I ask for 1 year of your life

another year another batch

raffles canoeing 11/12 team

What if you believe?

haha was going for an epic post but decided not to.

so a truncated one (haha, haven't used that word in a long time)

it's that time of the year again. I'm sick. not exactly the best state for timetrial but well, suck it up.

saturday's training left much to be desired. so today, have finally decided to abandon my regatta (actually that devision was a couple of weeks back, going to get new boat). after all that trial-and-error i have concluded that it is incompatible with a good technique for me. so meanwhile, will have to make do with the nelo.

my form is highly erratic, but the small positive is that i have proven i can be really fast. plus, teamboat k4 that day was great (: it ranks up there with the other SBS experiences (:

so we were meant to be the 'rabbit', like just to pace the nelo boat and possibly the other regatta k4 as well. none of us expected it to be good, or rather, thogh we didn't voice out our thoughts, we were pretty much expecting a horrible training. and initially, me and backman were countering each others tilt, haha, so much for a start.

but gradually it became better and better with the technical exercises. the first inkling i had that this would work out was during the paddling on one side. we were moving together and it was really really stable for the rest. It was also the most stable k4 i've ever paddled though some parts were unstable for me only.

then we did the break stroke. which was not my favourite from past experience. but this was ok. then the pause between the break stroke started getting shorter, and shorter and shorter, and our boat got progressively more stable. then no pause (normal paddling), even more stable, 80%, picking up, 90% more! and 100% let's go! btw did i mention all this while eyes closed for the back 3? haha

if that was fun, what took place next was even more SBS (: did starts. so here's how it works. whole boat will paddle, then only 1st and 2nd person 100% for 8 strokes, the back 2 just tap water. then 1st and 3rd, 1st and 4th then all 4 together. 1st eight, could feel the momentum of the boat, 2nd eight was my turn, 3rd 8 again the momentum and THEN, off we went, WE WERE ON FIRE!! suppose to stop when we want to, and we paddled pretty far before stopping (:

it is hard to describe that wonderful feeling, my words limit the vividness of the moment. you know, after all the disgusting trainings (not as in tough, but not so good), it is paddling like this that i live for. Being able to put my power (wasn't all, not perfectly stable yet, so we can go even faster!) was a great feeling, to feel the boat surge was incredible (: and again we did a stacking thing, this time starting from backman, last 2, last 3 then the whole boat. for a moment i really felt like we were flying (: following which were some starts, where we were the first boat out! yea, we were about next to/in front of the nelo boat on parallex error and coach was surprised too (:

ah (: happy, and back to reality. tmr awaits!

"If you don't have a dream, how can you have a dream come true?"

What if you believe?