Memory From Summer

2015年11月8号

       Every summer, in the beautiful Charles River, there holds a dragon boat competition. During that day, thousands of people get together around the river. I attended the last year's and won two golden medals as a member of Team CYPN. This year is more special to me: together with several friends we organized our own team, and I am the coach&drummer.

       We trained near MIT boat house. In my memory, it was really beautiful scene: Golden light shines on blue water, white sailing boats sailed around, and there were always people jogging.

       Race itself tough is not relaxing. Here is something about the race. Every boat can sit maximum 20 paddlers, plus one drummer and one steerer. The track length is 500 yards. When racing, all players need to perform together to finish the track, usually in between 2.5~3.5 minutes. So the whole race is very pushing. The whole race includes two parts: preliminary contest and final contest. Preliminary result is the average two trials, and it will decide which group you will be put in. There are 8 groups: from A to H, each has 9 teams. A is the fastest, and H is the slowest. Every group has gold, silver, and brozen medals. This is to encourage completing between teams at similar level.

      As organizer, you need to be always ready to deal with unexpected situations. For example, some people quit because of healthy or business issue, and we need to find new members to join.

      Training itself is tough but fun. From time to time, we took a shower in the rain. Most time, we were worn out after finishing. But we went to dinner together, talked about funny things in life. Our friendship increased day by day. It's even more special to me, because I was experiencing some hard time in my work. Every training is like an escape from reality, a reminder that good things do happen.

     Time went fast. Preliminary contest finally came. I sat on the drummer seat, looked at my teammates, I felt peace - we trust each other. Start gun fired, I yielded the commands, "Power 5! 1..2..3..4..5..Quick 10! 1! 2! 3!..". Everything went perfect, until,  I felt the boat began to move leftward. Then I looked up. Our steerer already fell down. The boat went a U turn. All we could do is to watch other boats leaving us further and further away.

    "It's over." All the effort we spent ended nothing. Looking at my teammates, I can tell, although pretended to be OK, they were very frustrated. Looking at the steerer, you could tell from his face how regret he was. It was like one of those moments in our lives: you devoted your whole life on something, but result turned out like a joke. What can you do at those moments? Most time you need to accept the result, but you can choose what attitude you accept with.

    "We still have another trial, though this might not change the result, but let's do our best, not to tell others, but to ourselves, how well we can get."

    Our steerer got disqualified due to major turnover, and we got assigned a dock staff.

    "Fight for our steerer."

    We pushed ourselves to the best. Our final result is 2 min 55 seconds, better than last year's alumni track champion.  The following day, we were assigned to a low level group according to the average results. But we made the result to 2 minutes 43 seconds, which won us a silver medal in G group. And the time is enough to win a medal in D group.

    To me, this silver medal is heavier than a golden one. How much you have gone through, how heavy it weighs.