OTW: What training have you done today?

Kinley · Post by **Kinley** » March 25th, 2007, 8:04 pm

First row of the year this morning. Three of us met at a public launch in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and rowed around the island of Newcastle. Stopped for a light shore lunch on Wood Island. A bit brisk on the outside but comfortable in the river & harbor. 6 or 7 miles total.

ehagberg · Post by **ehagberg** » March 25th, 2007, 8:12 pm

1st day back on the water this year for me as well.

10k on the Passaic River in Rutherford, NJ. 5k north of the Nereid BC boathouse and then back. 54 minutes round-trip, including warmup, row and docking.

ancho · Post by **ancho** » March 26th, 2007, 4:52 am

Raced on the 1x and 8+ in Banyoles yesterday.
2nd on the single in my heat, and on the eight we broke an oar with 500m+ to go, and still managed to come in 4th after a complete stop and finishing with 7...

Total about 16k

DonS · Post by **DonS** » March 26th, 2007, 10:32 am

Kinley,

Were you rowing the new Ace?

-Don

Kinley · Post by **Kinley** » March 26th, 2007, 4:19 pm

No, I was rowing the original Echo. It's corky & dry, and the water is cold here.

I don't yet have an Ace, but expect to be equipped with one before the racing season gets underway. The Echo people seem very keen to have me row their boat rather than my own Maas 24, and I have accepted their invitation as I like the challenge of learning a new boat.

Updates to follow, but not immediately. We still have snow on the ground, and the Ace is very, very wet. It's patterned on a surf ski.

Rockin Roland · Post by **Rockin Roland** » March 27th, 2007, 12:00 am

Raced all weekend at two different regattas in 4+ and 8+.
Coach was not happy with us on Saturday as we came second in every final by narrow margins.
Sunday seemed to be going that way again until we struck gold in Men's A Grade coxed four event. It was a sprint regatta and we were rating 47. That would have to of been the fastest four I've ever been in. Now we have our names on a very nice looking perpetual trophy plus a photo of us holding it wearing our medals in the local newspaper.

I was also hoping to have a go at the C2 erg 300m sprint race held in front of the clubhouse during this regatta. Unfortunately it clashed with my OTW heat race for 4+. There was $125 prize money. I've never raced 300m on an erg but I hear the guy that won it had 119 splits showing on the monitor a fair bit. Not sure of his exact time but it was under 50sec. Race was run by Aust. C2 distributor.

Back to some hard interval training in the 4+ this week complimented by some distance work in a scull.

Bob S. · Post by **Bob S.** » March 27th, 2007, 1:28 pm

Rockin Roland wrote: Sunday seemed to be going that way again until we struck gold in Men's A Grade coxed four event. It was a sprint regatta and we were rating 47. That would have to of been the fastest four I've ever been in. Now we have our names on a very nice looking perpetual trophy plus a photo of us holding it wearing our medals in the local newspaper.

Congratulations on the win! One question. By sprint regatta did you mean 1ks? The 47 rate suggests that the races might have been even shorter. I have never been in anything shorter than about 850m (the distance, free of traffic, available at the Long Beach, CA., marine stadium). I haven't heard of any shorter races in the U.S. Here the usual masters' races are 1ks. One exception is the San Diego Crew Classic which is all 2ks (junior, collegiate, open, masters — the works — but all eights).

Bob S.

Rockin Roland · Post by **Rockin Roland** » March 27th, 2007, 6:05 pm

Bob,
We raced over 1K on the Saturday but the Sprint Regatta on Sunday where we rated 47 was only over 500m. These weren't masters regattas. They were club regattas open to all age groups. Although I'm 45 years old I was offered a seat in a club A grade four when one of the young guys came down with a flu virus.

I must say that it's much easier to rate 47 on an erg than in a 4+ boat. In a boat your hands have to be so much quicker around the back turn at that rating. Your hands have to clear the knees before the body follows otherwise you can have all sorts of problems at that speed. On an erg there are no such issues with tap down, blade square and oar clearance. My added challenge was keeping up with quick young blokes half my age.

