Comment for a Cause (C4AC) is back for it’s 3rd year. C4AC is my way to raises funds & awareness. This year I’ve picked Right to Play as my charity of choice. Each comment this site gets equals $1 that I will be donating at the end of the month.. Don’t forget to keep up to date by subscribing to my rss feed

Since signing up for pilates as an extra workout routine I’ve noticed that I’m more flexible then I thought and it’s helped improved my rotation with a longer reach when I’m paddling. I’m kicking myself now because I really wished I signed up for a class when I moved out here two years ago instead of the other day since the gyms out here are over priced and aren’t well kept up. With that being said I’m really pleased with my outcome so far in the class, can’t wait to see the full results by this summer when the classes end.. I just wish it wasn’t so pricey

Other then that nothing much else is new other then I can’t wait for this Saturday, the boat I paddle on is in our 2nd regatta of the season.. I’ve never been on a team that’s been to it so this is gonna be fun and interesting I just hope that the weather gods bring out the sun instead of pouring buckets of rain like it did last Saturday.

With that being said I think it’s time for bed and I’m please I get to sleep in tomorrow since I don’t have to get up early and cover a route.. YAY!

Comment for a Cause (C4AC) is back for it’s 3rd year. C4AC is my way to raises funds & awareness. This year I’ve picked Right to Play as my charity of choice. Each comment this site gets equals $1 that I will be donating at the end of the month.. Don’t forget to keep up to date by subscribing to my rss feed

For the last while, I just found heading to the gym or even working out at home isn’t doing for it for me anymore.. It just feels like I’m doing the same boring thing over and over again even if I changed something. So after a lot of thought and googling I found a pilates studio that’s about 15 minutes from my house, so tomorrow morning (err in a couple hours) I’ll be taking in my 1st pilates class (signed up for 15 weeks). I’m looking forward to be working out in a different way and not be waiting in line for a treadmill or the weights.

My goal isn’t to have a killer beach body by the summer but to be able to compete the skill tests that you need to do if you want to join the national bobsledding team. The one part of that test I’m NOT looking forward to is the running since I’m not a runner, no matter what if I truly try out for the team or not, I see this as a great cross trainer for my paddling.

What’s driving you to your fitness goal?

It’s hard to say which province or city in Canada (or the world) has the best kept secret of where is the best place to train if you’re heavily into water sports. Living where I am on the south coast of BC (British Columbia) you are able to train year long (if you want to) on the water. However the rest of the province and Canada is buried under snow, so they can not head out to their favourite watering hole for a practice but instead are able to train either at a pool sitting on the deck with paddle in hand or in a true paddling tank.

Over the years I have wished we had one out here for the longest time to help spice up our training, as well who wouldn’t want to be indoors paddle instead of being outdoors being hailed on? (Been there done that, no more thanks). A paddler friend of mine from Montreal told me that I should attend one of their indoor paddling practices anytime I want to head out east.

Now I can say we finally got a paddling tank out west! That’s in one of the 2010 Olympic venues buildings that worked along side with a Rowing and Paddling Centre and they designed a paddling tank inside the building, for their rowers and us paddlers (dragon boaters, outriggers and other canoeists). It’s got a boat structure of an 8 person skull or a 10 man canoe/dragon boat (dragon boat team normally has between 20-26 people).

Thier website did not have much information about this paddling tank and even in the email I got back from them saying no more then 10 people in the room. So there goes my idea of having 10 people in the structure and rest of the team on the edge of the deck.

On Saturday I was offered a chance to be in the first dragon boating paddling clinic being that was put on by my coach, in the clinic there was only five people in it so we got more one and one time in the hour that we had then we would have if we had a full boat of 20 paddlers out on the water doing the expect same thing. More pictures on flickr.

It would be interesting to see how much will be changed in the paddling tank once the Olympics is over. I know they will be putting up the mirrors then and adding a video system but not sure what else. A few of us noticed when we first stepped into the boat structure that there wasn’t anything for our feet to go against and if you weren’t careful there were lag bolts sticking up from the corner of the bottom. Hopefully that gets fixed or looked at.

Now we got to wait until April before they re-open up their doors again to the public.

