Race Day Logistics for a LW Masters rower

I will race in 2 days. In the elite Light Weight category. Just because there is no Masters category on this race.

So this will be one of the few rowing races this year (perhaps the only one) where I will have to make weight. My natural weight oscillates around 72kg, so it should not be a big problem. The challenge is always that I am a few kilograms more on January 1. Well. who isn’t? Here is how my weight has been going in the past few months:

The blue symbols are measurements. Always measured first thing in the morning, after a visit to the bathroom. The fat orange line is the line I need to be under on Saturday. The blue line is a linear fit to the trend in the data, and the thin orange line is the moving average with a window size of 5 measurement points.

A few things. You can see that the day to day oscillations are big. Almost 2kg sometimes. I strongly suspect that that is mostly water. I was happy I knew this and didn’t worry about those oscillations too much between January and now. The consequence, of course, is that I want to be well under the limit approaching race day, or otherwise I will have to dehydrate myself.

By the way, I didn’t do anything special to lose the weight. Regular exercise, of course. And no fizzy soft drinks. Beer and wine limited to the weekends, with the exception of business dinners.

On race day, I need to make weight between one and two hours before the race start time. After that, there is time for a quick snack and some drinking. I need to buy some bars and sports drinks for that time window. Also, there are no shops in the starting or finish area. In the starting area, there is nothing. In the finish area you can buy softdrinks and grilled sausages. :-/ So, I need to plan carefully and take all my food and drinks with me.

So that was the easy logistics challenge.

This year, my daughter is racing as well in the Girls 15/16 category, and that will make it really interesting. Almost as if I am doing two races. Why?

Here’s is the starting list and time order:

http://www.veslo.cz/17-mistrovstvi-cr-na-dlouhe-draze-s-mezinarodni-ucasti/25043315/startovni_listina_horin_2016.pdf  

Lenka’s start is at 13:08. My start is at 14:33, and that is the time when the officials start my race clock, even when I actually pass the starting line later. There is 85 minutes between that. Let’s say Lenka’s race takes 30 minutes. That leaves 55 minutes to

1. Take the single out of the water and load it on the trailer. This will involve carrying it through the finish area crowds, because I doubt we will be able to get the trailer any closer than 500m to the finish line. This will take at least 15 minutes.
2. Drive 10km to the starting area. This will take 15 minutes.
3. Change footstretcher setting. Launch. This will take 10-15 minutes.
4. Row to the start line. This will take 5-10 minutes.

There is very little slack in this schedule. 🙁

Luckily I can put the single on the top level of the trailer without actually removing the wing rigger.

Here’s a map of the race. The green polygon is the approximate position of the start line. The red one is the finish. The yellow ones are boat/trailer areas. The race is 6 km long.

Oh boy. I will have to have a very relaxed attitude to all this, and take it with some lightness. If I miss the start time, I will miss it. Will measure my real time on CrewNerd and then check where I would have been in the results if …