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.

The 2008 Montreal Dragon Boat Regatta also presents special races such as the Women’s Division, Men’s Division, Out of Town Race and many more to name it few. Each team really performed to their best to win the race. But some teams were not very happy about their performance. They were not prepared and focused due to some unpleasant circumstances like one paddler may end up not paddling and some paddlers did not hear the referee gives the signal to go.

The referee in this kind of race gives a very little time between the time when he says paddle up! (meaning that you need to get your paddle ready to race) from the time he says Go! And when some of the paddlers were not ready, the team start will be affected and subsequently will not perform as well as they should be.
Weeks before the Montreal Dragon Boat Regatta, participating teams were pushing themselves to do well during their practice to ensure their victory. Some of the coaches were moving around his paddlers around the boat to know when the paddlers do well in front as well as the back of the boat. This strategy makes the paddlers to become versatile and more valuable. The coach could not only switch the paddlers from front to back rather he can also interchange it form left to right sides of the boat.

In the second race, calling your boat Finish is a little bit risky. The cox or the coach should know his team very well. If they call finish too early, their boat can tire out and subsequently will have nothing left to finish the race. The third and fourth race in the Montreal Dragon Boat Regatta was interesting as they were the Financial Cup as well as the Out of Town Race. The distances in each race in this competition is 500 meter but not on Financial Cup and Out of Town Cup which is only 250 meters distance. There are specific strategies used for each type of race. For the 250 meters race, it is very much sprinting the entire time as the distance is short because there really isn’t enough time for transition. However, in 500 meter race you can really feel the difference between the Start, the Transition and the Finish.

In this competition, you really need to be ready mentally and physically during the race and your goal is to race and beat your opponents regardless on the external forces that you can’t control.

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

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.

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:

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.