The holidays revisited

ANd so time has proven itself impossible to retain save for in memories . Coming to a concluding phase of the june holidays , tot i should do a post as a summary .

Yeah much have happened within the 4 week span , spending some time as a reflection , I'm quite amazed by how much that have passed and i havent gotten a grasp of everything ...
Though much of the holidays are spent in training , those long mundane days that ever seem so repetitive of itself , but yeah its been a good long holiday that provided time to sharpen up the skills in the K1 ....

And ever since i passed that stage , leaving the clumsiness of basic boat handling , transffered over to bedok for training with the seniors , kinda learnt a lot , both in skills and intellectually .
Knowing the senior team more closely , despite their extreme small size , bout 11, 12 pple max , but yeah that kind of size for a team makes good for everyone to be close to each other. No one gets left out , everyone's involved kind of relation , its a kind of closeness outsiders might not fully understand , cos even me , i find that yeah the seniors are really closely bonded , and i might not fully integrate into them ... After alll i am but from another batch ...
It leaves quite something for us to think abt and learn , to make the same out of our own batch . What do we have , at the end of the day , as a batch , what legacy , what impression are we to leave behind to our next batch of juniors? How are we going to do ourselves and the name of the team proud?

ONe thing that i found out , that these batch of seniors , the 2nd batch of SAJC canoeing , are actually the first actual batch to receive a full 2 year training program as a team ... Prior to that , the pioneer batch didnt really had time to fully prepare. And hence this year , The A div Championships , this batch holds a promise to their seniors , a promise to take "revenge" , a promise that they'll not let down the efforts of the pioneers .. Quite impactfull actually when coach was briefing them abt this reminding abt the promise the other day ... Briefing them as a batch , analysing them as a batch , while i was sitting along side , absorbing this rare chance to see the seniors batch 's past and deeper experience ... Each and everyone of them has seen a lot more i havent got to see ... HOw the team started out , the days they were at kallang , then to jurong then to bedok . Like a sort of a shared team history . This is their history , this is their legacy .
They have come thus far , and i believe that there's nothing more worthwhile to be able to see the the live action the growth of the fruits of one's own labour . To know that every sweat every minute spent in the boat goes a long way back and mean a hell lot of difference when put to the ultimate test . To have no regrets ...

And when their share of the show has ended,its up to us to create our own share of that history . We may not be the best , we may not have taken back every medal in the championships , but its the process of fighting for it thats worth reliving .





Ah ok enough of emo crap .... Some of the things i find intersting that happen during holiday


1) Finally setting clean record of zero capsize in a single training day . Nonetheless , still have random booms here and there on rare occasions

2) Getting stuck in seaweed bed in seletar reservoir .

3) Crapping at guang jie's hse after trainings to "study" session ending up as watch tv mahjong and what-not

4) Nearly causing the boat to sink while towing back yong's downed SwiftRacing K1 ... Bad management of inertia , conservation of momentum , applied too mcuh force end up i jumped out my own boat to hug his boat till reach pontoon ... Otherwise its a $1000 donation to the reservoir

5)Taking K2 with Jon Gan with which we turned the sprint kayak into a sprint submarine ..( me 73kg + him 77kg =150 kg ) We sat in the boat so low in the water , our fore deck was barely out of the water surface .

6) During an after training free "training" period , me , tzetian , edmund , wai kit,rafting up at the far side of the reservoir to take a MEGA wash from the wakeboarder's powerboat . (yes a bloddy wakeboarder in the reservoir !~!?) Felt like a washing machine

7) laughing at joshua and hanming who capsize also because of a similar MEGA wash

8) Cursing some ITE's dragonboat team who went on a rampage charging wherever they were at , including while i was trying to park at the pontoon ... ( Imagine u trying to maneuver a K1 to park and then a dragon boat came at charging at u )

9) Earning the rights to use the two LiangJin K1s ... Wooo smoothest boat i used ... Too bad i overweight for the Regatta ....:-/

