Jun 11 2018
105th Primátorky 2018 – Race Report (drama)
Thursday
I only had time for a weights workout in the gym close to the office.
Friday
No time for a workout. It was a planned rest day anyway, to get rested before the races of Saturday evening. I worked from home, then headed to the rowing club at 3pm to join the rest of the club and travel to Prague in a bus and a minivan. We arrived at the rowing club CVK Praha at 6:30pm. The juniors went for a quick row, and then we headed to the hotel.
It was already late, so dinner consisted of a quick bite at Burger King next to the hotel. Then it was time to go to bed and get well rested for a long day of racing. I was looking forward to it. Primatorky are a very interesting race. The race is held in the middle of Prague, and the only disciplines rowed are 1x (only Men and Women open) and 8+ (all age/gender groups). There is always an impressive finish area, and usually the weather is nice.
Here are a few pictures from the Friday evening racing program (Academic Eights, one of them featuring World Cup single scull winner Ondrej Synek).
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The lady coxswain in one of the pictures is Martina, the trainer of the Juniors of Slavia rowing club in Prague. I have much more to tell about her below, so read on.
Saturday
Races started at 9:30am, so I joined the “athlete bus” at 8. I could have slept longer and take an Uber or public transport, but I was interested to see the other races. Also, the terrace of CVK Praha rowing club is a nice place to have a coffee, read a bit, and chat with friends. Compared to our budget hotel room in an uniteresting part of Prague, it is definitely better.
The plan unfolded without surprises. I spent two hours catching up on the Prague rowing stories, saw our Men’s single scullers go for a quick training (and almost getting a warning for not obeying the traffic pattern) and watched my son Dominik race his heat in the Boys (<14yr) 8+. They won their heat easily and qualified for the semifinals.
Our Juniors 8+ came 2nd in the heat (even though leading with 300m to go) but they won the Repechage and qualified for the semifinals.
Romana’s Women’s 8+ raced their heat and had to go to the Repechage.
Then, Romana and I had lunch and we took the tram to the finish area.
We had an ice coffee and waited for Dominik’s race. Meanwhile, the sky had changed from completely blue to cloudy.
Dominik won his Semi with a large margin and so they were in Sunday’s finals. We took the tram back to the start, because Romana’s girls had to get ready for their repechage.
I took my position on the balcony of CVK Praha rowing club, with a great view of the race starts.
The clouds had become more threatening, and I could hear thunder and saw lightning in the distance. We all took out our phones and started monitoring the weather reports. It was not good. And by 5pm it got pretty dramatic.
At 5pm I had to go inside because it started raining hard. Within 5 minutes hard rain had changed to very hard rain and strong wind. It was basically a white spray outside and there was zero visibility. Martin went out to check if our boats had been tied to the slings and returned entirely wet. I was watching some poplar trees that were bending dramatically.
Around that time, I heard that the races hadn’t been stopped and that our Boys (<16yr – not the boat with my son) were out on the water. I moved from the club house to the boat house to join a concerned group of people from our club. There was little we could do. We watched how the wind blew away the portable toilets, taking one eight with them.
It was a terrible 15 minutes, but then we saw our boys 8+ arriving at the dock. We helped them secure the boat and sent them to the warm showers. I went to see them in the changing room, and I now have a lot of respect for their stroke and cox. They were at the start pontoon but decided, while the race organization was still paralyzed, to not race and row back to the club. A very wise decision. I later heard that the officials had still started this race and let it go on in wind and hail.
By that time the races had been stopped for 2 hours. Our 7:10 pm start in the Masters 8+ was moved to 9:10pm. I wondered how they would move a program that ran officially until 8:30pm by 2 hours?
We all gathered in the club house and waited for further instructions. The weather had calmed down now and I was preparing to get changed to racing gear, when the official announcement came that all semifinals had been moved to Sunday morning and the Masters races had been cancelled. I guess it was, finally, a wise decision. Here are some pictures from other parts of Prague, after the rain.
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We all got in the buses and were driven to the hotel. After a quick shower and putting on dry clothes, Romana and I decided to head to the Vinohrady quarter and have a dinner in a nice restaurant.
At the end of the dinner, the restaurant was visited by 5 guys dressed only in towels. They had been surprised by the rain and gotten completely wet. Then a lady living nearby had invited them to her appartment to dry their clothes, and while they were waiting for their clothes to be dried, they decided to go to the restaurant on the other side of the street to have a drink.
After a very nice dinner, Romana and I headed back to the river for the Masters party. The party was on a boat in the finish area, and we joined the other Masters who hadn’t raced.
That is also where we heard a couple of frightening stories.
- One club had no information about the whereabouts of two ladies singles scullers, who were on the water when the storm arrived. Later, it turned out that they had found shelter in another rowing club and were unharmed.
