Spring Races, Women’s 2x, Girls 2x, Men 1x Final and 8+

It was a long wait between the 1x heat at 11:30 and the final at 15:52. But I wasn’t bored. As I said in the previous blog post, the weather was traditional spring race catastrofic windy weather. So a 14 year old girl took a swim on the finish line. The rescue squad brought her to our clubhouse and she took a hot shower. Then they brought her single, which was entirely filled with water, from bow to stern. Eda and I took care of it.

Around 2pm it was time for the Women 2x. Romana rowed our Orca with Zdiška and they came in second place. A few pictures after the race:

They reported that our double Orca has perfect rowing properties in wild water. The pictures don’t show it, but the conditions today were quite difficult.

I missed my daughter Lenka’s race in the double because I was busy warming up on the erg, preparing for my own singles final. They came in second place, a fraction of a boat length behind the winners. I consider this a big success because Laura, Lenka’s double partner, is preparing for exams and skipping a lot of trainings. I am pleased to note that both girls showed the right fighting spirit and managed to row to a second place that nobody expected. No pictures, unfortunately.

Then it was time for my singles final. We had to wait forever at the start because the rows before us were 13 year old quads 500m. As the final 500m of our lake were hell today, it was difficult for the race organizers to align the boats at the 500m line and hold the races.

The singles final was passing the time doing start practices and chatting. There were 6 boats in the final, 2 Masters rowers (including me) and 4 young guys, aging between 18 and 20.

Finally, we were aligned and started.

5 boats were out of the starting blocks on a line. The other Masters rower was behind by a length quite rapidly.

After 300m the waves started. We were all still on a line.

After 500m one of the young guys started to fall behind. I was still in front with three others.

Unfortunately between 500m and 1000m I lowered the rate and pace a bit too much. Somehow I completely forgot my race plan to do 10 strong strokes at 500m and 1000m. Even though I rowed the heat in a lower pace, I still felt the effort during the final.

So there I was rowing in fourth place, a few lengths behind #3. As we hurried down the race course, the waves became higher and higher.

With 500m to go I somehow got inspired again and managed to increase the rate. That helped. For a few strokes I had the feeling I could even beat the guy rowing in third place, but he somehow managed to stay ahead of me. Still, rowing higher rate in Kamikaze style, my arms flying in all directions as in a weird 1980s disco dance because of the waves, I managed to come close to #3.

Finished in fourth place though. Still, I beat one kid and one Masters rower in the final and ended the races in fourth place of 11 rowers.

As you can see from the graphs, the HR is quite low, but really after 500m the lake was unrowable today.

Another snapshot from the races:

At the end of the day I rowed the 8+ as a guest rower in the Pardubice University eight. It was quite an interesting experience, rowing with guys who are training on a river and have just 5 months of OTW practice.