If you're not first you're last...or something like that

It's pretty crazy when people actually go out of their way to hate on you in person, in real life. OK, we might not have done that well on Saturday but comon - who knew haters would come from far and wide just to disrespect the Banana Boat a little this year. I'm probably blowing this way out of proportion and completely misinterpreting the situation Haters always gonna hate, this is true, but I guess our reputation might actually be preceding us this year...

After we threw down a dismal 2:36 in our first race some dude actually went out of his way right before the 2nd race to come up to us and say, "Hey Banana Boat what happened? Did you guys throw that first heat or something? I thought you guys are supposed to be good..."

Are you serious right now? Yeah, we did well last year but our team is also about 70% new paddlers for 2011 and you're kinda pushing that all Asians look alike thing a little far. I hate to make excuses but that was also the first time we ever did a 500m piece this year and we didn't even have a finish, so cut us some slack. You don't know us *snaps fingers & shakes head side to side*.



We also got lots of comments about our new uniforms. Ok fine, a lot of it was actually just from me but our uniforms are pretty gangster this year, just have a look. I place the blame solely on our captain for that poor judgement call But so what if our uniforms don't have sleeves and look like hobo shirts? Sleeves are restrictive and how else can you show off your ripped back muscles?

That doesn't mean you have to come to our camp as we're relaxing and try to talk to us about how unique, colorful and different they are. Actually, looking back now I definitely might have misinterpreted that whole situation because the guy was really friendly and did offer us BBQ after (and I'm not talking crappy hot dogs, I'm talking real Italian sausages grilled on a real BBQ they brought in). But anyway...



The team also learned a few costly lessons on Saturday too. As far as team sports go, that whole thing about being as strong as your weakest member is a pretty reasonable motto when it comes to dragonboating. With 22 people on a boat trying to work as 1, a single misstep will cascade and throw everyone off.

But it was a good experience before throwing the noobs into the fire. With a lot of first timers it was probably first race jitters and not knowing what to expect, but now that they do have it under their belt it's time to step it up. Hamilton is in 3 weeks and we actually do have a real reputation to defend there. We can't lose, we won't lose...

Sure, we are a recreational team but that doesn't mean you shouldn't aim to win. Losing sucks, especially when you pay to play and are putting the time and effort into it - so don't let your teammates down. Hell, there are teams who practice 3 times a week and they consider themselves recreational too.

One thing we learned for sure is that you need to keep your heads in the boat. Yes, it's noisy and intense and shit's going on all around you, but every time you look outside the boat it costs us. When you don't pay attention to the people in front of you or concentrate on the calls then the boat falls back a seat, all because of you or me. With 20 paddlers, those split seconds add up and unfortunately it cost us the final race because it happened to be the case in the last few meters.

Check it out, this is how close it was. The orange buoy is the finish line. Within the last 10 meters or so, looks like we got caught up in the moment, heads turned and we lost. Story of my life...



Also, show up to practice. With only an hour on the water each week every practice counts. That's the truth, so show up and don't let your team down.

So bottom line is we got our work cut out for us, but in all fairness with only a few practices under our belt it could have been worse. Not to say that we did particularly well, but I was seriously depressed kinda disappointed that we didn't break 2:30 all day.

Here was the final race.



It actually wasn't that bad though because the weather held up, the venue was pretty nice and we had a lot of fun. We even went to Niagara Falls after.

Well I guess that's it for my disgruntled Monday, drinking crappy coffee, looking too much into things and ranting about it post, so have a nice day.