post-tired

I had a full night's sleep, woke because I can't stay supine much longer than 8 hours without getting a back ache. Still operating on a massive sleep deficit. Or energy deficit, since, I don't think I was atypically sleep deprived.

I got 6+ hours Thursday night, despite waking early enough to get in a 5K and parboil before the train to Philly, where I also dozed a bit. I did get some sleep Friday night, despite the presence of People I've Never Before Slept In The Same Room With. After dinner (at Tria) and a stroll through Philly's first Friday, Upyernoz and I were both ready to call it a night by 10 or so, so I even got a solid hour or so before my roommates arrived.

Saturday was an insanely long day.

We mustered in the lobby by 5:45, in theory to get to the site by 6:30. Although, if you include getting lost and then trying to find parking, it was more like 7.

First race was at 8:36 ish. Then, a lot of waiting. twoeleven came by to watch my next race. (Around 2 pm)

I was reminded of the problem of inviting non-dragonboaters to watch dragonboat races. It took me several races, as a participant in the sport, before watching the heats became more than "ooo, colorful boats with dragonheads" or "hey, look how they dressed up their drummer!" The typical observer gets pretty bored pretty fast.

The philly race (1) does not also feature an Asian Festival (no Taiko drummers, no martial arts demos, no Dragon dancers, etc. -which reduces the crowds, good for a race that has so many teams, but bad for non-racers) and (2) is far enough away from anything else that it was risky to leave the site, particularly since the organizers' slick machine for cycling through 150+ teams in a day obliges teams being sorted into chutes up to 45 minutes before their heat.

This is a crazy amount of standing around, all lined up, for a 2-3 minute race. The 30 minutes (maximum) that I was on the water was not the cause of my sunburn. (yeah, hmmmm, ok, some of my exhaustion is likely "too much sun"). That 45 minute advance means that, even though your next race is 2+ hours off, you really only have an hour to leave site, see something and then come back. Even our guest drummer (a teammate's college coxwain) bailed before our last race, because the lag was too much.

Granted, the lag would've been shorter if we'd sucked. We made it into Divison A (top 10% of teams attending), so our last race was going to be one of the last two of the day. Otherwise, we might've been done by 3, and there'd have been time to be social. But, I'm not sad that we made Division A our first year in the race, especially with such a motley boat line-up. (Although, we would've smoked B and gotten bling.)

The DC Dragons had a slicker group than when I paddled with them in Ithaca. Although they still lost to That Other Boston Team, (who had a stacked team, which is something "we" are somewhat reluctant to consider). We stole DC's camp mom to be our drummer for the last race, and she was awesome. (She claimed she hadn't done it before. I think she was lying.)

Twoeleven had left by then, and, my other local potentialiaties had evaporated, so I grabbed the first available ride back and left before the final results were posted. We came in, at worst, 11th. Oooooooh.

post-tired

I had a full night's sleep, woke because I can't stay supine much longer than 8 hours without getting a back ache. Still operating on a massive sleep deficit. Or energy deficit, since, I don't think I was atypically sleep deprived.

I got 6+ hours Thursday night, despite waking early enough to get in a 5K and parboil before the train to Philly, where I also dozed a bit. I did get some sleep Friday night, despite the presence of People I've Never Before Slept In The Same Room With. After dinner (at Tria) and a stroll through Philly's first Friday, Upyernoz and I were both ready to call it a night by 10 or so, so I even got a solid hour or so before my roommates arrived.

Saturday was an insanely long day.

We mustered in the lobby by 5:45, in theory to get to the site by 6:30. Although, if you include getting lost and then trying to find parking, it was more like 7.

First race was at 8:36 ish. Then, a lot of waiting. twoeleven came by to watch my next race. (Around 2 pm)

I was reminded of the problem of inviting non-dragonboaters to watch dragonboat races. It took me several races, as a participant in the sport, before watching the heats became more than "ooo, colorful boats with dragonheads" or "hey, look how they dressed up their drummer!" The typical observer gets pretty bored pretty fast.

The philly race (1) does not also feature an Asian Festival (no Taiko drummers, no martial arts demos, no Dragon dancers, etc. -which reduces the crowds, good for a race that has so many teams, but bad for non-racers) and (2) is far enough away from anything else that it was risky to leave the site, particularly since the organizers' slick machine for cycling through 150+ teams in a day obliges teams being sorted into chutes up to 45 minutes before their heat.

This is a crazy amount of standing around, all lined up, for a 2-3 minute race. The 30 minutes (maximum) that I was on the water was not the cause of my sunburn. (yeah, hmmmm, ok, some of my exhaustion is likely "too much sun"). That 45 minute advance means that, even though your next race is 2+ hours off, you really only have an hour to leave site, see something and then come back. Even our guest drummer (a teammate's college coxwain) bailed before our last race, because the lag was too much.

Granted, the lag would've been shorter if we'd sucked. We made it into Divison A (top 10% of teams attending), so our last race was going to be one of the last two of the day. Otherwise, we might've been done by 3, and there'd have been time to be social. But, I'm not sad that we made Division A our first year in the race, especially with such a motley boat line-up. (Although, we would've smoked B and gotten bling.)

The DC Dragons had a slicker group than when I paddled with them in Ithaca. Although they still lost to That Other Boston Team, (who had a stacked team, which is something "we" are somewhat reluctant to consider). We stole DC's camp mom to be our drummer for the last race, and she was awesome. (She claimed she hadn't done it before. I think she was lying.)

Twoeleven had left by then, and, my other local potentialiaties had evaporated, so I grabbed the first available ride back and left before the final results were posted. We came in, at worst, 11th. Oooooooh.