race report

20181006_155935

Oct 7 2018

Hradiště 6km head race – race report

Saturday, October 6, 2018

Head Race Day! I was up early, far too early. The town of Uherske Hradiště is an hour drive east of Brno and our race wouldn’t start until 2pm. We left Brno at 9:30 after picking up my club mate (and competitor) Eduard. The early departure time was to allow Romana to coach one of her Junior girls.

Arriving in Babice, at the place of the start of this 6km race, we found sunny weather, fair temperatures and a nasty head wind. The race is down stream on the river Morava, but the river was low because of the draught and there was very little flow. Actually, it would be wiser to stick to the middle of the river to avoid rowing into shallow parts. Still, a head wind blowing against the stream could potentially lead to some chop.

I contemplated setting the sculls a bit lighter, but then thought through the consequences and decided to not do it.

The race went pretty well. I started off and settled on my target 230W, not worrying about the stroke rate too much. I knew the stroke rate would be a bit lower in the head wind, and focused on hitting the power and work per stroke target. I also counted series of 30 strokes, 10 strokes focus on sitting straight at the catch, 10 strokes on legs, 10 strokes on back swing.

The course has a few turns and it was always a surprise what the wind would do after the next turn. At one point, about 1600m into the race, the wind really kicked up some waves. I hit a wave with the bottom of my right blade and nearly capsized. It stopped me for one stroke, then I continued to struggle into the head wind. I had no pace information on my SpeedCoach, and kept trying to hit my power targets, but in the middle 2km, the roughest bit, this was pretty hard.

I was rowing away from the guy behind me (David Ulc) and catching up on someone in front of me, but I wasn’t sure if that was Tomas Zeman or Andrej Hudec. Only at the finish line I found out that Tomas had taken over Andrej very early in the race.

I was worried most about Tomas Zeman and my double buddy Kazimir Nedoba. In the sprint season, Kazi had been faster, but he is fast mostly in direct confrontations and has difficulty rowing in the loneliness of a head race with 1 minute start intervals. Tomas, I had beaten him numerous times in a direct 1k confrontation, but he’s a big guy, a fire fighter, and the “indestructible man” body type. I feared that he could be fast into the head wind.

The first 4km went by pretty fast. The only annoying thing was that my left oarlock started squeaking quite a lot. The fifth 1000m interval started to hurt and the final 1000m hurt a lot.

I had missed all the kilometer markers, but I didn’t really had to look for them, having reset the SpeedCoach just before the start and showing distance rowed in the bottom left bit of the screen. I also saw the first houses of Hradiste, the water got calmer, and I knew it was time to rate up.

The final 500m were really painful but I wouldn’t let myself rate down. I knew it could be a close finish between me and the other contestants, so I wanted to get out as much speed as possible.

I collapsed at the finish line, chatted with Andrej a bit, then did a 2km cooling down row.

Meeting the other Masters rowers in the boat area, we all decided to go for a quick beer before loading our boats on the trailers. On the way to the club house we stopped to look at the results:

Second place for me, “only” ten seconds behind Tomas. Looking at the 2k and 4k times, it is also clear that I lost most in the middle 2k and made up for that in the final 2k.

We had our beer and then we received our prizes in a mini ceremony. I got a nice medal, a T-shirt, and some sweets. Tomas got a cup and a bottle of home made Slivovice. Oh, and we all got kisses from Mrs Tomastikova, the charming club president of Moravia Rowing club.

The winner’s ceremony with the charming club president of Moravia Rowing Club

Here are the race charts. The overview chart and a few comparisons with a year ago. To do justice to the comparison, you have to know that a year ago the river was high and flowing fast. This year, I spent 4 minutes longer on the course.

I have a race video which is uploading to YouTube right now. I will post a separate blog post with the video.

