The Road to Boston 2007

[Bob S.]

I got back yesterday in the late morning and my back is now really giving me a bad time — not from erging, in fact I have done far too little erging for this last week. What did me in was too many hours of sitting in airports, aircraft seats, and the seat of my pickup — not to mention another three hours at the computer yesterday afternoon catching up on messages on this forum. And I still have about a hundred unread messages left in my e-mail inbox. I just hope that the chiropractor can work me in some time today.

It was a great trip however. It was a real pleasure to meet so many of you in person. I was sorry that I missed connections with Tom R., but I enjoyed the conversations with Rich, Tim, and Carla (fantastic job, Carla!) as well as many others who are not regular "Road Gang" contributors. Rich, thanks for the photo that you sent in to the forum. I took the liberty of dragging it to my desktop and sending it to my daughter.

In thinking back, I realize that this was my first real erg race, even though it was my 14th erg regatta. When I finally got a look at my race profile, I realized that I did a rather crappy job. Not only was there no consistency in my pace, which was bad in practice as well, but my rates were just as erratic. Also, my hope for proper negative splitting was just a dream. No excuses. Frederick Osborne is the stronger rower and his profile shows that he rowed an excellent well-controlled race. I should have thanked him for being there, since his lead was probably the motivation I needed to improve over last year’s lackluster performance. Rich had one small error in his report. I had not competed against Osborne before. I met him in 1995 and 1996 when he was still in the 60-69 M hwt class and I was 70-79 M lwt. At that time I could see that he was very likely to get a WR when he turned 70 and I believe that I said something to him at the time. Sure enough, he set a new WR in 1997. I was out of it by then and didn’t get back into erg competitions until 2005. I hadn’t seen him listed in any of the recent rankings, so I didn’t know that he was still competing until I saw his name on the monitor.

I was a bit slow on the uptake in that race. It seems like the PM4 had a different format. As I remember it, the PM3 had the three names all in the same panel. It wasn’t until about the 1k mark that I caught on to the fact that the 2 in front of my name meant the there was someone else in the race. There was also a 3 below it, but it was apparently for a no-show. When I finally realized that there was a fellow ahead of me, listed in the panel above, my first thought, to paraphrase the line from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” was “Who is this guy?” Then I read the name: Osborne, F. Wow! A specter from the past! No wonder the fellow on the next erg looked familiar to me. He had several meters on me and was gradually increasing it, getting up to as high as 18. With about 300m to go, I was faltering, with a pace as far off as 2:03, but I managed to kick it at the end. The even 3.0 second difference translates to a 12.5m gap — over a half length of open water. The kick was far to little and too late, but at least it got me a better time than I had at Long Beach satellite regatta.

Bob S.

[Yankeerunner]

Bob,
You told all that to me Sunday but I was obviously only half-listening. I hope that both of you go sub-8 next year and that you can have the winning edge.

Here's Carla:

[Mary P.]

Rick, great pics (even the ones out of focus; gives the feeling of action, or maybe nausea of the participants). Thanks for volunteering, too.

I really wanted to see Carla's race after reading about her progress over the months. Again, WAY TO GO! Had to catch a plane this year, but I hope to see you PB and medal again next year.

[Yankeerunner]

Thanks Mary. And because you are so complimentary here's another (although it doesn't do her justice), of your teammate Helen Frykman, even though she was not contributing to the thread:



I took this photo because she's a Fox and because I coxed her in 2003 and 2004 (I coxed this Fox, as Dr Seuss might have said). But mainly because she's a Fox (you know me )