Burton Speaks

This past weekend I attended the Rainier Dragon Boat Race up in Tacoma, WA, with the Bridge City Paddling Club. (The astute reader might note that I was paddling with Shibumi last year; we're more of an outrigger team now after a disappointing race season, and I'm doing the dragon boat thing with Bridge City.)


We went up north with enough people to fill two boats. Having been divided into "fast" and "else", I was on the "else" boat. My feelings on that can be discussed at a different point in time. We went in with a strong, fast attitude, and left humbled by our lackluster on-the-water performance.

How were our results?
First race: 2:24 - for some on my boat, the first race they'd ever paddled in. We came in fourth.
Second race: 2:21 - we locked in our timing and were making considerable improvements. We came in third against fast teams.
Third race: 2:34 - the tide shifted; all teams were slower, but our boat felt particularly slow. This was the race we needed to win, and we came in third.

I'm tired of losing. As the salt-water spray hit me in the face, and I struggled to watch and match the timing of the paddle in front of me, I couldn't completely ignore the boat next door pulling away from us and feeling our boat rock in their wake. That feeling, that I was putting my all into this thing and not making the headway our rivals were, was terrible.

I'll say this about the venue, however. They made a schedule and stuck to it. Races happened quickly, and the dock was arranged in such a way that they could marshall, load, and unload the boats with great efficiency. I was impressed. I was less impressed, however, by the lack of divisions they had. That is, with 25+ teams of varying casual-ness, only the top three would win a medal. There was no competition among the slower boats, except as fodder for the faster teams. I didn't like that part so much.

In the end, I only know that I have to work harder if I want to win... and I want, badly, to win.