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Jun 19 2018

Tales of the Double (Race Report)

MM C 2x

Saturday morning. Nine am, meeting at the boat. My double partner Vojtech had to get up at 4AM to arrive in time from Ostrava. Romana and I got to the race course by 8AM so we had time for a morning coffee from the Black Dogs coffee company. I am not sure how the black dogs contributed to the coffee, but at least there is a dog in the picture:

There was a pretty strong headwind. Rowing to the start, Vojtech and I did a few 10 stroke bursts, and we did some practice starts which were pretty good.

On the real startline, we were just three boats. The Masters rowing scene in Austria is a bit smaller it seems. There was a Vienna/Graz combination, a boat from Bohemians Prague, and us.

Our race start was a disaster. We caught a semi crab. Not a real hard crab, but the kind where the boat just starts to roll and you can’t row full pressure. We corrected for that in the second stroke, but we were already behind.

In the first 500m, we managed to row to second position, but we led the Prague guys get out too far in the front. I was expecting them to crumble in the second 500m but that didn’t happen. These chaps have been training hard in the winter.

In the end, even the Austrian crew started to pass us and beat us on the finish line.

Talking to the Prague guys confirmed that they have been putting in the hours through the winter, and also, they have done a bit more racing this season than us in Moravia. These were the first kilometers that Vojtech and I rowed together. We are definitely not fast (yet?).

As Vojtech, later that day, proceeded to win the Masters D 1x with ease, it shows that the watts are there on his part, so it is either my lack of power or just bad rowing in the 2x. I hope it is the latter. There is a lot that can go wrong when racing in the double. I do note that in the single, Vojtech has a very short stroke, and we both have to change our rowing quite a bit to row together.

Respect for the chaps from Bohemians!

MMix C 2x

Four boats at the start. The Helbig family from Graz, a crew from Linz (Sames/Nigl-Eder) and a crew from the Vienna rowing club Donau (Bertagnoli/Bandera). And us. Michael Helbig had stroked the MM C 2x which had beat us on the finish line. The others were unknown to me.

Still a pretty strong headwind. But we shouldn’t be a slow crew.

Our race start was terrific. From peripheral vision I knew the other boats were right with us, but I didn’t want to look and just pushed out the first ten strokes, then settled to race pace.

Romana later told me that we were leading, but I wasn’t aware of it. About 20 strokes in, I was dealing with waves coming in from the left (a launch wake that just caught us in the highest lane, not the others, I think). Romana later told me that that was were Graz was passing us. By the time I was checking on the situation, we were in second position, half a boat length behind Graz and leading by half a boat length on Vienna.

I also heard the lady on the Graz bow make some weird noises and I called for a power 20. You can clearly see that moment in the stroke rate data in the chart above.

We passed Graz and they stopped rowing. I mean, completely stopped rowing. DNF. Not sure what was going on there. I suspect that Michael went out too fast for the lady to hold it, and she had cramp or other problems.

Now we were leading and I was eager to build out our lead to something a bit more comfortable. About 25 strokes later, Romana asked me: “Are we going to keep this stroke rate all the way to the finish?”

My first thought was: “That is a pretty long sentence to say with 400m to go, so hell yes!”

My second thought was: “Perhaps she wants us to calm down the pace a bit?”

I think the second thought was the better, so I said: “Calming the stroke rate” and so we did. This great picture was taken in the final stages of the race:

The Vienna crew was more than two boat lengths behind now, so there was no reason to be concerned. In front of the grandstand we did a 5 stroke “sprint” just to show off and that was that.

We went and picked up our medal and then we did a pretty long cooling down row in the cooling down zone. While we rowed the last 2km back to the dock, the wind had calmed down and the water was flat, and we locked in a magical 20spm with a great rhythm. It’s nice rowing with a medal around your neck.

It shows that rowing a double takes practice. Romana and I have done our kilometers together and that paid off.

We went back to the hotel and had a great Italian dinner, where we were joined by Veronika, Romana’s double partner.

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Jul 16 2017

Czech Masters Open – Sunday Race Report

Saturday night

On Friday night I was the serious, boring guy. Focused on my singles race, I started drinking water after two glasses of wine. Om Saturday night they made fun of me and I eased up on my limits. Romana and I had a nice dinner together, and then we joined the others at the beer brewery terrace:

It was a fun night. We saw the fireworks at 11, and then we walked to our hotel and went to bed.

