!!! Su Pah Fast !!!

(A brief interruption from the Ireland adventure)

Last Sunday I raced with the Stat Dragons from South Cove Medical Centers in my first ever Dragon Boat race.

(Can you find me? Look really hard!)

We arrived at 7:30 a.m., received our uniforms and had to get changed for our first race. Not wanting to change in the nearby port-a-potty we used what we had and made our own fitting rooms.

Teams come in to Boston from all over the place and get pretty serious about it. I snapped a picture of this team, practicing on the lawn. WHAT!

You are crazy if you think that worried us though. While they were practicing . . . we were sleeping. 7:30 am is too early for us Stat Dragons.

Here we are, all ready to go for our first big race. I'm sitting on the right side of the boat, fourth row back . . . just in case you needed a little help spotting me. :)

We raced a total of 4 times, so between races we killed time by napping, playing cards and my favorite, forming back massage lines.

The Charles river was lined with all kinds of great food and fun things to do. A stage was set up in the middle of everything where different performances went on. We had a great time exploring and even found a tent giving away free tattoos.

We did really well all day as far as the race goes. We made it into the finals for our division and really kicked some trash. Going into our last race, we were pretty sure we didn't stand a chance. Our best race time for the day was 2 minutes 52 seconds while the teams we were up against had times of about 2 minutes 45 seconds. However, when it came time to race, we gave it our all and blew the competition out of the water, beating them by 4 seconds.

Below is a video someone took of that last race. We are the boat on the far left. I'm sitting in the back on the right side of the boat. You can actually see me for a second at the very end of the video.




If you are wondering why we don't look excited at the end, it's because we didn't know we won. We were so focused on rowing that we didn't realize we won until we were out of the boats and on dry ground.

I had such a blast and can't wait to do it again next year!