Paddle for Life 4.0

This past weekend, I participated in the 4th Paddle for Life Dragon Boat Festival. I had been participating in the race every year since its beginning in 2007 and always had a good time.

This year, the event was held at Leo Ryan Park in Foster City. I raced at this location in 2007, and actually preferred it to Jack London Square. The water is calmer, there are no wake from ships/boats and best of all, it is a shorter drive from my house, so I don't need to wake up as early:)

I arrived at Leo Ryan Park at 8am. Summer 2010 had been unusually cold, but this morning was especially gloomy. Someone asked "What happen to the Sun?", to which I replied "They got acquired by Orcale." :)

Xilinx was the defending fundraising champion, so this year, we were rewarded with the "Ultimate Team Tent". Our tent was provided by the organizers, pitched near the finishing line, where we had a great view of the competition. Breakfast, lunch, snacks and drinks were provided, as well as 2 cushioned butterfly chairs!

For the last couple of years, we share a tent with Lucy's party boat. Lucy and Marvin were married last year and they had a baby. Lucy is now too busy to organize a team :(

As per last year, 10 person boats were used for this race. I asked our team captain, Marin about this. It seems like many teams had difficulty finding 20 paddlers. So, 10 person were used instead, so that teams with less paddlers can still participate.

The Xilinx team had enough paddles to fill 2 boats, so we were divided into Virtex boat and Spartan boat. Most of the people on the Virtex boat had raced in previous Paddle for Life events, while the Spartan boat were mostly newbies. Having paddled in the past 3 events, I was placed on the Virtex boat.

Our first race was against PepsiCo, MPBA and Rainbow Coi. Marvin was our drummer. Before the race, Marvin told us his stradegy: given we were a team of veterans, Marvin expect us to be able to paddle in sync better. So, he planned to have a high stroke rate.

It was not to be. Our team did not click. From the marshall area paddling to the starting point, our paddles were not totally in sync.

I also felt the floor of the competition boat was especially slippery. I quickly took off my sandals before got to the starting line to help get more traction. Luckily, with the calmer water, the starting call was slower. The judges actually had time to say "We have alignment!" before making the start call.

Our boat got off to a good start, but during the transition from start to race pace, we lose our timing. The boat started to rock. With the 250m course, there was no chance to recover, and we came in about 4 seconds slow to take second place. I felt really frustrated after the race. With the slippery boat and the timing issues, I did not feel any power on my strokes!

For the second race, Xilinx Vertex raced with Clorox, Chu Crew and Xilinx Spartan! The Spartan team had a really good first race, so it was not clear the Virtex boat would prevail against them.

Nathalie was our drummer for this race. Given the problem with how slippery the boat was, I marshalled barefoot. This really helped my grip and I was better able to help move the boat. I felt our boat paddled better compare to the first race, but when I looked up after the race was over, all the boats seemed to have crossed the finish line at about the same time.

When the result was announced, it was explained all four boats were separated by less than 1 sec! Our boat, the Virtex team, unfortunately, came in last, while the Spartan boat came in first. Marvin was perplexed. I heard him discussed with another Bay Area Dragon teammate how the experience team actually performed worst than the novice team :)

We stopped for lunch while the organized arranged for the final race. The "Ultimate Team Tent" had our lunch provided by organizers and we were served not-fully-thawed turkey wraps and potato salad :( Just after lunch, our massage therapist showed up. Again, that was one of the perks of the "Ultimate Team Tent".

The Virtex boat was assigned to the Division E finals. In the finals, we faced Henkel ACA Dragon Flyers, VOCAL and Water Shredders. Marvin was our drummer for this final race. We had decided we would do a different call for the transition from the start to race pace since that seem to throw the timing of the boat off the most.

Again, for this final, I marshalled barefoot. After 3 races together, our team finally came together. We had a good start and did a pretty good finish! At the end of the race, I looked up and notice we had finished neck to neck with another team. As we were paddling back to the marshalling area, Marvin nodded to one of the judges at the finish line, who said "Xilinx!"

After docking, we got the official confirmation. Xilinx Virtex was the Division E champion and we were to receive Gold Medals. After 4 years of racing, I finally medal-ed.

IMHO, our team this year probably was did not perform better than teams from previous years. But we did win our division this year and I am happy to finally bring home hardware.

After the race, I got a chair massage from the masseur, then hung around for the medal ceremony. Our last minute donation push helped Xilinx won the fund raising challenge again, so next year, we could look forward to the "Ultimate Team Tent" once more.