This weekend I took part in the annual Dragon Boat Festival in Milton Keynes with the MacIntyre Marvels team.
The event is held annually at Willen Lake in Milton Keynes and is sponsored by Easycopiers. Each year they choose a local charity to support and proceeds from the team entrance fees as well as sponsorship from some of the teams are donated to that charity. This year they kindly chose MacIntyre to be their chosen charity. This year the event raised an amazing £11,000 for MacIntyre.
MacIntyre were lucky enough to enter a team in the event for free, courtesy of the event sponsors. The team was made up MacIntyre staff, friends and family (of Phil Wales mainly). The sponsors also paid for us to have three training sessions beforehand so we had a vague idea on what was expected of us.
The event was made up of three preliminary heats which all teams took part it of which there were 60 teams entered this year. The top fifteen teams then proceeded to the semi-finals, which were determined by the teams top two times, then the top two teams of each semi-final and the next fastest team from the semi’s went through to the final. The event was one by the Plastic Fantastics, who also recorded the top two times in the heats as well, I guess they had a lot of practice beforehand 🙂
It was a fantastic day which was enjoyed by all. The weather was fantastic and the turn out by spectators was amazing, I don’t think I’ve seen so many people at Willen Lake before. Conor, Nat, Anne, Ivy, Paul, Natalie, Lucy & Thomas came along to cheer us on, along with the families of most of our team.
Although this year our entry to the event was paid for, I think we all agreed we’d like to take part in it again next year and raise more money for MacIntyre.