Last October, I went out to watch my friends Jackie and Phil race and thought it looked pretty awesome. Everyone on the team seemed really fun and it looked like a great way to meet new people. So this year, I joined them. I started going to practices a few weeks ago and have learned a lot so far about technique and form. It is very different from canoeing or kayaking. It takes much more core and even leg muscles than I had thought. We do a lot of conditioning in practices and I've found the benefits of all my work in the gym. Our coaches are all very awesome... they have been racing for a long time and paddle for multiple teams. One of them is even racing with Team USA in an international festival in Hungary this summer.
Dragon Boating is awesomely intense. We have twenty-two people in the boat. Twenty paddlers, a drummer and a steer-er. Twenty-two people working together, rowing together (hopefully in unison).... it really is a cool feeling. Phil stated it best when he said: "To be a "member" of a dragon boat team is really a misnomer. A better term might be appendage as it embodies more of what we do while on the boat. We forget sometimes, though. We forget that we are nothing more than a leg on a fire-breathing Chinese water centipede."
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