OK Ed - first sprint regatta

[G-dub]

Sarasota Invitational on the venue where world championships were. Amazing to be in a spot that was so “official”. I had 4 races on the schedule - a mixed 4+, mens 4+, mixed double and mixed 8. I immediately noticed that I couldn’t make the men’s 4+ due to time constraints. So now down to 3 races. Winds came up when we launched the mixed 4+. We were renting boats and learned once in water that the steering was bad. Took awhile to sort out and made us all more unnerved. Practiced starts too long and ended up missing the call for us to go to start so got disqualified! Had to take the row of shame in the outside lane and felt terrible when the mess savvy of our supporters thought we were actually racing but very far behind! Next up was the race I dreaded. The mixed double has been a challenge anyway but we got it to the start and to the finish. We didn’t really get into the race as the bouncy water and nerves left over from the mishaps prior made it tough for both of us novices. The wind really throws a challenge at you that hopefully gets better with experience. To me it seemed like it was blowing my sense of calm away from me! And mixed in and stirred up nerves. It would be sweet to eventually be able to “race” this boat but we have a ways to go technique and confidence wise. End of day the mixed 8 I was in won bronze on handicap (real time we were 4th) and it was nice to have felt like I exerted myself after a kind day of wind and nerves and slight disappointments. That boat may have done better but several in the boat were on 4th and 5th race of the long day. Much was learned from the experience and I look forward to taking it into the next race next month. I guess it was a dues paying day!

[jackarabit]

Windy, unknown boat, s.n.a.f.u. But coming third in a boat with a tired crew! Priceless! Think you’ve found your métier, Glenn.

[lwtguy]

Most people never have a good first race. I know I didn't.

You can ask most people about theirs and most of the answers will be something along the lines of "It sucked, we lost but I had a lot of fun!" That's how mine went!

Glad to see you're enjoying it though. It may take some time to start winning, but that first gold medal makes all the losses worth it.

[Edward4492]

Nice write up Glen! As I re-call you got a win last year in the eight. I learned this past season that there's a lot of things that can happen in a boat race.....most of them bad. Hitting buoys (my favorite race-day past time so far), bridges (near misses so far), hitting other boats (again near misses, sooner or later I'll tag one), losing an oar (done that a couple of times, in-explicably haven't flipped yet). The upside is I can get a whole lot faster just by rowing a passably clean race.

As you've undoubtedly learned, the secret when rowing as a crew (as compared to a 1x) is time in the boat. Me and Marianne (my mixed 2x partner) put in a ton of meters and as such my two most enjoyable races were with her. We rowed clean, beat our target times, and beat a couple of boats in the process. I've found that boats seem to click almost right away. I've jumped in quads where it felt right almost from the first stroke....and other boats that never clicked.

It's a truly challenging and fascinating sport!

[G-dub]

I’ve been lucky enough to medal (1 gold and 2 bronze) in each of the 3 regattas I’ve completed - 2 regional head races and 1 sprint. But given they were in an 8+, I certainly cannot claim credit! Ed - you are right, me and my partner in mixed double need tons of time on the water and to be honest it’s probably not the best combination. But we enjoy giving it a go and are learning all the time - to me rowing with people of like mind and spirit is as important right now as like body type. It became pretty clear pretty fast that in a sprint race there is no room for anything but full on speed and power with blades full of water! That is tough to do when you are still trying to learn how to do it. I feel much more capable with sweep at this point but will keep working at sculling. Anyway, next race is April 7. Should be less frantic I hope.