What a lovely row: Saturday ORCA mix 2x 1000m

As the temperatures on Friday evening started to drop below 30 degrees, we fired up the barbecue and had a very nice dinner of Roodbaars (Atlantic redfish) from the grill. This fellow weighed 2.5kg at the fishmonger’s, so the three of us (Lenka, Romana and I) had plenty of very tasty fish. A simple salad to accompany it and (perhaps a little too much) French white wine.

We decided to launch around 9am, when there are still reasonable temperatures, and the lake hasn’t yet turned into an amusement park.

Absolutely ideal conditions. No wind. Flat water. Almost no swimmers. The boat rentals weren’t open yet. My training plan said “Death by Lactate” but as I was rowing with Romana, who hasn’t done her share of 1km trials yet, I decided to just do a 95% effort on the 1000m.

So we launched our Salani “ORCA” and did two kilometers of warming up. Then a test start plus five strokes which were perfect. Very concentrated and very nice.

Then we rowed one kilometer to the buoyed 2km and got ready for the start. The plan was to do a 95% effort. Hard start plus ten, then down to 30spm and only increase it a bit in the final 200m.

Start was ok but worse than our practice start. After ten strokes I lowered the stroke rate. A quick glance at CrewNerd, which told me I was doing 10spm. We must have been rowing so  smoothly that we confused CrewNerd. After about 200m CrewNerd came back and I was indeed rowing at 29.5-30spm.

The half way point was passed without the dreaded lactate bite, and we continued our well coordinated 30spm.

29 degrees C, 1023mbar, humidity 53%, wind speed between 0.2 and 1.0 m/s.

With 200m to go I brought up the stroke rate to 33spm. We stopped 2 strokes early, and cruised through the virtual finish line at 3:42. Happy with that. At the Masters Nationals in 2014 we were third in 3:44, same warm and windless weather. This year’s edition will be very interesting. Hauk and Zizkova will remain in masters B, the Dekanovsky’s we don’t know, and we will be starting in C. Already in C last year there were Masatova and Zeman, who rowed a 3:44.


|Start|Stop_|Dist_|Time_|Pace__|_SPM__|avg HR|max HR|DPS|Remarks
|00000|03049|03049|17:43|02:54.3| 19.2 | 133 | 172 |08.9|warming up
|03049|03148|00098|00:22|01:51.9| 32.9 | 133 | 160 |08.2|100m #1
|03148|03250|00102|00:22|01:47.7| 24.9 | 168 | 171 |11.2|#2
|03250|03350|00100|00:22|01:50.3| 17.1 | 172 | 174 |15.9|#3
|03350|03448|00098|00:22|01:52.1| 30.0 | 176 | 177 |08.9|#4
|03448|03548|00100|00:23|01:55.2| 29.8 | 177 | 177 |08.8|#5
|03548|03649|00101|00:23|01:53.7| 30.0 | 178 | 179 |08.8|#6
|03649|03746|00097|00:22|01:53.5| 30.0 | 179 | 179 |08.8|#7
|03746|03847|00102|00:23|01:53.0| 30.6 | 179 | 180 |08.7|#8
|03847|03948|00100|00:22|01:49.8| 32.3 | 180 | 180 |08.5|#9
|03948|04045|00097|00:21|01:48.3| 33.0 | 180 | 181 |08.4|#10
|04045|07762|03718|21:53|02:56.6| 19.4 | 141 | 180 |08.7|cooling down

1kmspm

1km

So, no excuses to go slow, two weeks from now!

We did a 3km cooling down followed by some swimming in the lake, gave the boat a good wash and then headed to the town centre for a coffee on the main plaza, and a visit to some bookshoppes.

Now indoors to survive the hottest part of the day. No rowing planned for tomorrow, or perhaps a lazy single scull early in the morning.

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