Joining the Busting With Life breast cancer survivor dragon boat team in September at the start of the 2024/2025 season, 'newbie' Rebecca saw her health and fitness leap ahead.
“During the paddling season I enjoyed getting out onto the water two or three times a week, as well as fellowship and laughs with a caring and supportive group of women.”
One of the favourite events of the season was the Auckland Anniversary Day Regatta at Viaduct Harbour. The Viaduct was buzzing with paddlers, spectators and energy. There were races for both standard boat (20 paddlers, sweep and drummer) and small boat (10 paddlers, sweep and drummer) teams. The races were short and quick and really got the adrenaline pumping! Busting With Life were proud of our performance in both categories.
Auckland Regional Championships was the next big event in our paddling calendar. Held at Lake Pupuke, the breast cancer survivor division was fiercely contested by 4 teams from Auckland and across the North Island. This event is always a good test of where the team is at before heading to Nationals a couple weekends later. It included a variety of race lengths; 500m, and the most notable, the 2km race, longer than any races we'd participated in earlier in the season. The thought of 2kms sounded daunting, but once you're on the water and get your rhythm it was over before you knew it!
The last big event of the season, the culmination of the seasons training, was the National Championships at Lake Karapiro in Waikato on the 5th and 6th of April 2025. This full-on and very exciting two days was a suitably fun end to what has been a marvellous season. And the icing on the cake, both our standard boat and standard boat teams came away with some bling.
Our 2025-2026 season starts at the end of September, and we are recruiting! If you are at least 6 months post treatment and would like to give dragon boating a go and be a part of the action, please email us at infobwl96@gmail.com. We can't promise you won't get addicted!
