Dropped the ball on posting about CCWC!!

Well... surprise, surprise... I dropped the ball (again) on posting about the Club Crew World Championships held in Ravenna, Italy in September.

To make a very long and drawn out post (that much) shorter, here are the juicy pieces:

2000m - World Champions (Women's Premier)
200m - 2nd place (Women's Premier)
500m - World Champions (Women's Premier)

Not too bad ;)

Plus we got some great media love from the Ottawa Citizen here: http://ottawacitizen.com/sports/local-sports/ottawas-galley-girls-dragon-boat-team-win-big-at-world-event

I don't have many pictures from the first couple of days, but managed to pawn my camera off to Krysta's fiancee (as of a few days ago) to take pictures on the last day - so here goes :)

Medal Winners for the 500m Women's Premier Race

Me and my teammate Dr. Gina

Have to have a picture of my wonderful running buddy Guinness (just before I left) :)

Galley Girls celebrating a world championship in the 500m with a nice champagne toast

Krysta and I 

Getting my 500m medal

Paddling up to the start of the 500m final - I'm seat 7 on the right

Ravenna for IDBF World Club Crew Championships

It's Tuesday and I'm in Ravenna, Italy with my team from Ottawa - The Ottawa Premier Women Galley Girls. We are preparing to race in the 204 IDBF World Club Crew Championships. 

Yesterday, we had a practice scheduled and we got out for about ten minutes before the officials called all of the boats off the water. The course is contained, but still managed to get whitecaps, high winds gusts of 70 km/h, rain and just plain awesome, dirty weather conditions. A few boats tipped and the officials felt it wasn't safe to continue as planned so we returned to our hotel‎. I managed to sneak in a bit of a run around Ravenna, which was nice to burn off some energy because we have been tapering all week.

I walked around yesterday, had some prosciutto melone and then had tuna steak for dinner. The food here is incredible. Everything is fresh, plentiful and tastes so wonderful :)

This morning, we managed to get a full hour session on the course. The boat is feeling good and responding well, so we will see what happens tomorrow during the first race. It's a 2km race, with boats leaving every fifteen seconds. Right now we are slayed to start in the middle.of the pack, which is good because the water won't be as messy as starting at the end of the bunch - less wash to have to contend with. But, instead of hunting the first crew, we will be the hinted, having crews trying to overtake and pass us. 

Here are some pictures of the course - note the massive Canadian flag - just waiting for us ;)

For friends and family at home, our race is at 5pm Europe time, and will (should) be broadcast in IDBF TV.

Some race pics from Fuzhou, China

I still haven't done a re-cap post - BUT - I've come across some pictures from the races that I thought I would share! In the small boats, I sit in the middle seat (ie: seat 3) on the right hand side. The final pic of the set is one of my favorite - capturing some good down time at the course. I am (again) in the middle ;)

Maclean's publication

Hi everyone,

I've been meaning to do a bit of a re-cap of the event in China but haven't yet had the chance.... I had the Ottawa festival right after my return and am gearing up for Nationals in a few days. It's been busy... :)


BUT, I wanted to share some great press that Canadian dragonboat recently received.

Maclean's published an article called "18 Reasons why it's great to be Canadian", and they featured the Canadian National Dragonboat Team, and our results in Hungary 2013 as reason number 2. This is pretty big coverage for such a grassroots effort, so we're trying to share this as broadly as possible.

There is a great picture of the Premier Women's crew in Hungary last summer - see if you can spot me :)

18 Reasons why it's great to be Canadian

World cup done - now to get home...

Updates on this trip haven't exactly been consistent - finding free Wi-Fi has proven difficult, and to be honest, our days have been filled with racing, sleeping and foraging for food I can stomach. Thankfully, I filled my bag with protein bars from Canada - they're almost all gone ;)

Team Canada ended up with a respectable 3rd place overall (based on points) in the world cup - taking home two silver medals and three bronze. Our showing wasn't what the team or the coach wanted, but, considering how the team was brought together to race internationally, never having paddled together, we must accept that our results are good - all things considered. 

I must say though - it was tough standing on that podium and not singing along to the Canadian national anthem. For that reason, I'm going to step up my training to ensure that I'm on the National team for 2015 - and get to sing once more :)

We were supposed to have left yesterday, early morning, but our flight was cancelled and I am now hanging out in Beijing awaiting my outbound flight. If I had more time, I would go to the wall, but it just isn't feasible this trip. I've seen it before, but my travel companions haven't, so that would have been nice :)

Yesterday I spent the day wandering around Fuzhou. I spent a significant amount of time in a park adjacent to the hotel. They had a dragonboat museum there with the traditional teak boats. It was a sight to see, and a bit of an honour to pay homage to my sports beginnings. 

Later that afternoon, I was walking my some locale having tea and they invited me to join. I spent two hours chatting with them using a translation app on an iPad, and drinking white tea. It was possibly one of the coolest experiences I have had while travelling. It was great to have that opportunity because I was alone and not at the whim of travel mates. 

I will post some pictures when I get home, but for now here are some pics of our medals, and the locals who invited me to tea. 

Last day of racing

Today is the last day of racing at the IDBF World Cup in Fuzhou, China. This has been an incredibly interesting experience, and one where I'm learning a lot about team dynamics, managing expectations and kicking negative out of my head (and that of my teammates).

It's tough - our women's crew is not what our coach wanted - but we are doing our best.

This morning, we finished in silver position after the Philippines and before China in the 100m standard boat a final.

We just got off the water from the A final for the 200m relay. This is a tough race because pure putting teammates against teammates. In this case, it's our women who do a 200m race, and when they hit the finish line, the men have to race 200m in the opposite direction. It was head to head against China and we came in second by a few seats.

One of those heartbreaking races/ situations and now the women are psyched out or the final race of the day - a 500m standard boat mixed race.

Right now, we are waiting for the TV crews to ready themselves for our medal presentation ceremony, and trying to stay positive. It's unfortunate really. We are second place in the World Cup, and the mood at our team tent is collective dejection. It's different than my previous experiences - that's for sure.

Another item that we are contending with is having to race around television schedules. In some cases, they load us into the boats and leave us out on the water for twenty minutes before they start the race - this is particularly true whenever we are racing China. It makes it difficult to manage heat, water, mental and physical preparedness, but hey - the way I see it, we have been racing on cray jet-lagged bodies, so we really can't be much worse off ;)

The audience and crowd watching the races is incredible. There are so many people cheering us on, and we have made some friends with the locals. A man even brought us banana leave sticky rice after our last race that he made at home. It was cute.

Alright, enough for now. I will update when we have finished the 500m.

Bronze in the 200m

We have about 12 races today and we started our day off with a bronze medal finish in the 200m. First place went to China and second place went to Philipines.

We just finished our team pursuit race against team China. We won our heat but were assigned a ten second penalty which lands us in the bronze medal race. We are still seeking clarification on why we got a penalty and might end up in the gold medal race. More to one as I've just found out that there is wifi at the race site.