Saturday

2x

First race at 11am. Masters C 2x. I rowed with Vojta Cernak from Perun Ostrava. We rowed four trainings together, two in Brno and two in Ostrava (Mordor). The favorites of the races were Petr Mitas and Martin Polasek. And then there were a few other dangerous doubles. 

Tailwind. We did a few fantastic practice starts, but our race start was not so good and we were in last position. Of course we quickly corrected that, but Polasek/Mitas were ahead of us. We raced in lane 6. Petr and Martin raced in lane 1. That made it difficult to judge their advantage. I stroked and didn’t watch them. After about 200m we were clear of the redt of the pack, and with 600m to go we were a couple of lengths ahead of the pack and one length behind Petr and Martin.

At that point I called “go”. We were behind and needed to do something, and we were leading the rest of the field by enough to risk. 

We didn’t catch them, finishing a few seconds behind them, and with a huge gap behind us and the rest of the field. We had rowed well and finished according the expectations. 

A third silver medal to my collection of this weekend. 

8+

The last race for me and also the very final race of the weekend was, at 3:30pm, the Masters Men’s eight. Four boats only. We hadn’t trained together since our win in Prague. Our opponents were a team of the best rowers from Prague, a combination of the best rowers from Moravia, among others Petr Mitas, Martin Polasek, my double partner Vojta Cernak, and my brother in law Tomas. We are a pure club eight from Brno. The fourth boat was a pure club team from Prague. 

So we were underdogs. The rest of this blog will be a picture blog:

Race prep

Discussing tactics

Crossing the finish line
Gold medal!
Happy team

The race was a thriller. We were lucky that we racted to the starting signal promptly and got a meter or so on Prague. Then we built that out to half a length. We rowed in lane 1, with Prague right next to us in lane 2. Their cox ess a 15 year old girl and every time she called a power ten, we heard her child’s voice announcing that we were going to be in trouble. To make matters worse, our cox led us into the buoys, so on every stroke our port side, including me, was praying not to hit a buoy, or worse, cstch a crab.

The two other boats, including the Moravian selection, were falling behind. 

We won by half a length in front of a finish area full of Brno fans, so the cheers were great. 

 

 

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Jul 16 2017

Czech Open Masters Race Report- Saturday

Friday

We left Brno around 11am and arrived at 2pm, including a one hour lunch in the nice village of Horni Cerekev. I decided to relax and not row. Romana and I just claimed a few bost stands for our club boats, I prepared my single, and then we went for a short bike tour. 

Saturday

1x

I launched at 8am for a quick row. I had left the SpeedCoach holder at the hotel so I rowed ‘unplugged’. I rowed to the 2k start, then did 2x 30 strokes at race pace, with a 500m paddle between. Then, at the 500m line, I did a 35 stroke interval consisting of 25 race pace strokes and 10 harder ones. The theory behind this is that doing this a few hours before e race will make the transition to  lactate burning easier during the race. Usually, the first race of the day hurts a lot agout 300m in, and because I had only two races on Saturday, I thought it would be good to do this. And I think it didn’t hurt.

My first race was a tough one. The Masters C single. I was up against Petr Mitas, a guy who always beats me, and a few other guys who shouldn’t be underestimated. Kazi Nedoba from Hodonin, Tomas Zeman from Prague. Six boats in total. I was super concentrated for this race. My plan was to be in front out of the start, then settle for a race pace around 325W, and start attacking whoever would be in front front of me with 500m to go. 

I think I was second out of the start, but I am not sure. I try not to look. There also was a strong cross/head wind which required a lot of attention in the beginning of the race. 

By the time I settled down to 34spm, I was in second position, a one third boat length ahead of the ‘pack’ and one boat length behind Petr. Petr battled on at high rate, so I rated back to 35.5 spm. That took me out of the pack but Petr had about 2 lengths on me. 

