Mirror Flat Lake in Brno

Thursday. Sunny weather. Which means -2 C in the morning, which is a bit chilly on the scooter, and 14 to 16 degrees in the afternoon, which is great for rowing.

Half of our club is in Gavirate for a camp, and the other half are doing a camp on the Labe (Elbe) river in Pardubice. I will join the Pardubice crew for the weekend. But this Thursday it meant that I had the lake almost for myself. There were a few rowers from the club on the other side of the lake.

Steady state. I didn’t monitor the Power values during the row, but focused on Effective Length and Work per Stroke.

During km 6 to 8 I rowed without feathering. I was pretty happy with the execution of the drill, but looking at the data after the row, it shows that I significantly shortened the finish during that bit.

I had a fun “Masters Rower Price” moment in the final 3km full lake stretch. A junior from the other bank was trailing me and apparently doing some intervals. He was fiercely rowing at 30spm and catching up. His rowing was ugly, but he had the strong body of an 18 year old. When he was almost level, I increased stroke rate from 17spm to 24 spm and was able to stay ahead of him by keeping the length and rowing nice and clean, until he gave up. I enjoy those moments. Here’s a zoom in on that bit:

Recently, I have started to use Boat Speed in meters per second for the speed plots, but I am adding a pace (seconds per 500m) for those not used to the meters per second values.

How much more enjoyable is this. Being out on a sunny day on the lake, gliding over the water, outrowing a junior. Compare that to doing mindless steady state on a static erg in a basement, without company. I may ditch erg training early this season. Time to do more running.