world of my own

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood,
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

*loves *

the colour orange
the sky and the water (:

Saturday, April 28, 2007

woke up around 5 plus to man's msg. someone (prob my mum) had helped closed the windows. even so, the heavy rain outside made the room cold. rain. it disrupts training. knew that no matter how hard it was raining now, we would still be at macritchie at 700. and somehow, i knew the heavens would stop its showers by then.

weather was cold. but not as cold as wednesday. i think a few people fell sick bcoz of that. my windbreaker was in the wash, so i pulled over the green befriender shirt and hopped onto the bus. slept all the way until the traffic light. woke up with a start and realize i was already at macritchie.

boat 19 has a hole. ):

by the time we finished our stretches, the rain had stopped almost completely. i almost wished it hadn't. i missed the weepy rains that accompanied our trainings. they bring back nostalgic memories of last year june, j1s. rowing k2 with van/shawna, the unrelenting drizzle. and the slight chill that followed after we got out of the water.

today, the rain reinforced once again that nats is drawing near. that this year is our year. that while last year i watched at the sidelines as the snrs battled their hearts and body out, this year, we would be the ones doing so. is it 74 days now? 2 weeks and 1 day to WO.

truthfully, today's water passed in a blur. too fast. perhaps part of my mind wasn't even there. it was just so concentrated on rowing that the 'memory' part was overshadowed.

hm... lets see, i rmb the warm ups being pretty painful. not super painful but just never-ending. i rmb the battery died at the start of our 1km. yang started us off. the part between the start and approaching 500m is absent in my memory. i only recall seeing the 500m buoy and wondering why i still have so much more to go. oh, now i rmb turning to see boats by my side. and i rmb yang's boat in front, n me thinking that its still less than one buoy's diff.

fast forward. the next picture was one at around 250. saw the finishing line and said to myself 'up frequency'. i think i was dying at the last few buoys so even as i told myself to chiong all the way to the end, i could feel my frequency slowing down. and then as suddenly as it had started, it was over.

i dont really rmb the 500m rows. all i rmb was the start and the end. and the 2nd one which jl timed. where i crossed with 3 or 4 other boats and jl rattled off timings so fast i cldn't catch mine. i wonder what was my exact timing. but it doesn't really matter.

250s were exciting. i think it was after the first 250 that i decided... that's it, if i keep on rowing like this, im not going to go anywhere. no fight. no fire. or rather, there was the fight and that fire, but there was also fear and doubt. and when you row without the conviction that anything is possible, you begin to impose boundaries and limits on yourself.

so i psyched myself up and talked alot of crap with the other boats. smth abt im going to own them n stuff. pumped up. psyched up. 2nd 250 was good. 3rd 250 was not in a proper lane, direction got screwed up, mental died. not good. not good. cant afford that in a race. 4th 250, challenge again! thx xm for being to cooperative.

basically i said 'ximi im going to own you!' then she said 'ok loh!' in a very disbeleiving tone. so we decided to fight it out. start burst. nice. first 10 strokes still could see her boat in the corner but after that lost her. maintainance... or rather slower burst. not too bad. until abt 6 buoys that i became tired... and saw her boat creeping up. rmb thinking to myself, 'cannot! i made a promise to ximi tt i'll own her! cannot break my promise'. haha... quite funny. so clenched my teeth, held on to my strokes, tried my hardest to burst... and finally... crossed the buoy.

the last part i looked over. it was a diff of a few centimetres. prob less than half a second. but frm where i was it looked like she crossed first. nevertheless, it was a good fight. (:

...

today, had another realization. i row because i love the row. the water, the boat, the glide. that kind of freedom. but its diff from the reason why i race. for now, i race because i want that kind of satisfaction and triumphant feeling achieved from clearing the buoys knowing that ive done a good row.

that aside. im thinking that its very hard to know if one had done his/her best. so before i discover how that can be done, ill just be satisfied with the adrenaline rush from crossing the buoys with the feeling that i just flew.

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joo spoke
@ |6:20 PM|