What OTW Training have you done today

[Nosmo]

hey Nosmo, That looks really good in my book, wish I was as good as that.

I expected them to have to drop back and find you, yet there you were ahead of the 8+ amazing. They looked to be motoring too.

Where in the world are you? It looks like Florida to me.

Rocket, Its taken me a long time to row that well. Your videos are much better then I was with your experience.

It is Oakland CA--same town but different water from where many of the US Olympic hopefuls are training. (look up California Rowing Club).
The W8+ was faster. Often they are not but it depends on who is in the boat and how together they are. You can hear the coach comment that he usually doesn't know who will be faster until we start a piece. I was matching stroke rating. (I almost always train without a stroke coach so I just listen to the other boat).
Often I can beat them if I over rate them by 2 to 4 spm--I just wasn't up for doing 3 x ~3K at 33 or 34 spm that day. Closer to racing season they become smooth at a 38 and I can't over stroke them (well actually I can but it slows me down). They are a good crew. One can never count them out in a race.
I also do get 10 meters or so on the starts---smaller boat accelerates faster. That workout I took the insides on two 180 degree turns to get a head, then take the outside on the next turn to have them catch up and we fought like dogs next to each other for the last 500m. With my mixed 2x partner we are always faster, but she moved to a town a hour a way so we don't row together regularly anymore. The turns are such so that I can almost always adjust the course length to make it a competitive workout no matter how fast they are.

That may be so, but that stern wake looks nice and continuous to me. A slight dip of the stern at the catch might result from that slight "lunge" that you confess to - which I probably wouuldn't have noted without being prompted.

The lunge does cause the stern dip. One can see it in slow motion or stop frame. It is not really "same old same old" because 8 months ago all the faults were significantly bigger.

[Bob S.]

That workout I took the insides on two 180 degree turns to get a head, then take the outside on the next turn to have them catch up and we fought like dogs next to each other for the last 500m.

What is the longest straight line you can get on Lake Merritt? I remember seeing a National Masters' there one year and I am fairly sure that they had a full 1k, but just barely fit it in. We (the UCB crew} rowed on it once in the 40s for some special event and it certainly seemed very cramped for an eight. The was one other shell there at the time, a guy in a single and he did a start with us just for the fun of it and sure enough he jumped ahead right away. Once we got rolling he dropped back quickly enough, but that quick jump out of the gates was impressive to me. 180s in an 8 - that's no fun at all.

Bob S.

[Nosmo]

One can get a straight 1250 meters or so. In a single the 180 degree turn at the damn is not bad, so you can get a good 2700m. more then that requires a very tight turn or a stake turn.

We have a 7 lane 1000m course, that does barely fit. We've hosted races every summer for a long long time. The SW Masters Regionals Championships seem to by staying at the Lake for the foreseeable future. It is a good course, however the water can be rough. Motor boat wakes bounce off the walls in most places making conditions difficult and the wind can be weird. There is a reasonable chance we may do the masters nationals again in a couple of years. The volunteer effort to put on the Nationals may be more then we can handle though. A one day race is bad enough. When we did the nationals 10 years ago or so, one of our member basically shut down his business for a couple of months to organize it. He also had to deal with the stupid fighting between the USRA and the (now defunct) Masters Rowing Association (or what ever it was called).

[Byron Drachman]

It was almost as nice as Oakland this morning in Michigan. OK, I exaggerate. For Michigan this time of year it was balmy weather, well above freezing. There was no wind and I had the river to myself. Last year I was jerking on a chain and sliding back and forth indoors on this date.

That black thing at the stern is a camera mount. I was inspired by Roy's example and have been taking some videos and looking at them in slow motion. I have so many things to work on, some of which I didn't know about until I saw the horror show in slow motion.

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[Rockin Roland]

Byron, you may call that balmy but to me that looks bloody cold !!
Down under the hot summer is into full swing now. The days are long and hot and the nights are warm. Crew rowing is off for summer break. A few more morning sculls for me then I'm off to the beach with the family to enjoy the surf and sun for our holidays.

Yesterday morning conditions were just about perfect. No wind at all, flat water and very little river traffic. An hour and half of absolute bliss. River traffic was so light that I never had to look over the shoulder once. Ideal conditions to find your max. length and just settle into a rythmn without being interupted. Loved it.

This morning there were similar conditions however it was very humid. The sweat was dripping off me. It was so humid that I noticed down at the club no one would dare go near an erg. One of my sweep crew mates that can't scull was intending to do an erg but quickly changed his mind when he felt the unbearable humidity in the erg room. So he decided to follow me on his bike and have a look at my sculling technique. He pointed out that my finish position looked a bit cramped which led to me moving the footstretcher back. It made a difference. Immediately I noticed I could get more speed around the back turn. I didn't change the inboard length when I moved the footstretcher back towards the bow. By doing this I noticed that I could grip the oar handles closer to the ends of the hand grips. I found that this allowed me to get a more powerful leverage through the oars.

The stroke coach told the story. Despite the humidity I was holding numbers on the speed coach for far longer than prior to the foot position change. Plus my crew mate watching me from his bike said that he'd never seen me previously scull before with such long powerful strokes. The stern was also more stable in the water with the weight moved closer to the centre of the boat. Perhaps this better weight distribution gave more boat run. Or the added oar leverage, Or both.

It's so much more personalized in setting up the rigging and feet position in a single scull compared to a sweep boat.

