ranger wrote:Large fields of intensely competitive, well-conditioned, experienced 60-year-old scullers?...I will have to see it to believe it.
Ranger - it is all relative.
For large fields at OTW regattas, the best way to see it is to go to a regatta and compete. I recommend the following regattas: Cdn Henley Masters, US Masters Nationals, the World Masters Championships (in St. Catharines this September) and HOCR.
There were fifty five 60+ scullers in the 1x at the '09 HOCR (no ltwt category). The top 7 were within 5% of one another. By comparison, there were a total of 15 ergers in the 60+ Ltwt category (I think 7 in 60-64) at CRASH-Bs. As you well know, there are rarely more than one or two 60+ ltwt ergers (let alone competitive ones) at smaller races.
Clearly you will see more competition at OTW regattas than you have been seeing on the erg.
Using the number of entrants in the C2 ranking tables as a proxy for competitive racing is not useful for reasons that area too obvious to enumerate.
ranger wrote:..I am not presuming anything about how fast I can be OTW, but isn't it a little more straightforward than you are making out? Don't you just gaze at your speed coach from day to day and note how fast you are going? In the end, isn't that what wins races? "Tricks up their sleeves"?...Not sure what you mean...If I can rate 30 spm in head races, what then?..but perhaps you can explain.
Assuming you are just being ornery by taking the extreme position that poor conditioning can be entirely overcome by race tactics and experience. You know as well as anyone that at the top of a decent field, everyone is well conditioned.
As for explaining, I suggest focusing on head races, which you appear to have expressed interest in doing competitively.
At a race such as HOCR, there are sharp turns that incorporate obstacles (bridges). Headwinds, tailwinds and crosswinds ALL hit you over the course of the race (the course hits all points of the compass) and boats start every 10 seconds. There are only a few stretches on the course where one can really open it up and not worrying about turns/bridges/buoys or asking for or giving way to other racers.
To win at HOCR, one needs to minimize the negative impact of all of these things, including decisions such as when to speed up to pass someone before an obstacle (or slow down until past it, then pass afterward) in order to optimize average speed. It also really helps if you can row the minimum possible distance. Going fast over a longer course is still slow.
A good current example is the HOCR Championship 1x. Mahe Drysdale, the reigning world 1x champion, came 4th in '09 and 6th in '08. In '09, the only one of the people in front of Drysdale to make the top 18 (A,B,C finals) at the '09 Worlds, Lassi Karonen, was 9th - 17s slower over 2K than Drysdale. Though one can question the value of comparing times between different heats, 17s is a lot. At HOCR, Karonen beat Drysdale by 1s over 5K.
The person with by far the fastest raw time at HOCR '09 was Nathan Cohen - 11s faster than Drysdale on the course. Unfortunately for Cohen, he picked up a 10s penalty for a buoy violation, pushing him to 3rd, just ahead of Drysdale. In '08, Cohen won the Championship 1x at HOCR, beating Drysdale by 21s.
In short, Cohen and Karonen appear to be better at head races than Drysdale. Some of it may be because they were taking the HOCR more seriously than Drysdale, but a material component is because Cohen and Karonen are better at maximizing their speed over a winding course full of obstacles, even though Drysdale is clearly MUCH faster than either of them in a straight line.
Though one should be very careful about generalizing from personal experience. I will mention my personal experience as decently-conditioned novice masters sculler in '09 for illustrative purposes.
I was fastest relative to experienced scullers in relatively straight head races in relatively smooth water. It helped a lot that I had raced most of the courses multiple times, but as a much younger sweep oarsman with a coxie doing the steering.
In a 1x, once the course gets twisty, the obstacles multiply and the wind/waves become material considerations, it gets a LOT harder to keep on pace consistently. Getting the right line on a turn & maximizing speed is a lot harder than putting your blinders on and going in a straight line. As with anything else, experience counts, as I am sure you know from your long distance running. Also as you say, training is not racing & confusing the two is a mistake.
Hope you can make it to some OTW races this season. They are a lot of fun and you will learn a lot.
Cheers. Patrick.
