Sep 12 2017
Tuesday & Wednesday – Travel & First Training in Bled
I haven’t blogged in more than a week. The reason is the World Rowing Masters Regatta. There was simply so much racing and stuff going on and no time to blog. But there was certainly a lot that I want to blog about. So here we go. A series of posts about the most important regatta of the season.
Tuesday
Finally! We are off to Bled. Picked up the rowers at a parking in Brno, then the trailer at the rowing club. Our lake showed its most mirror-like water, so we were tempted to unload the boats and go rowing, but traveling to Bled won.
The drive was uneventful, luckily. I would hate an “eventful” drive with a boat trailer. The only point where I was a bit nervous was when we chose the left lane at Graz, and were diverted into a very narrow temporary highway lane, separated from upcoming traffic with concrete blocks. Romana was driving and she managed the 7km of driving in this lane with perfect calm. Millimeter precision steering, with a few cm on both sides of the trailer, or so it seemed to me.
Driving into Bled town, my passengers started to make phone calls to announce our arrival and go for a training in the afternoon.
Too early.
We were caught by the organizers and put on a temporary trailer holding area.
After about an hour of waiting, we were allowed to drive to the venue. So, all in all the wait wasn’t long, and it was a good move by the organizers. If they hadn’t done this, they would have created a traffic jam of trailers on the venue.
Boats were unloaded, and the official Bled 4×4 pulled our trailer to the trailer parking. Romana and I hopped on the bike and rode to our hotel. We checked in, took a shower, and then went into Bled for a nice dinner.
Wednesday
I went for a quick training in the morning. The official training times were between 8am and 10am. First, I took some time to rig the boat. Then I had to carry it about 500m from our rack to the dock. I did two loops of the entire lake. A few practice starts and a few 20-25 stroke intervals.
In the afternoon, we rode around on the bike. We had a nice lunch on the lake. The racing had already started, but we weren’t racing today, so it was nice to see the boats rowing their warming up.
After that, we watched some races from the grandstand. I saw a regular follower of my blog win, and watched Tom Carter race the Masters A 1x. I also took the opportunity to look around the booths and chat to rowing electronics vendors.
Sep 12 2017
Thursday – World Rowing Masters Regatta – my first race
On Thursday, my brother-in-law Tomas and I would race our B 2x race. Tomas had come over the evening before, would race with me and then spend a few days biking in the Alps. When we launched, it suddenly started to become windy, and the lake became a little choppy.
We haven’t done many sessions together, but I was hoping that our race experience from Trebon would compensate for that. Unfortunately, it didn’t.
Our start was great. This was the only race of the five I did on this regatta where the traffic light system was actually working. I did go off when I “felt” that it would go to green. We were slightly early. The guy on the starting pontoon looked at us in surprise, but the race was started and they didn’t call us back.
Rating down to the middle part of the race, we were not able to find a good rhythm. We were fifth, but a few boats were just in front of us. In the second 500m, I had hope that we could pass one or two boats, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. Too bad. Fifth place.
Our time was very disappointing. With this tailwind, we should have been able to go under 3:30. We clearly didn’t manage the chop.
I thought we were sixth because we beat two boats. According to the official results we were fifth. The Vikings didn’t show up.
Romana and Veronika rowed the A 2x and were happy with a fourth place.
In the evening, I walked up to the Triglav hote, where a small crowd of rowing data fans gathered. Before the talk, I took a picture of the boat area (above) with a million boats. Our boats are not in the picture. They are more to the left.
The seminar on data analytics for rowing was a success. I presented for about 30 minutes, and then we talked for about an hour.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: 2x, double, OTW, race, rowing