The Draw

Wednesday

Cycled to work.

Cycled home.

The usual course. In the morning, I left home 20 minutes later than normal and I discovered that this is a mistake. In Židenice, the part of Brno that I ride through, are a lot of small courtyards, and on these courtyards, there are small enterprises. Handymen, builders, carpenters, etc. They start at 7AM with their preparations for the day, and around 8AM they all leave their courtyards with their little vans and trailers. What I perceived as a quiet neighborhood was suddenly buzzing with activity.

Thursday

The original plan was to use a gap around lunch time to row and prepare the boat for transport for Friday’s reconnaissance row and Saturday’s race.

The gap disappeared in a sea of work.

Then the idea was to leave around 4:30, row and prepare the boat for transport. I had one call to make with a guy in Phoenix He let me know he had a conflict and needed to postpone. So I arrived at the club around 6 and the only thing I could do was admire the mirror flat water, not row, and prepare the boat for transport.

I am OK with it. I will not sit on the erg but take a rest day instead. Today it was important to get all the work out of the way, because tomorrow I want to have time for my reconnaissance row.

The Draw

Around lunch time they published the draw. First let me show you last year’s result in my field:

2014

I won, and Mr Machacek from Blesk, the president of the Czech Rowing Association, came 9 seconds behind me. Close, but i was faster.

Here is this year’s draw:

2015

So Dusan Machacek starting one minute before me … so he can watch me. Interesting coincidence. Cernak, who didn’t race a year ago, is also pretty fast. So this will be interesting. At least i have all my opponents around me.

Tomorrow, the plan is to get up at 5:30, get the trailer, leave Brno around 6, arrive at the race start at 7:30, go for a 12km reconnaissance row, park the trailer on the trailer parking, and head for my 11AM meeting, about 10km from the race venue.

Here is the reconnaissance video I made a year ago: