The 2008 Montreal Dragon Boat Regatta

Posted April 8, 2009 * Comments(0)

What happens at the 2008 Montreal Dragon Boat Regatta?montreal_regatta
The Montreal International Dragon Boat Regatta is a 2 days event with approximately 150 teams participating. Each team should have at least 21 paddlers plus a cox and a couple of spare paddlers.
This is really a big event together with all the participants, spectators, vendors, staff and volunteers surrounding the area. The rankings on this sports event are from A to G Division depending on the numbers of teams participating. Each division was then divided into three categories namely the Premiere, Intermediate and Rookie.

This year competition was a bit watered down because most of the top teams were not in attendance as they were in Penang, Malaysia for the 2008 6th World Club Crew Championships and as a result some of the teams that were not usually belong in the A Division category was subsequently ranked as such in this regatta.

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Keeping a Dragonboat Training Log

Posted December 4, 2008 * Comments(2)

Many competitive dragonboat paddlers keep a training log to record their training activities and race times. They record in their log the sessions about on-water training, pool, weight training and other aspects important to their success in Dragonboating.

It’s usually a little booklet like this one below:
fitness_journal

You can also include body vitals, such as: body weight, body fat %, resting heart rate, girth measurements of waist, chest, legs and arms. These are usually recorded initally at the start of a training programme / season and not at each session. Then at the end of the season, a paddler can look back at their improvements, not just in race times, but in their overall body conditioning.

Date:
1/6/2008
Body Weight:
85kg
Body Fat %:
11%
Resting Heart Rate:
45b.p.m
Girth Measurements
- Waist
105cm
- Chest
120cm
- Arms (biceps)
35cm
- Legs (thighs)
50cm

How to record your data?

A simple way to make sure your data is recorded accurately is to buy an exercise book with lines and draw some columns with headings (you can also type it into a computer on an excel spreadsheet and print it out as well, or even more advanced is to store it on a PDA, whichever way you choose just make sure you can access it easily after every training session). Here’s an example of what I do:

Date Description of training How long did I train for? Excercises Performed How I felt?
1/12/2008 Water Training 1.5 hours 3 sets x 1.5km paddling @ 60%, 2 min rest between

3 sets x 500m paddling @ 90%, 1 min rest between

 It was an intensive session, though I felt I struggled at the end with the power sets. I did feel the boat lag today as most people were tired from the race on the weekend.

Also a crucial aspect is to be honest with what you do on the water and off the water. Write a brief summary of how you felt after the training session and make sure it’s dated.

Training logs will help you in the long term. If you have a bad racing year, you can look back at previous years logs and find out how hard you trained and felt in previous years. Good paddling years are usually a result of how well you have trained.

If you are like me and would prefer to keep everything electronic on the Internet, here’s a website called iLog that can keep track of your training sessions and results.

Good luck with your training and if you have any additional comments, please write them below.

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