[Byron Drachman]

One of my sweep crew mates that can't scull

Hi Roland,

Can you give him some instructions and send him out in a rec. boat? It is nice to be able to be able to do both sweep and sculling. I've seen some sweep rowers catch on to sculling almost immediately.

I've been using a video camera attached to the stern and made a similar observation a week ago so I also moved the footboard toward the bow. I might try even one more notch toward the bow and reduce the span a little. I'm still looking for the perfect stroke and perfect rigging so I look just like Xeno when I scull. Heh, heh, dream on. I'm supposed to do a quad this morning but I suspect there will be too much ice.

[Nosmo]

5x5'on/5'off again with the W8+. The work out was at 28 spm. They had a fast lineup this morning so I took 4 lengths to start and overstroked them for us to finish together or them slightly a head. Brisk sunny morning with flat water no wind. Was ~50 deg F (10 deg C)
Yesterday. Easy SS plus drills day bowing a quad. Good practice steering in the dark--although I clashed oars with the other quad coming off the dock before I realized the steering lines had been uncrossed since the last time I rowed that boat!

[Rocket Roy]

11C on the Thames this morning, a bit choppy but nice all the same.

I've been thinking about shortening my inboard by an inch on each oar, my thinking is that this will give me more weight on the blades and as my main attribute is strong legs and the legs do most of the stroke doesn't this make sense?

All opinions most welcome.

[Snail Space]

I've been thinking about shortening my inboard by an inch on each oar, my thinking is that this will give me more weight on the blades and as my main attribute is strong legs and the legs do most of the stroke doesn't this make sense?

All opinions most welcome.

Roy, instead of committing yourself, you could try shortening the in-board one oar at a time to see if you like it.

Well, you did say ALL opinions welcome.

Cheers,
Dave.

[Rocket Roy]

I've been thinking about shortening my inboard by an inch on each oar, my thinking is that this will give me more weight on the blades and as my main attribute is strong legs and the legs do most of the stroke doesn't this make sense?

All opinions most welcome.

Roy, instead of committing yourself, you could try shortening the in-board one oar at a time to see if you like it.

Well, you did say ALL opinions welcome.

Cheers,
Dave.

Dave, I assume that is a joke.........right? Can it be possible to row well with one oar an inch shorter than the other>>>>>>you are having a laugh!!! I'm so new to this game, I'd believe anything

Happy New Year to you and everyone else in The USA.

[Bob S.]

Dave, I assume that is a joke.........right? Can it be possible to row well with one oar an inch shorter than the other>>>>>>you are having a laugh!!! I'm so new to this game, I'd believe anything

Happy New Year to you and everyone else in The USA.

Just make sure that you don't ever let anybody talk you into putting the seat in backwards. It can be very painful to the tail bone. Yes, it has happened. Once to me - a stupid bit of carelessness on my part and once to a friend. He had had plenty of boating experience, but on his first time rowing with a rolling seat, he didn't know any better and assumed that the dip in the seat should be to the front of the rower. He never did figure it out at the time. He learned about it from me a long time later when we went out in a recreational double that I had at that time.

Bob S.

[Nosmo]

Dave, I assume that is a joke.........right? Can it be possible to row well with one oar an inch shorter than the other...

You may be surprised at how easy it is. There are many cases of people with very screwed up rigging not noticing.
It is kind of like having two different crank lengths on a bike. I've heard many cases of people not noticing, and there are others like my wife, who got on a new bike and immediately commented that the crankes were longer (they were 172.5 not 170s and she didn't even know they made different lengths).

[Byron Drachman]

You may be surprised at how easy it is.

Hi Nosmo,

That happened to me. On my old Staempfli oars one of the collars moved out of its former position. I probably tried to compensate until it finally dawned on me.

Happy New Year

Byron

[Snail Space]

Dave, I assume that is a joke.........right? Can it be possible to row well with one oar an inch shorter than the other...

You may be surprised at how easy it is. There are many cases of people with very screwed up rigging not noticing.

Yes, sorry Roy, I was just joshing around. Having said that, Nosmo is absolutely right about how easy it is to inadvertently row with assymetric rigging. In fact, it may even be the default situation in many club boats, but you are probably protected from it by having your own craft.

I volunteer my time for a state school boat club. A few years ago a fellow coach and I checked the inboards and lengths of all the club oars, and were shocked by the unequal rigging. We spent a morning with spanners and rigging charts and basked in a sense of satisfaction when we had finished. We now confirm the measurements at the start of each school year, and are amazed at how the rigging fairies seem to party whilst we are not looking - even though none of the rowers are meant to make adjustments.

Despite our efforts, the junior rowers still manage to row with all sorts of rigs because they ignore our carefully matched pairs of sculling blades and, if not watched, take out any pair of blades that look the same - ignoring the fact that the looms have unmatched coloured, and numbered, markers on. As they say, no system is fool-proof.

Even when they go out with properly rigged kit we often get regaled with cries of, "Sir, I think somethings wrong with the blade" or "Sir, my gates are at different heights". It's funny how imperfect technique is always the fault of the rigging, isn't it.

Cheers,
Dave.

[Byron Drachman]

I was able to chop away enough ice at the dock to get out for a row yesterday. The thaw continues and there was very little ice on the river this morning. it warmed up to the low 40's F. It seemed like summer. I did 19K.

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