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Join us in our 30th year, and swim to get fit! |
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Chlorine Chronicle (Archive)NMSC Sep/98 NewsletterThe Excitement of the UnexpectedAs many of you already know on July 4/5 NMSC entered a team in the Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival. My expectations for this event after John Burrows approached me were that we would compete in our two guaranteed races on Saturday, have some fun and would go home. In my ignorance I planned other activities for Sunday. Well my best laid plans for Sunday were quickly laid to rest after our NMSC team placed 9th out of 102 teams in the qualifying races on Saturday. By the end of my alternately planned Sunday and five more races the NMSC team placed 3rd in the Petite Final, 7th overall and had lowered the time difference between our team and the fastest team from 24 seconds on Saturday to 11 seconds on Sunday. Quite an accomplishment for 22 people (plus two spares) who had never dragon boat raced before!!! In retrospect I should have known we would do well. Under the expert leadership of John Burrows all the right ingredients for success were assembled:
The element of surprise and the pleasure of watching a team under good leadership perform beyond the sum of its parts has given me and many other NMSC members an experience we'll remember for a life time. Many thanks to John Burrows for your leadership and to my dragon boat teammates. PS: Margie - I have been working on my flexibility (although a gymnast I'll never be), Kevin - I'll wear padded gloves next time, Peter - I'll never figure out how you right sided people do it. Don Clinton |