This year was my first year trying out Dragon Boat. With the pandemic, I am not as active as I used to be and it’s hard to find the motivation to continuously exercise. Despite being on the club swim team, I do not consistently attend practices and I am terribly out of shape. So, I decided to do Dragon Boat! I thought it would be a fun way to exercise with a team, and I was right.
As a former competitive swimmer, I found that there are some similarities between swimming and Dragon Boat. I found with doing Dragon Boat I started to miss swimming a little. The feeling I had before our races during the Dragon Boat Festival was so similar to the feeling I had standing behind the blocks in swimming. The team camaraderie was also reminiscent of my high school swim team. The energy we had was amazing and it was electrifying to race with such motivated people.
Why am I bringing up Dragon Boat when CSA’s Dragon Boat raced last June? Last Saturday I raced with Boston 1, a competitive club Dragon Boat team operating in Boston. They had a scrimmage with other club teams in the Boston area, and I got to experience a much more competitive side of Dragon Boat compared to CSA’s races. It was super fun racing with a team that is so eager to improve and has so much synergy with each other.
I say so many good things about Dragon Boat and I really do want to continue it. However, there’s still something holding me back from continuing with Boston 1. Maybe I’ll narrow it down and overcome this hesitation. But for now, I’ll just reminisce about how good (but painful) it felt racing with them.