If I had to rate this venue out of three out of five paddles. As not 100% finished and its more of a rowing tank not a paddling tank but it is something.

After @guapomole posted this youtube video (below) on twitter, I started thinking that I should kept with skateboarding instead of giving it up as a preteen. Also got me thinking about this year’s dry-land training routine since my 15th dragon boating season almost coming to an end in a few days.

I’m thinking about take up land paddling (a long board with a kahuna big stick) as my cross trainer this off season instead 6man outrigger, I’m looking forward not having to travel an hour to/from get to practice especially on those crappy nights.

It may not be the correct stroke that I do but from the videos I’ve been looking at, you can get a lot of good top arm drive, the whole body gets a workout and just think about the balance one can get from that too. Using this and my other core exercises would for sure help strengthen my core muscles that I lost due to the surgery I had back in April.

I want to be on the A boat next year, which means there is a lot of work a head of me to do.

What do you do the spice up your exercise routine?
Would you use a sport to strengthen another sport?

I maybe a paddling geek but I do LOVE my (canadian and american style) football! A university team (I support) and two pro teams were playing this long weekend. Its been a long time since I was able to watch three days of football in a row, it was really nice that all three teams won too. A nice way to start off the long weekend I think.

Sunday, I just hung out with my Mom and brother by going though some boxes of my late grandfolks. Its been three years since they passed on, but we just haven’t gotten around to sorting some of their boxes that were from a filing cabinet. One of the great fines was a 12 page typed written story with some handwritten notes from late great uncle about a week long a canoe trip that he took with my uncle back in the late 60′s. I never got a chance to meet him but from the stories I heard about my great uncle he was interesting character and being blind never stopped him do anything either.

Holiday Monday was gonna be a day of relaxing, and re-organizing my computer desk but I noticed my site’s counter showed my site had a few unwanted visitors (spider-bots and spammers) so spent a good hour and a bit fixing that problem. If you’re unsure about having a site counter you really should get one. Nile’s latest post explains why you should get one.

How was your long weekend?

Photo credit: Loren Zemlicka .

First off I want to thank my dragon boat team, Gary and Meaghan for supporting me.

BC Childrens 11th Annual Paddle for Kids charity event happened on Sunday, 30 teams registered though only 24 teams took part in the event. The weather was nice, wasn’t to hot out either. H2O Geeks raised over $3441 dollars in 7 short weeks and were ranked in 6th spot as of Friday afternoon for most fund-raised, which is not bad if you ask me. In the end Paddle for Kids raised over $95,681 dollars that’s over half a million dollars for BC Childrens hospital in Paddle for kids lifespan.

Our team H2O Geeks could have arrived on site on Sunday never having a chance to be in a dragon boat and then race, for me that was not an option, I wanted this team to be on the water as much as possible, for one get use to the boats and to learn the stroke. Like the old saying goes “practice makes perfect”. All summer long we never had a chance to paddle with a full boat (of 20 paddlers) until race day. It was a great experiences for all. (...)
Read the rest of Paddle For Kids 2009 – Recap (235 words)

First off … Happy long weekend to all the BCer’s (British Columbia Folk) out there, be safe this holiday Monday. This is the 1st BC long weekend I’ve been home for in years. I decided to stay put this year as I’m already missing two Saturday dragon boat practices this month and our last festival of the season is in September.

Though not everyone was able to showed up to practice (due to work and the long weekend) so instead of two boats (22 people per boat) heading out on the water, we had enough people for one boat and lets just tell you it was one of the best practices ever. I’ve always found teams that combine their A and B teams every once and a while will make both teams stronger. But this team doesn’t think that its either A or B. I disliked it that some of our A boat folk don’t know the names of our B boat paddlers.

Anyways there were not a lot of people at the lake or on the lake but the waves from the few motor boats made it feel like we were paddling in Hawaii. We decide half way though practice that it was getting to hot, so the team beached the boat and most of us went for a swim. We also got to watch 3 deer as they walked by in the trees. Though we didn’t see the two eagles that normally fly over us/watch us as we practice.

Yesterday I had a small group of friends over for a bbq it was great fun. No long weekend is compete without a bbq. That was the 1st bbq I hosted (without family around) and I was surprised that all there wasn’t any food left, so I can’t have left overs this week oh well… But I guess that’s better then having a lot of food untouched.

