living the life that I want to

Saturday, March 24, 2007

CANOE CAMP 2007! <3 (23mar-24mar)

Just got back from team dinner, steam boat at marina bay! I'll not be surprised if any of the J1 girls end up with a terrible stomach ache cos' the aluminium foil of our hot plate was BLACK. yes, black with carbon particles that could just poison us all :/ yay I shall go eat seafood steamboat with my mummy ($12 per pax) one day, at least I'm assured of a COOKED meal haha! (:

okok, I shall post about canoe camp. Canoe camp was from friday afternoon till err, today. The usual icebreakers and introductions were conducted on friday, with captain's ball being the icebreaker. Seriously, all the girls could do was stand there and watch the ball fly over our heads :/ canoeing guys are exceptionally tall and strong. haha! After which we ate dinner and headed off to LT6 for the screening of Coach Carter. That was the second time I was watching the show, the first time being in RGS during swimming camp'06. Back then I couldn't comprehend how important team cohesion was, especially when swimming is such an individual sport where there was even intense competition amongst teammates. However, after being in canoeing for the past 3 months, I've realized that there would be no rafflesROW if the team was divided, instead it has become a second family to me <3 style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Every single person in the team counts and a person's attitude during training could drastically change team dynamics for better or worse. Therefore, we should try to be strong for our teammates. Although at times we may feel down in the dumps and totally pumped out, we must always try to keep a positive outlook on things. Whatever it is, your teammates will always be there for you. Supporting and encouraging you all the way (: quote amanda: we go through shit together haha! we sure do...

My camp group was articuno that consisted of (J2 guys) guoren, shawn, shengling, james (J1 guys) shenghao, marcus, xingda, kennedy, william, victor (J2 girls) joohui, van, elisa (J1 girls) prav, kexin, michelle and me! (: yayy. Never really got down to bonding with our group mates though, well maybe the sharing/reflection session after the movie. There was very much this emphasis on being a STUDENT ATHELETE. Top priority is still on our studies, we're students of RJC and we're all expected to maintain decent grades throughout the year. We'll not be earning a diploma for canoeing at the end of the two years. When we do not do well in studies, do not put the blame on canoeing, we as canoeists must learn how to juggle and manage our time properly.

And so came saturday. Woke up at 5.45am to get ready to set off to MacRitchie with the seniors for water training. Today's stability with hannah on the k2 felt much better compared to that day. We must practice more on starting bursts! go go go! ~7 more days to NJCC! okay, I shall try to recall whatever sets we did throughout this entire day.

In MacRitchie:
25 pushups (warm up)
2-4-6-8-10-12-10 pullups
2x 50 pushups
2-4-6-8-6 pulls ups
2x 2min planks (whilst waiting for the guys to complete their weights sets)

PT (part 1)
7 sets of 2x (20 pushups, 20 crunches) + plank whilst waiting for the other groups to finish running 2 rounds around the PE block

PT (part 2)
basically this was called "deck of card training" or something like that. The no. on the card represented the no. of reps we were supposed to do i.e. jack-11, queen-12, king-13. For the different suits, CLUBS: normal pushups, DIAMONDS: diamond shaped pushups, HEARTS: leg raisers, SPADES: squats, JOKER: spell J-O-K-E-R for every pushup. hmmm.... Seriously, I have no idea how many of each exercise we did. Lost count -.-"

After PT, we kinda washed up, hydrated ourselves, ate some stuff and had a sharing session with the J3 guys that came back. Can you imagine? There were J12s also!? HAHA! We've seriously got a long long way to go. What the J12s shared was really quite heart warming, although RJ canoeing team wasn't given a proper place to have water trainings, they would usually spend most of their time doing land sets and spending time in the library reading up on how to row properly. Reading up and not being able to practice it, how terrible can that be. Well, right now we're much more fortunate compared to them. Therefore, we should make full use of all the resources that we've been provided with and not take things for granted. Water time is precious, we have jiaolian to coach us, there are boats for us to row, we should really be thankful (: Picked up a few competition tips from our seniors also. Starting burst is IMPORTANT **+ CHILL and just do our best. nervous pangs for njcc...ahhhh.

To end off the camp, we had a closing ceremony consisting of 3 parts:
1) To prove our willpower: 100 pushups. Wasn't that bad but it was really tough staying in that position whilst we waited for the rest to complete it. Furthermore, we had to redo 25 pushups cos' someone was lagging behind. No hard feelings... One for all, All for One! (:

2) Run of hopes and dreams: Everyone was supposed to form this super long line and go for a super long run (up and down slopes around the school) Each time the last person in line was supposed to sprint to the front and whilst doing so, scream out why he/she joined canoeing, what he/she liked about canoeing and what he/she wanted to achieve as a canoeist. Well, thanks to my stupid disjointed foot, I decided not to run since I didn't want to hurt it any more considering that njcc is next week. So yeah, soolin deb michelle selene and I sat down with amanda and talked about "stuff"

3) Presentation of certificates of completion! (: yayyyy! We've officially survived Canoeing Induction Camp! wheeeee! With a grand total of ______ pushups! haha! Don't even want to count how many that is haha!

This camp has been a great challenge for me. Both physically and mentally and I'm actually quite proud of myself and my fellow batchmates for completing it! We never gave up, we never gave in... All the way girls (: Thank you seniors for organizing such a wonderful camp, despite having your CTs last week, you all still made this camp a reality! respect.

super lame joke I got from the odac blogg---
Q: what kind of pickup lines do canoeists use?
A: they don't use pickup lines. they just pick you up >_<"
just to clarify, we AREN'T that strong. ok, maybe muddy ;)

<3 We're a team. One person struggles, we all struggle. One person triumphs, we all triumph.

10:36 pm