- Martina, the trainer of Slavia, had helped with a dramatic rescue of two people who had ended up in the river
On that second story, we first thought they were tourists from a pedalo, but on Sunday it became clear that it was a group of four people playing geocaching. They had entered a dry tunnel to find the cache. Then they were suprised by a flash flood which spit them out into the river. One person from that group was later found dead, and another is still missing. Martina noticed two people “swimming” in the river, and noticed that from a nearby river boat somebody threw a rescue ring at them and then jumped in the water. She (mother of 2 children) jumped on her launch and helped with the rescue, getting the two drowning people out of the water. Some pictures taken from the river boat.
Dramatic video footage from the rescue here. That video also shows (towards the end) some cellphone video of the weather conditions. Watch it, because my description above is quite inadequate.
What you may not realize is that the rescue operation was pretty risky. The river flow and the wind were dragging the launch and the river boat towards the bridge and a weir. If the river boat made a mistake there was the risk that it would have crushed the launch and the swimmers on the bridge. Martina is a hero.
I already respected her as a trainer and knew her to be a very nice person. What she did on Saturday was heroic and admirable. Here’s another interview with her, taken on Sunday and another video of the conditions.
Sunday
The weather was nice again, and Romana and I went to the finish area to watch our son’s final races.
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Here’s the video. My son is in the blue boat coming second:
Then, I took a train to Brno, hoping to be back in time to get a OTW row in the single. Meanwhile, our Juniors won their final race, and our U23 single sculler Ondrej Cermak won the Men’s Open 1x final in a great race. I watched it on TV in the evening. It was great to see our club (and our sponsors) being so successful at these races. Here is a link to the Czech TV broadcast of the event. Our juniors start at 8:45 minutes in and our single sculler at 1:08:00 in.
I didn’t manage to get in a row on Sunday. My car was parked at the rowing club, so I took the public transport to the lake. By the time I arrived there, there was a fierce thunderstorm (not as bad as Saturday’s Prague one) and by the time the sky was clear again, there wasn’t any time left to row. I waited for the bus and the trailer to arrive from Prague, congratulated all our winning crews, and drove home with Dominik.
Jun 19 2018
About Large Boats and Small Boats (Race Report)
Sunday. It was going to be a busy day. Here was the program:
9:35 Masters C 4x
10:17 Masters D 2x
12:28 Masters C 1x
I had been drafted to fill a seat in two Donaubund boats. Their regular rower had a bicycle accident and was unable to row. Of course I was happy to fill in, knowing that Andreas Kral and Marko Milodanovic are excellent rowers. I was hoping I wouldn’t disappoint them.
We met at 8am and rigged the boat, a nice Filippi quad. We were up against two boats, who had both entered as C. However, at the start line we would find out that the crew from Salzburg was actually a E crew.
The third crew were my friends from Bohemians Prague. Today, I wouldn’t underestimate them.
It was a pretty heavy headwind. Rowing to the start we did a few practice starts and that was the prep. I had never rowed with this crew, but I think I blended in quite nicely, seated on 2.
Despite being an E boat, the crew from Salzburg was a very serious competitor on the first 500m. That could also be said about the Bohemians crew. For the Bohemians, this classification could actually be extended to the second 500m.
But by solid rowing we were able to push our boat out in front, centimeter by centimeter, pushing against the headwind which made it feel like we were rowing in concrete.
Looking at the picture, with me seated on two, Andreas on bow, Marko on 3, and Alex, invisible on stroke seat, I think I blend in quite well. Phew.
We managed to push our bow ball across the finish line a few seconds before Bohemians. This had been a long and painfully intensive 1000m.
To our surprise, the winning time went to the E crew from Salzburg, because they got a bonus of 11 seconds according to the Austrian handicap system. Well, we still got a silver medal, and we did win the race on uncorrected time.
I didn’t bother taking my SpeedCoach in the boat, so here is just a crude pace chart as measured by my Garmin watch:
Double
Andreas and I could just move our sculls from the landing dock to the launching dock and get our double. We rowed in a nice Filippi belonging to Andreas and Marko, and we pushed off with 9 minutes left to get to the start. Not a lot of time to get together as a double. To make things worse, I had forgotten to drink from my water bottle, which I had left on the dock when we pushed off with the quad.
At the start line, with us in lane 1, I was surprised to see a pair lining up next to me. We were four double and a pair.
The headwind had become even stronger and there now was serious chop. I didn’t know any of the competitors but Andreas told me that it “was doable”, so after the “GO” of the quick start I set off as furious as my body, still tired from the quad race, would allow me. We were all boats in one line but in the second 250m, Andreas and I managed to pull away by about a boat length.
A bit before the 500m mark I asked for a power 20, and we did rate up and tried to pull away further. We were quite unsuccessful in that. I think that the difference with the pair even got smaller.