10)Did the most spectacular recovery in my short kayaking experience ... ME was near the bedok reservoirs first bay when i lost balance ... Went all the way down nearly 80 degrees before i responded with a last minute brace and pulled myself upright again ... ( my elbows were already in the water ... had i acted slower i might as well have done a complete roll)


11) Imitating VJC pple to drink reservoir water using the wing paddle as a scoop

12) Getting pricked by the carbon fiber from my wing paddle while i was admiring it :P

13 ) Achieving personal best K1 500m timing with the aid of a 12 knot downwind :P

14) getting scolded for cutting 3 lanes while sprinting sets .

15) Blatantly giving backwash to TPJC's C rowers who attmpted to tailgate me

16) Enjoying hot water showers at Temasek Poly after trainings

theres a lot more ... i shant list everything



OH yah in addition i realised that during this holiday period ... A lot of pple have gotten Girl or Boy friends ...


1)Jin Kahn who so randomly gotten an RGS girl whom he said was his Goddad's daughter ....

2) Natty (RJC) who showed up at coffe bean with some SA girl but till now i dunno who the hell was that

3) Zany (NJC) who i saw at khatib with some VJ girl and later confirm is his GF

4) Marcus(NYJC) who i saw at Upp thomson while having dinner with team , holding hands with a girl

5) Nicholas and Christine from team who just recently confessed being together ... WOOOOO

Training with a goal

yeah i'm back in Bedok now since this week ............
Supposedly for the lack of equipment so only a few of us are now training with the seniors .Bloody random though these few days the J1s are too returing to Bedok to train for some undisclosed reason ... That leaves those boats and Seletar left untouched ... So much for efficient usage . WOnder y the thell we shifted em to seletar in the first place..


And yeah also i'm doing good now on the K1 . Havent had a legal capsize for quite some time now so maintaining the good luck streak
( illegal capsizes not valid ... INcludes random capsizes off the pontoon , cap while scratching face , drinking water playing etc etc ... )

BUt the problem now is my fitness still rather off limits when put comparison to the rest of the team ... True i may have a certain headstart advantage when training with the seniors , having more water time and making them more productive by going long distance (>10km) . BUt the fact is it does not really mean a lot . HOw much i can fare as a racer would really depend on how long i can sustain , how much efficiency my lungs would provide , how rapid my muscles can recover . These are all the fundamental issues and wat all racers compete with each other .

HOw much do i dare to dream , how far would i go for this dream , all that hardship and time spent condensed into one race that determines the worthinesss of the efforts , and also of our very own competence ... How long would it take for me to break , when would i start thinking of slackier alternatives is determined by how strong my mind would stay ... Its not easy , no one ever said it will be

I need to train , i need to train , i need to train ... BUt how long would my mind remain faithful to me and keep reminding myself this ...



Oh , and we just lost another guy today ... sad sad sad , wat really happened i dunno , but i reached only to be told we've got one more casualty who was bombed by coach during the earlier session of J1 training ... dude , this suck ... the team is beginning to take shape and now this ...
Wth pls stop pls stop , i wont grumble of the lack of equipment , i wouldnt be choosy between the Tropical or SwiftRacing boats , i wont grumble of having to take paddles 10cm too long for me ... PLs bring my team back to me

Pull me up !!!!!!!!!

THAT SUCKED


YES it does .... When after so much and so far at least there might be a reward for all that work . WTH has it really all gone down the drain?



Shat, training today was a real wake up call for me .
Pre-training training from MR Q who so randomly turned up at the reservoir in the morning to give us PT ... Wait , thats not a complain nor grumbling , its me who has failed to make the mark . All went fine till it reached to have to do pull-ups .
And i failed the test miserably .... BLoody HeLL wake up your Idea !!!! Its june now !!! ANd I still cant do body weight sets .... So end up Tian had provide support at the quads to pull me backwards when i pulled up , so that more of my effort could be directed at pulling up instead of resisting the natural tendency to swing and squirm ... Support!!! Support for pull ups !!????!! I thought that was but a thing of the past ....

