and then there were 14 1/2.....

- nope, the above hotties that's definitely not us - if it were, we would have had a better chance to win our Dragonboat warm-up race on sunday ;-) but let me start from the beginning. After way too much japanese food with my asian friends and a loud, thundery night on saturday, I didn't get much sleep and had to drag myself out of bed early sunday morning. The temperatures hadn't cooled off a bit despite the storm and the sticky, humid air hadn't moved away. When I arrived at the beach at 9am sharp the dragons had already been fed with paper money offerings (feng-shui) but I was flabbergasted to find out, that just 14 of my "Desperate Housewives" teammates and one teenage daughter had shown up for raceday, the others were unable to make it for various reasons. I immediately was ready to hop on the next bus and crawl back into bed but of course this was not an option, sigh! As you can imagine, the outlook was quite grim - to put it mildly - knowing, we would have to compete against 7 other participating teams who not only had their 18 team members complete but also some replacements in tow which was very encouraging to us.

"Participating is Everything" the saying goes, yeah right, but when you train hard you are not very ecstatic about becoming last in the end which we perfectly managed to achieve during various weather scenarios - 1st race: burning sun and hot hot hot, we ended last - 2nd race: completely overcast and sticky, we still ended last - 3rd race: turned out to be more of a wet T-Shirt competition, not only were we dripping wet and didn't see anything upon entering the boat but also a nasty thunderstorm exploded right after our start which scared us so much that we finally beat one chinese team, hallelujah!!!! At least we wore bright, sunny yellow shirts so our hubbies could spot us through the clouds. Lesson learned out of this - for the next 3 weeks we'll better sleep on the boat and steel our muscles day and night!! To be fair, I have to mention, that the majority of the other teams looked younger in their average age and top fit and it seemed obvious to me that they are spending their days and nights either in their fitness studios or practising power/hot yoga 3 times a week.

Despite this minor setback the atmosphere during the day was terrific and it felt awesome to be part of such a traditional HK icon. Finally some facts about the Dragonboat Races:

* The race always takes place during the traditional Tuen Ng Chinese Festival (Dragonboat Festival) which this year will fall on june 19th

* it's hold in various locations throughout HK but Stanley is the biggest event and owns the largest boat rack with 43 boats

* it's an event that attracts individuals, clubs & companies, Chinese & Expatriates as participants

* this year it lists record braking entries which in numbers means a serious over-subscription of over 200 teams - last year there were 183 teams and during yesterday's warm-up race 50 boats were competing

* a team consists of 18 rowers, 1 steersman and 1 drummer, some races even allow 20 rowers. The minimum required are 12, the maximum 20 participants. There are competitions for Men, Women and Mixed Boats.

* The race course length during the warm-up's was 200 metres and during the main race it will be 270 metres - sounds like nothing to you? Believe me, it can nearly kill you if you're not super fit!!