With 600m to go the pack was three lengths behind me and Petr was two oengths ahead of me. When I passed the 500m mark I launched my desperate attack. Stroke rate went up to 36spm and I managed to reduce the gap with Petr to a length and a half. At this point in the race I passed to members of my club who were rowing a cooling down from their Masters A 1x. It was great to have them their cheering for me.

Unfortunately, my engine stopped producing Watts with about 250m to go. In the cross/head wind I had difficulty keeping the rate and power up. All my muscles were burning and screaming. I tried to hold the power, even ousted two or three screams. But to be honest I basically collapsed. I finished in second place, 8 seconds behind Petr and 9 seconds before the rest of the pack, where a dramatic fight for third place ended unfavorably for my friend Kazi, who came in fourth. 

3:56 in head wind. Not bad. It took me along time to start breathing normally, then turn the boat. I collected my silver medal in the medal ceremony under the finish tower and started a long cooling down.

Mission failed but I guess it was mission impossible and miracles don’t exist.

4x-

In the afternoon it was time for the quad. We hadn’t rowed the quad since July 2016, at the same race exactly a year ago. This was a full field, six boats of Masters B quads. We knew Neratovice are good. They beat us two times in a row, and they have raced quad  smaller races in Bohemia, winning everything. 

We didn’t know the other boats. 

The weather, which had been quite diverse, changing every ten minutes throughout the entire day, showed an ugly face. During the warming up we got a really strong tailwind, throwing big waves. Our practice start was a disaster. 

The real start was even worse. The strong cross tailwind blew us into the next lane, the starter wouldn’t let us correct that so the only thing we could do was turn the boat at an angle that would bring us back into our lane. Sitting in stroke seat, I had to foot steer strongly to get us straight into our lane. 

By the time we were done steering and ready for a tactical move, we found ourselves rowing in second position, a lengh behind. The favorites and a little over a length ahead of the rest of the field.

We didn’t really try to catch up with Neratovice. Instead, we tried to tap down clean in the very heavy chop and row long strokes. I reduced the stroke rate to a safe 33/34 spm, and we just monitored the remaining four boats behind us. My friend Kazi stroked the Hodonin quad. They managed to manoeuver themselves in third place and subsequently caught a crab with 100m to go, and they ended in fifth place. We were second in 3:17. Not a fast time but with the cross wind and the chop there wasn’t much we could do to go faster.

Two silver medals

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Apr 9 2017

Czech Rowing Long Distance Championships – Race report

Woke up at 7, well rested. First trip to the bathroom, then to the scale.

71.8kg

Why am I rowing this race when I have to row in the Men’s (age unrestricted) lightweight category? I have no chance of winning this event. But I guess it is because I enjoy head racing. I think the 6k is one of the most difficult distances. There is a lot of room for errors like going out too fast. There is a technique aspect, and I guess I am closer to the elite on longer distances than on the 2k.

Above all I love doing it. Almost 25 minutes of high quality race rowing. Where can you get that?

Yes, on a canal near a muddy field north of Prague. Among others.

So breakfast was limited to coffee and one bun with jam.

And the amount of water I could drink was capped to 500 ml until the weigh-in. Not fun.

The weather was slightly better than on Friday. It was dry, and there was even some sun now and then. Here is a picture I took of the preparation area. The muddy field with all the boats is to the left. The start is 2km away from this place.

IMG 2143

I arrived at this place at 9:30, with the club’s minivan. My starting time was at 2:18pm.

At twelve o’clock I went to the weigh-in area to join a small crowd of lightweights. The young guys seem to have accepted my place in this crowd, after 3 years of participating, and a few of them started chatting with me, the crazy Masters rower who rows this race for fun, and not to achieve a qualifying time to be considered for the national team.

I weighed in at 71.8kg, exactly 2 hours before the race start time. So now I had a small window to get some food in (a bun, a banana, and some energy bars and nuts) and drink some water.