How was your weekend/long weekend?
With long weekends do you find yourself staying home or try to get away?

Its early and its race day and I thought I’d post something before I head out the door to meet up with my dragon boat club (all three teams, our A, B and junior teams) will be taking on the lake by storm.

I’m also one of seven ladies who will be helping out one of our teammates teams that they coach. As they are short paddlers. By the end of the day we seven ladies will have raced in 5 or 6 races when everyone else will have done 4. Hopefully this heat will not effect us in any shape or form as the temperature has been in the early 30′C ‘s all week. I heard today it might be up to 35′C + (that’s about 95″F). For one I’m not use to this temperature I like the mid teens – early twenties range.

So with that I have four 1.5 Litre water bottles, tones of fruit, a healthy lunch and my famous trail mix (I make about two freezer bags full at a time)

M&M’s
Shelled Sunflowers Seeds
Pumpkin Seeds
Raisins
Dried Cranberries
Dried Blueberries
*Optional*
Dried Banana’s .. Don’t like having them go mussy on me when I’m at a race.
Nuts.. A teammate is allergic to them so I don’t have them in there.

Its also Blogathon Weekend for most bloggers. Where they will be raising money for a charity of their choice and blogging every 30 minutes for 24 hours. If I wasn’t racing this weekend, I would have taken part.

Good Luck: Rebecca, Raul, Duane, Gary, Rainer, Kristi and Aidan

Paddle Update: I was talking to the local rep, and he mentioned that because I wasn’t the one who purchased the paddle, it can’t be fixed but I might have a new paddle by the end of this weekend or week (not the one I’ve been eying but another one). The rep also said that he has never seen or heard about my version of paddle breaking either. Today, I’m using my other carbon fiber paddle that I have (thankfully I have a few paddles)

Have a great weekend

For those of you who follow me on twitter, may have heard me talk about forming a dragon boat team of twitters.. I wanted to see if there was enough interest in Vancouver’s tech community to even go though with it. As a way to remove oneself from behind technology to interact with fellow Vancouverites that you would not meet at a tweet up or meet up and it was away for me to introduce my love and joy (the sport) to people who have always wanted to try it and or wanted to get back into the sport. And I’ve done it thanks for the lovely souls who’ve signed up to learn how to dragon boat in 8 weeks (a practice a week).

Right now #H2OGeeks is ranked 2nd in fund-raising and I’m proud of the team and all their effects. Pads on the back forever one. If you’d like to help support us you please feel free to support me or if you have more then one friend who’s on this team you can donate straight to the team instead. Tax receipts are given to those who donate $20 or more.

I might do some more Dragon Boating Intro for Vancouver techies /anyone starting next spring if anyone would be interested. Please let me know.. It is afterall my dream job to be on the water all (err most of the day) teaching people how to dragon boat and work as one team .. not a bunch of people in a big long boat.

Yesterday at #H2OGeeks practice my brother borrowed my paddle so he could and 6 others could grab the boat and paddle it back to the dock. Well, he came to the dock and was scared shit-less that I was gonna kill him for breaking it. I’m upset and mad but what more can you do? Over the years I’ve seen and heard about carbon fiber paddles breaking somewhere on the shaft and now I have to find myself another paddle and fast (the 3 semi retired paddles I own aren’t at the length I need) as I’m racing this Saturday.

Earlier in the season I thought about getting a new paddle in September when the season ends at the length I’ve been getting use to and a better T-grip.. It just sucks that carbon fiber paddles are anywhere from $200-300 bucks and its money that I just don’t have lying around to spend at the moment.

What a great weekend, the clouds were rolling in with a few sprinkling of rain here and there but all and all it was one of the best Alcan I’ve been to in years. I say that not just because of the venue or that the woman’s crew I was on got 1st place in our heat and placed 13th out of 22th in the woman’s category. My 1st ever medal for woman’s to boot to, sad that we just missed taking part in the woman’s guts and glory a 2000 meter race (when you get a bunch of teams paddling against the clock and doing wild turns. The one year that my team at the time made it into it…I was 8 months along.. my goal is to take part in it one day)

(...)
Read the rest of Post RTADBF (427 words)