Wats with all those breaks spent at the back gate pull up bars ??? (back gate bars , cos too paiseh to do at fitness corner ) ... Shat , so much with all those talks abt fighting for racing slot , so much for thinking abt beating the best .... At this rate , that shall be a thing of coffeeshop talks if u still rely on others to even do pull ups ...

wake up YANG wake up ....

K4 , like nothing in the reservoir

Right since so long did i properly manage this blog ...





Like some of the progresses over the time when i wasnt around , including more and more trainings .

Now since holiday started the training schedule is like everyday , plus the fact that have to rush study for the common test when school reopens . Pretty much rips off me any much available spare time , and now I'm gonna have to miss several session off the EMERGE conference ..... Shat man time is really running past fast , in a zoom the week is ending and i didnt really have a lot of time to reflect abt it ... Other than Mon and Tues which i went for the NUS physics lectures with Nigel ... All memories abt it is a blur lost within the not so deep waters of Bedok reservoir ...

Haix

Good thing is , hahax theres good progress in training . I just managed to earn my rights to the wing paddle , actually not so much as earn it , seems that everyone's getting their chance to use , a much coverted piece of equipment that was yet so sacred and holy (due to the Nick's incident with illegal usage of the wing that almost got him booted from the team) .



KEy events is that for the past two days , much of my water time was spent playing around with the new K4 ... Coach basically started experimenting with various combinations of crews for the K4 and also to train the drivers for boat control .
Aye first trip down , Wai kit at the helm ,Wee Ling and Guang Jie and Me at the back . Had to try to coordinate our movements ; any slight jerks or weight shifts was well felt by everyone else in the boat , which may be disastrous when we were moving at those speeds typical for K4 sustained movements . Overall good balance and it felt real shiok to be reaching into the realm of higher level speeds ...

Next trip down , Ling and Jie replaced by Matt and Nelson taking the middle two seats . The crew this time was screwed right from the start . Right off the pontoon we faced a leftward list partially contributed by me (whoops) and wobbly jerks . This time round, didnt succeed in any proper sustained paddling. Every few strokes we faced a bad jerk which we braced water to maintain balance .
In addtion to the fact that we failed to proper communicate our intentions to move , so whenever one person leans slightly to the right , someone else would think we're losing balance and hence try to counteract by leaning left . Which then sends a signal to the first person to lean right even more to counter this counter-action. Bad time , we ended up oscillating all the way to the far side of the racing lanes before all these mistakes compounded into a big counter-jerking so much that we cap'd ! Ouch , end up having to be rescued by seniors ... Dam tedious work just to bring back a downed K4


Yeah but end up it was me and Wai kit stuck in the K4 on permanent taxi duty and serve as a crew to let others have a try out on the K4 , after which we were rotated out to rest individually . Yong at the helm was equally a joke as us . THink it was Ling and someone else (probably Qian , or is it?) and me behind , then Yong was happily doing a perfect complete paddle motion that included full body twisting , save the fact that this caused his stroke frequency to be downright klutz. End up the three of us behind paddled in unison in fast, light strokes, while Yong was lost in his own world in slow, complete strokes . No insult but it kinda made us look like clowns looking from the shore ...

Best combination was yet was the time Jack ,Eugene (who were originally K2 partners already) , HuiQin and me , which hence made me the noobest rower in the crew ... Relatively stable save for minor jerks which were a nuisance when rowing ... Guess i was too nervous , esp when they decided to start sprinting .
Gosh i had to squeeze all my will not to make any unnecessary movements lest they be amplified under the speed we were moving at . Trying to keep up with the frequency was manageable , keeping still was much harder... But aye ultimately , hahax the K4 is really cool :D ... Felt as if we could take on a fully crewed dragonboat anytime ...

Hahax could have described a few more trips but i seriously need go study ... Nvm ....