Romana was busy with Iva, who had to place 18th to be invited to the “control” races in a couple of weeks. She came in 21st, 7 seconds behind 18th place. In a head wind, she would have made the limit easily. Iva told me afterwards that she had stopped at one point, because a girl flipped. She stopped rowing to ask the girl if she was all right and instruct her dad (who was cycling on the bank) to help the girl. I didn’t know what to say when she told me that. I guess she is right and “qualification” is not so important as making sure that nobody gets hurt.

Then it was time for me to launch. In contrast to Iva, I was looking forward to rowing in a tail wind. Of course, now it was my race time, the wind had stopped. Oh well.

I had my “digital rowing” plan thought out quite well. No heart rate strap (to avoid the risk of the dreaded SpeedCoach hangup), new battery in the Empower Oarlock, the Garmin watch to monitor my start time, and a second stroke meter to monitor the distance, because I had set the SpeedCoach to show SPM, Power, Work per Stroke and Effective Length. However, one of our elite rowers was short of a stroke meter, so I gave him that device for his race. No problem, I could manage. I do want to see the elapsed distance, because even though there are markers on the bank for every 1k and I sort of know the course, it is easy to miss the marker and it is even easier to get confused when heavily fatigued.

So, one minute before my start, I switched the Garmin from showing time to recording and showing distance, and set the SpeedCoach to “ready”.

There were 24 lightweight men competing, and I started as the 23rd of them, with only Mr Hrstka from Brno behind me. Jan Hrstka is a sympathetic young guy who rows at Lodni Sporty, the club on the other side of my “home” lake, and we see each other regularly when training. Before the start I chatted a bit with him, commenting that we had traveled 250km to look at each other again.

Last sip of water to empty the bottle. Set SpeedCoach to record. Switch Garmin Forerunner to show elapsed distance, watch the two other scullers before me get started, paddle to the starting position.

5-4-3-2-1-GO

I was off. A race start and ten hard strokes and then try to settle for the 240W that I thought was a good power target for this race. This is very hard. On fresh legs, settling for a certain power value is much harder on the water than on the erg. The numbers I saw were above 300W, and I had to consciously lighten up and reduce the stroke rate to get to the 250-270W range.

Exactly 30 seconds after me, Jan Hrstka started. I looked at him. I was doing 28spm and it looked like he was doing 35spm. He quickly closed in on me.

After about 1km, he was just a few lengths behind me.

I stuck to my script and rowed at 230-250W, 500-600J per stroke, and keeping the effective stroke length above 90 degrees. I was curious to see what would happen.

It turns out we continued to row like this for most of the race.

At the half-way point, he had closed in to one length behind, but it had taken him 2km to do that. At that point, Romana and Adam, our head coach, were cheering. I put on a little more pressure.

At 2km to go, Mr Hrstka seemed to make a move. We were closing in on a bridge where the canal is a bit narrower, so I shouted at him that he should finally pass me, which he finally did. When he passed me, I noticed he looked quite worn out.

These 4th and 5th km were quite hard. I saw the power drop, occasionally to 210W, and had difficulty keeping the effective length high. Also, now I had to row in Mr Hrstka’s puddles. I was wondering if I should have tried to increase the power and stay ahead of him.

The last bridge, 1.5km before the finish, and the start of a long and slow turn in the canal.

When I saw 5km on the Garmin, I started counting strokes. With 500m to go I tried to squeeze out everything and empty the tank, which I think I succeeded in doing.

In the end result, I came in 19th place out of 24 rowers, in a time of 24:48.8 minutes, beating 5 guys (among them 3 U23 rowers). If I had started with the heavies, I also would have beaten quite a few rowers. Jan Hrstka came in 13th place. Our club’s second best lightweight (the best guy had a race in Italy) beat me by a minute. Complete results here.

So, I am pretty happy with that result. A minute faster than a year ago, but then it was in headwind, while today there was a very very light tailwind (when I rowed). A year ago I came 15th out of 16 (and Jan Hrstka was 90 seconds faster than I). In 2015, I was 14th out of 17 in a time of 25:05. My gap with the winner is constant around 2 minutes and 40 seconds. Quite a gap!


