It's the day after Monday dragon boat practice. We're well into Month Two of our annual ramp-up to the festival season. Last night we did our first @100% sprint (250 metres) race piece, to give our newbies an idea of what a full race is like. No dropping down to 80% in the middle. One hundred percent power all the way.

This year, we're really working on our cardio. Last year's festivals showed that while we have the 'right stuff' to be competitive at one or two levels below the elite racers, we had a very bad habit of losing steam about 50 metres from the end of the 500 metre course. We'd smoke all the other teams with our phenomenally fast starts, but didn't have the endurance to make the best of our lead out of the gate. We went from being middle-aged geezers to being oxygen-deprived wheezers as we 'ran out of fuel' and slipped just far enough back at the finish to not make it to the podium. Our races on the final day of festivals were always close; we just need to kick it up a notch. We all feel that we're miles ahead in our conditioning this year compared to last, so we're hoping for good things this festival season.