Good sprintervals in the eight, and a few words about coxing

We had a very good outing in the eight. The head coach accompanied us during the training and made us do a 4km long warming up, including technical drills. This really made the boat come together. After that it was time for the 15 stroke on / 10 stroke off training (2x3km).

Timing is everything. When we had the timing right, there were hints of boat speed. 🙂

 

The first 30 minutes were warming up. I had the feeling we were doing higher rates than the 32spm that the plot shows. Still, I felt surprisingly comfortable on stroke side (not my preferred side), and the coach’s instructions were good and helpful. The rowing stroke is subtly different than the sculling stroke. Actually, for a sculler it feels as much less subtle but I guess there are different subtleties. One of the things I need to pay attention to (even more than in sculling) is to first push on the legs and then use the back swing to help the arms. Otherwise, the blades pop out of the water, the boat stops accelerating, and suddenly everything become much more difficult.

We had a new cox, the son of one of the rowers. I think he will be good at it, but of course today he made the classical beginner’s mistakes. Too much steering (oversteering) and not enough talking. Can’t blame him. It must be scary for a 16 year old to be suddenly in charge of 8 old men. Here’s the result:

pazdi

If you think that’s not so bad, compare it with my trajectory in the single:

lake

As said, he will eventually learn it. 🙂

Tomorrow a long racing weekend will start. First, on Friday, there is the CEFTA, or the “Rowing Regatta of the Olympic Hopes” as it is called with a beautiful English name. This regatta is for 15 and 16 year olds, from former Communist Eastern European countries only. The regatta used to be organized under communism, and after the fall of the iron curtain it just continued under  a different name. The location is different every year, but this year it will be in Brno.

Then on Saturday and Sunday there is the Brno International Youth Regatta, an annual event on our lake for rowers in the 15/16 and 17/18 year old categories. My daughter Lenka will row in a quad.

So while we were out on the water about three trailers, two clubs from Prague and a trailer from Poland (I believe) arrived and the club was busy with youth. Also the lake was full of young rowing teams. Nice atmosphere.

In other news, I received an email from David at Concept2. He will check what I am sending to the Concept2 Development logbook server and when he finds it ok, we will migrate rowsandall.com to the real thing! Exciting!

He also lifted the data limitation on the Concept2 logbook server, so we can now upload each and every stroke, up to 9 hours of rowing. Exciting. It will be a challenge to do a row which exceeds the Concept2 data limit!

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