Wednesday – a row in the double

At the end of the afternoon, I picked up Vojta from the railway station. He arrived from Ostrava after a 2.5 hour train ride in a train without airconditioning, in 30 degree C weather. This row was about trying out if we could row a Masters C double at the Masters Nationals.

At the rowing club, the first thing I did was inspecting my damaged single. A few guys had bumped into the single stored above mine, while they were carrying in a coxless four. The other single fell from the rack and it’s wing rigger bumped into my single.

Luckily, it looks like the damage is not structural and can be repaired easily. The guy I trust with the repair is out traveling to the races in Amsterdam, though, so it will not be until Monday before the repair can be done. I am actually planning to take the single out, but before the real repair, I will encapsulate the crack with plastic foil and tape, so no water will enter the structure.

After that inspection, we proceeded to the actual training. The lake was pretty much not rowable. There were white caps and it was windy, and there were tons of boats, swimmers, wind surfers, and other summer distractions going on.

Hell, there was even a rescue by helicopter demonstration. We were paddling out and the AW139 came flying over us at about 10m above the water level, then it hovered at a few meters above water, picking up a simulated drowning. That was fun!

Then we had to row through hords of paddle boarders. Finally, in the gorge, the water became calmer and we did some technique drills. We spent the entire 8km rowing up at steady state pace, except for 3 10 stroke bursts. It was good.

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The power in the above graph was not measured by the Empower SpeedCoach, but done by the rowsandall.com Physics module.

On the way back, we tried to do as many “head race pace” sections as we could. We originally planned to do a 3x2km on the lake, but on the river part, with the turns, we had to improvise. We basically rowed hard every more or less straight section. As Vojta on bow was unfamiliar with the river, he of course had to turn around very often, which slightly impacted our rowing. Still, I think the basics are there to make this a fast double.

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The second interval was unfortunately interrupted by an incident. Vojta bumped into a swimmer with his oarshaft. The guy was swimming in the middle of the river. We stopped and stayed around for a while to check that he was OK.

After that, we rowed through the beach area with its paddle boarders, swimmers, and other people blissfully unaware of traffic rules. The final interval was interrupted by a tourist boat. It was quite a row!

Vojta had already missed his 7pm train, so we had time to go swimming. Just a dive from our “swimming dock”, staying close to the shore. It was cool and refreshing. There is nothing better than a post-row dive into the lake. Well, perhaps a post-dive ice cold beer.

We decided to start at the Masters Nationals. This could be a fast double.