I'm glad that all the insane madness of sprint racing is over and were back to a more sedate schedule.

PaulS · Post by **PaulS** » March 27th, 2007, 6:25 pm

Rockin Roland wrote:Bob,
We raced over 1K on the Saturday but the Sprint Regatta on Sunday where we rated 47 was only over 500m. These weren't masters regattas. They were club regattas open to all age groups. Although I'm 45 years old I was offered a seat in a club A grade four when one of the young guys came down with a flu virus.

I must say that it's much easier to rate 47 on an erg than in a 4+ boat. In a boat your hands have to be so much quicker around the back turn at that rating. Your hands have to clear the knees before the body follows otherwise you can have all sorts of problems at that speed. On an erg there are no such issues with tap down, blade square and oar clearance. My added challenge was keeping up with quick young blokes half my age.

I'm glad that all the insane madness of sprint racing is over and were back to a more sedate schedule.

A 500m sprint sounds like a lot of fun and splashing about, is that a normal format at these events? What was the time, 1:3x?

As for the 300m Ergo, you would have won easily if the best pace was 1:19 or so, but you probably already knew that.

Nice work on keeping up with the young bucks!

bw1099 · Post by **bw1099** » March 27th, 2007, 9:31 pm

We put the docks in on Sunday.

The water was surprisingly warm considering that the river was frozen two weeks ago.

I'll probably go out for the first time on Saturday.

bw

ancho · Post by **ancho** » March 28th, 2007, 6:52 am

8,5k on the coxless pairs with Polaco yesterday, then I made about 10k on the erg testing a pair of slides, very nice!

Our club did the Heineken Regatta in Amsterdam a couple of weekends ago. it consists of a 2500m head regatta, and inmediately afterwards a 250m sprint (2 lanes) on saturday, and a 750m (2 lanes) regatta sunday morning and 5000m head regatta on the afternoon.
Great atmosphere, great fun, but very tyring, and the 250m sprint is really tough!

I could never even think about rating 47 at full stroke length on the eight!

TabbRows · Post by **TabbRows** » April 6th, 2007, 1:00 pm

Well, we're shaking out our cobwebs and hosing off the live oak pollen here. Trying to raise up some excitement for coming regional master events and put some crews on the water at masters nationals in late summer. Our men's 8 is working its way up and not as consistent yet primarily because we have a lot of substitutions in and out , no set crew. But our mixed quad is getting along real nicely. I hope we can keep it together for races. Hard for us masters to maintain boat crew intergrity in the summer as family and work gets in the way. I love being out on the water this time of year.

ancho · Post by **ancho** » April 13th, 2007, 8:55 am

We've been doing some fast intervals (1k, 500m and 250m) on the single this week (up to 6 singles at the time).
Great fun and very challenging, but rather tyring, too!

ThatMoos3Guy · Post by **ThatMoos3Guy** » April 14th, 2007, 1:32 pm

Got a chance to test out my teams new vespoli 8+ yesterday. After warming up for about 5 miles up river my crew did a lot of pyramids pieces on the way back. 20 strokes at a 26, 30 at a 28, 40 at a 30 and 50 at a 32. Equal rest between each set of strokes. Some extra srpint pieces at a 36. Glad to be off the erg a bit, even if there's still snow.

Nosmo · Post by **Nosmo** » April 14th, 2007, 11:58 pm

My wife and I got down the lake and it started pouring and the wind picked up. One of the coaches (who is a many time Head of the Charles winner) said to me, "I can't believe you guys are going out in that. Well they say insanity runs in the family." (Actually I think I was a lot saner then the large group of bike riders who went by.)
After about half hour my wife decided to come in. She was too cold and her feet were partially submerged from the rain. I managed to stay warm by rowing hard at a high rateing. Came home and hopped on the erg. Did an hour, 6 minutes at rattings of 16,18,20,22,24,18,20,22,24,16. ALso did a 1500m warm up and a 2K cool down at a 12. 17.8K total.