Workout Summary - media/20170409-073849-Sanders SpeedCoach 20170408 0217pmo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|05918|25:09.0|02:07.6|243.6|27.8|0.0|000.0|08.4
W-|05918|25:10.0|02:07.6|243.6|27.8|000.0|000.0|08.5
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|000.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00150|00:51.8|02:52.7|237.9|27.6|000.0|0.0|06.3
01|00500|02:05.9|02:05.9|266.1|27.8|000.0|0.0|08.6
02|00500|02:04.4|02:04.4|251.3|27.1|000.0|0.0|08.9
03|00500|02:06.1|02:06.1|249.9|27.4|000.0|0.0|08.7
04|00500|02:08.0|02:08.0|242.6|27.6|000.0|0.0|08.5
05|00500|02:05.9|02:05.9|249.5|27.7|000.0|0.0|08.6
06|00500|02:05.5|02:05.5|250.2|28.3|000.0|0.0|08.5
07|00500|02:04.8|02:04.8|238.8|28.1|000.0|0.0|08.6
08|00500|02:06.9|02:06.9|232.9|27.6|000.0|0.0|08.6
09|00500|02:08.2|02:08.2|229.4|27.2|000.0|0.0|08.6
10|00500|02:07.3|02:07.3|232.1|27.7|000.0|0.0|08.5
11|00500|02:08.2|02:08.2|246.5|28.4|000.0|0.0|08.3
12|00268|01:07.8|02:06.3|230.5|30.0|000.0|0.0|07.9

myimage (20)

 

After the finish, there was only a few minutes on the water to relax. After that there was a lot of work to do. Carrying the boat to the trailer (which is extremely hard after such a 6k race). Preparing the boat for transport. Walking to the car to get dry clothes.

Here are a few pictures from the official race photographer.

Then it was time to drive home. I didn’t have to travel with the trailer, because Romana had arrived with our car. We caught up with the trailer at one gas station, so I took a quick picture.

IMG 1425

 

Race Data Analytics

Here are the detailed graphs of my race, for the data junkies (including myself)

And here is the key graph from the entire row.

Both slip and wash became gradually worse as I got fatigued, and especially seemed to suffer from rowing in the puddles of Jan Hrstka.

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Jun 5 2016

Primátorky race report – disappointed

Primátorky races. Eights and singles in the heart of Prague, on the Moldau river. The culmination of the season for many Czech Masters teams.

As you have been able to read here, also the Masters men of CVK Brno put in a few trainings on the eight, to defend their series of 4 subsequent wins on this race. Last year I didn’t take part because of back issues, but this year I would be rowing on 2 seat.

We left Brno on Saturday morning. A comfortable 2.5 hour train ride brought us to Prague. The race would only be at 7pm, so time enough for a nice lunch with Romana and some race watching.

IMG_1851
Spectators on the Moldau bank near the finish line. Prague Castle in the background

 

IMG_1853
View from the grandstand towards the famous “Railway Bridge”

After watching a few races from the grandstand, I moved to the Railway Bridge to take pictures of our Men’s Eight (the young men) in their heat.

 

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View of the finish area from the Railway Bridge

Prague is a great place to race. Here is the first men’s eight heat approaching the railway bridge.

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The Brno Men:

cvkbrno_rotated

After the men rowed their heats and the repechage, the Wintech eight was ours for our Men’s Masters B final. We had time enough to launch early and used that time to sharpen our skills. After all, we hadn’t had so many trainings together. We rowed a good 7 km with 10 stroke pieces at different stroke rates and a few practice starts.

We were ready to roll and it was time for our start. Four boats started to align at the 1000m mark.

Lane 1: Brno (that’s us)

Lane 2: Piestany (they came all the way from Slovakia)

Lane 3: Neratovice

Lane 4: Blesk

A year ago our boat beat blesk by a tiny margin.