A pair, in serious chop and headwind, able to pull us in? Well, it turns out that is possible when the rowers are Laszlo Kokas and Attila Strochmayer. The race turned out spectacularly for the fans on the shore, but it was extremely painful to our tired bodies. In the end, we managed to cross the finish line 0.43 seconds before the pair, but to me the true winners are the guys in the pair. Normally, a pair should be a few seconds slower when racing a double. Respect!
Of course, we did happily collect our medals. I am quite happy with this result. We proved to be not slow, even with only 1100m of training together. Again, just a crude pace plot from the Garmin Forerunner.
Water & Single
Meanwhile, Romana had raced her double race with Veronika, where they unfortunately finished last, and she was now on the water in a quad.
I had an hour and a bit to recover before my singles race, and the plan was to rehydrate and eat a healthy bar to get some nuts and sugar in my stomach. The rehydration plan went well. After two races without a sip of water, my mouth was really dry, but I did get my water bottle and drink. The eating a bit part was a disaster, though. Romana had hidden the car keys on a secret place, but I couldn’t find them. So I was walking around the race venue in my Donaubund uni with only a bit of water to drink. I watched Romana race her quad (third place) and then asked her where the keys were. Turns out they were on the exact place where I had looked, but I hadn’t looked well enough.
I ate half of the bar and changed to my Brno uni, and then I launched with only 10 minutes to the official start time. I was lucky that the racing was a bit behind schedule. When I pushed off the dock, I realized that I didn’t have my SpeedCoach with me. This would be an unplugged row.
Six boats had registered for the MM1x C event, but only 5 were at the start. By now I did know the competitors a bit. I was up against Jiri Rysavy from Bohemians Prague (who had beat me in the double and made my life miserable in the quad), Michael Helbig from Graz (beat me in the double on Saturday, DNF because of his partner in the Mix 2x), and two guys from two Vienna based rowing clubs.
Because of the short time after two exhausting races and because of the excitement and less than ideal recovery between the double and the single race (entirely my own fault) I didn’t feel super strong for the singles race. I was actually expecting to finish last, probably with some distance between me and the other competitors. I decided to make the best of it and take this as a training row, focusing on boat run.
It took ages for us to line up at the start in the headwind. The first attempt was good enough for me, but then the guy next to me started to realign his single because he had been blown into the buoys. The second attempt was successful and my race start wasn’t bad.
After less than 10 strokes, I settled down at a stroke rate that felt right. I don’t know the exact stroke rate, but I think I was just below 30spm, perhaps even dropping to 28. I certainly wasn’t pushing it hard.
So, I was rowing in last place, but the surprise was that the others weren’t pulling away from me like crazy. There were two guys in front, about a boat length and a half ahead of me, then there were two boats that were about a length ahead of me, and then me, pushing along at a leisurely 28spm.
The nice thing about rowing in such a tired state is that the dreaded lactate shock after 500m doesn’t happen. You just keep pushing along. By this time I was about a length and a half behind the others and I was focusing on boat run and trying to keep the Distance per Stroke (as estimated) as high as possible.
Passing the 500m mark, I think I was rowing technically pretty well, because I was slowly pulling back into the field. Now, I was only half a length behind Jiri and Michael. I just kept going until I saw the pub in my peripheral vision to my left, which gives you about 150m to row, and then I thought, why not try and pass these two fellows. I rated up and we created a fierce fight for third place.
Beep – beep – beep.
We were all within one second, but unfortunately that last beep was mine. After a long 4 minutes and 15 seconds.
You know what? Even though I came last, this race in the single really made me happy. I think I showed some solid rowing there, and I found out that at 80% I am able to stay with the field. Now I will start with more training sessions dedicated to 1000m sprint racing, and I should be able to work up my base speed by end of July (Euromasters).
Romana got to row in place of Mrs Helbig (from the DNF mixed 2x with Michael Helbig) and won a medal in the eight:
Then we had a hamburger and watched some racing, put our boats on the trailer, and waited for our Slovak friends from Piestany to race their Mixed 4x (which they won).
The drive home was fast and without incidents (luckily) and after parking the trailer at the club we were home by 7pm.
Our first attempt to infiltrate the Austrian Masters scene has been really successful and I should thank the race organizers and volunteers for a perfect regatta. The only thing that should be improved is the wind direction. Also, big thanks for Natascha Kral (Andreas’ wife) for shooting the great pictures that I used in this blog. You may have noticed that half the pictures in this post (and in the previous one) look professional and the other half look slightly amateurish. The professional looking ones were done by Natascha. Click here to see more great pictures by her from this weekend.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: 1x, 2x, 4x, double, OTW, quad, race, racing, rowing, single, Vienna, WIRR