If you’re a regular blog reader, you might know that The Planet gets incredibly pumped about a little thing called the Dragon Boat Festival each spring. If you’re wondering what the heck a dragon boat is, you’re not alone.

Two years ago, The Planet headquarters competed in our first dragon boat festival, fielding two teams – one of senior-level managers, another with, well, the rest of us. It’s probably no surprise that the younger, more agile non-manager team took the race.

This year, we tried something a little different – entering one team from headquarters and one team from Dallas in the Houston race. No strangers to dragon-boating themselves, the Dallas office would prove to be tough competition, fresh off their Corporate Division victory in the 2009 DFW Dragon Boat Festival.

It was a pretty hot day for the competition on Saturday, climbing up to 87 with a humidity index in the 90s … And no, it wasn’t raining. That’s Houston for you.

We started early, gathering at the race site at 8 a.m. The first win of the day was erecting our 10×20 pop-up tent. It took about 30 minutes of trial and error, with many a misplaced part. Knowing I could not add any value, I looked on encouragingly while clutching my cup of coffee. When the guys were finally victorious, the raising of the tent was met with cheers and applause.

The Planet tent in all its glory.

And so the day began. The Houston team was the Hosting Rockstars, with the clever tagline of “We rock hosting, not boats.” (Our own creative genius Kevin Hazard came up with that one.) We decorated our tent with all types of rock paraphernalia: Props included blow-up microphones, rocking foam fingers and guitar-shaped sunglasses.

The Planet “ground crew” rocking out.

The Houston team competed in one of the first races of the day, and we got off to a rocky start, posting a time of 1:28 in the 250-meter race. Yikes. Dallas raced after us with a time of 1:22. For a little perspective, a team of local competitive dragon boaters, the Houston Heat, posted a time of 1:10. Our head-to-head match-up was next, and I’ll let you see how it turned out (Houston: Boat 2, Dallas: Boat 3):

Ah, the bitterness of defeat. Even though it was a close race and we improved our time significantly, it just wasn’t enough to beat the battle-tested Dallas. Even our bedazzled bandanas and cool shirts couldn’t save us.

But we looked good, no?

For the record, Houston matched Dallas’ Heat 1 time of 1:22 in the head-to-head competition. They inched us out with an even better time of 1:20.

Dallas pulling ahead of Houston for the win. Doug Erwin cheering us on.

The competition will continue, as the Houston team travels up to Dallas on May 16 for the DFW Dragon Boat Festival. Will Dallas demoralize us again? Or will the Houston underdogs prevail? Stay tuned …

Check out our flickr stream for more photos from race day.

-Katie