While we were aligning for the start, this guy came steaming up the river from the finish:

Right next to us, at the start line, it started to turn.

It turned. Then its engines roared as it started to make speed to return to the finish. Right next to us. The bowman and I were trying to keep our boat in the right direction.

Suddenly I noticed that the other boats had started. We did a panicky improvised start and started chasing them, right through the wake of that big river boat. The water seemed to have reached the boiling point. Whirls everywhere, waves, and the roaring sound of a fifty year old diesel engine.

After about 10 strokes our cox had to pull sharply to the left to avoid bumping into the giant. A few strokes later we started clashing blades with Piestany, but we quickly rowed through them. Adrenalin fountains were spouting from our ears. Stunned tourists on the deck of the river steamer saw us steam past them. Our stroke rate was 39 spm.

Two hundred meters into the race Blesk’s lead had shrunk from a boat and a half to a boat length. Our cox was shouting orders and we were reducing the gap by every stroke. They rowed over on the other side of the river and I was just focusing being in sync with our stroke, who was doing a fiery 37spm.

In that part of the race I was confident. We were rowing into Blesk so fast that I estimated we would be next to them by the time we rowed under the railway bridge, and then would be able to pass them in the final 300m.

By the railway bridge I had them in my peripheral vision. Thirty strokes to go. We were over 40spm by now and we were still moving but not as fast as I liked. That was clearly the feeling in our entire crew because everybody started to pull harder and harder. The problem was that everybody was pulling for himself and as we hit an area with very bad water because of the concrete banks, we started to lose balance and hit a few bad strokes, which cost us the win.

Immediately after the finish our stroke and our cox raised their arms and summoned the marshalls to listen to our complaint. At first he thought we were complaining about the clashing blades, but when we explained him the situation at the start, he started to understand. He acknowledged that conditions at the start had been far from ideal and even proceeded to say that the should have stopped the race after a few strokes.

His launch disappeared to the bank to discuss with the finish line officials. The Blesk boat and us were waiting impatiently.

After about 20 minutes of waiting, they finally seemed to have a verdict. The marshall’s boat came to the Blesk boat and started talking to them. We couldn’t hear what they were saying but it was clear that Blesk wasn’t pleased. Then the Marshall communicated the verdict to the speaker, who announced:

“The Masters B is declared undecided because of unfair conditions for Brno at the start. The two first boats will re-row the race at 19:40 to decide the winner. If one of the boats, or both, do not show at 19:40, they will be automatically put in last place in the results.”

After this announcement, Blesk rowed away proclaiming that they wouldn’t re-row. Our boat needed another five minutes to calm down. At that moment, I was ready to row to the start and race again, but some of us were fiercely against it.

All was decided when our stroke got cramp in his legs. We returned to the Blesk rowing club, only 7 rowers rowing, stroke seat bent over his oar and holding his leg.

At Blesk we went to see the Blesk crew to explain our point of view. Apparently they had calmed down as well, because they invited us with a big smile, exclaiming: “What did you think complaining against a crew from the organizing club?”

We explained that they rowed well and were not to blame, but that the conditions at our start were clearly unfair. Anyway, there wouldn’t be a re-row. One 1000m row was clearly more than enough for some of us (and some of them as well).

Our times of 2:54 and 2:54.4 were the two fastest of all the Masters races by more than five seconds.

HR and pace plot of the warming up row and race. No stroke rate data because I didn’t take the phone on board.

So of course I am disappointed by the result. On the one hand, I am sad we didn’t do a re-row. That would have been a nice story and a nice thing to do for the spectators, whoever would win it. On the other hand, I must acknowledge that I have crew members who cannot do 2 1000m efforts in series. Especially when done at 37 to 41 spm. Also, we clearly should have rowed better in the final 300m, instead of just everyone pulling hard without coordination.

Romana, the girls and I took the 9pm train from Prague to Pardubice, where we spent the night. Today was basically getting home, taking the train from Pardubice to Brno, then some groceries and now I am firing up the barbecue. My training of today consisted of a bike ride to the supermarket.

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