Sylph Angel

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Greetings Earthlings... I'm was thinking about putting up weird quotes from people but I can't recall any of those weird quotes right now, so I'll leave it. Now to talk about the marathon...

I took junior men K1. Junior men means basically every kayak single who wants to do 27km, not kiddy race... The 27km consists of six 4.5km rounds around Kallang, with a portage (portage is where you have to pick up your boat, carry it, and run like 100m) in between each round (adds up to 5).

Pre race: I arrived at Kallang 10minutes late (0640), but who cares. Then I just took my stuff (paddle, life jacket, drink, kayak, number tag and bib, etc.) and went to the briefing area. Haha I always get the feeling that I'm going for water each time I put on the life jacket (armor) and hold the paddle (weapon). Anyway, nothing special happened yet. I mean, I was feeling quite lousy, as I always do before exercise, but that was okay since I didn't plan on winning anything...

After that we lined up. The tourers and canoe categories went first. Then the kayak doubles started after a short interval. Then it was my turn (singles kayak). I thought of hydrating myself before the start, so I went to drink from my waterbag (containing Gatorade), but just as I was happily drinking, the starter horn sounded. I freaked out, quickly putting down the waterbag tube and picking up my blade (I had just lost about 4 strokes). Some start to a race...

Early race: As I was slowly picking up speed, I noticed Ryan (a senior who promised to row with me) burst ahead. I was wondering why he was going so fast. I mean, 27km! I decided to somewhat row somewhat hard too, until after about 500m. That's when I asked myself, "you tryina kill yourself?" And I just slowed down, so slow that Kenneth was ahead of me. I don't mean to insult Kenneth, he's just a sort of benchmark.

Eventually after about 7km of keeping up the same speed, I overtook Kenneth with some quick turns. He seemingly dissapeared after that (I later learnt that he capsized).

Middle race: This starts from the second portage out of five. My second screw up was here. You see, I picked up my kayak (which had some water inside, but I didn't really notice), and ran about 20m, then all the water rushed to the front and my boat tilted to the front, nearly crashing into the ground. I barely managed to stop it, running the rest of the portage with a boat tilted at 70 degrees to the front.

When I re-entered the boat and emtied water, I realized my waterbag was stuck at the front. I tried rowing, but the weight misdistribution screwed up the balance, and I had to spend about 1minute violently shaking the waterbag out of the front. Naturally, I was quite demoralized and tired after that.

Going on and on, I got slowly more and more tired. My a** was starting to hurt too. I realized that after a portage, my a** temporarily stops hurting, then after a while it starts hurting again. The temporarily stop hurting period gets shorter with each passing round, and my a** ends up hurting more and more. I didn't know if I could survive the thing... If my a** hurts too much it goes numb, and when it goes numb I can't feel the boat anymore, and when that happens I lose balance and capsize.

Late race: My key to surviving the race came. You see, an NUS girl (or woman?) came along, and after asking for her permission (yes, I actually asked) I went to ride her backwash for a long distance. Really, very long. 2 rounds at least, if I'm not wrong. She didn't want to take turns... Oh well. More for me, none for her...

Haha it was while riding her backwash that I past Ryan and Derek (who also promised to row with me). I thought about rowing with them, but decided not to. I mean, they didn't row the first part with me... So I just kept following the girl, shouting, "that's my ride!" to Ryan and Derek. They got quite angry and knocked me, but I don't care... =]

Going into the last round, that girl sped up. I couldn't pace her anymore and after a brief struggle, fell behind, and picked another person to ride (whom also turned out to be a girl). However, the NUS girl screwed up her portage. I think she had trouble emptying water or something. So I overtook her and rode the other girl (I realize I'm sounding like quite a flirt).

When I had about 2km more to go, I looked to the front and back, realizing the nearest junior K1s were about 200m in front and about 200m behind. This meant I could go on happily riding backwash until maybe the last 200m, when I would do a last burst to win the person I've been leeching off.

So I did that, but I shouted, "Thank you! Thanks for lending me your wash!" As I passed her. I think she smiled. Okay, I'm like poking myself with "youflirtyouflirtyouflirtyouflirt..." right now. Oh well.

Post race: I realized my number tag was gone... Was kinda afraid they would disqualify me. I still had my number bib (the cloth number thing I wore), but it wasn't the complete set... Still, who cares? I mean, it's not like I'm going to get a medal...

Oh yeah, while I was washing my kayak, I kinda met that NUS girl face to face... She was like, "Oh, hello." And I went, "Heyyyyy!" And she said, "Were you the one who..." And I replied, "Yeah. =]"

That's it. Sorry for any mistakes in terms of grammar, but I can't change at the moment, I need do do stuff. Bye.

vεﯠαחƒőχ @ 5:47:00 PM.