After lunch, Romana and I took off to Třeboň. The weather forecast was 15-20 degrees with wind and rainshowers, so we had all the rowing/racing gear in our bags: Long sleeves, long legs uni, short sleeves, regular uni. Sweaters. Caps. Suncream as well as umbrellas. Two bikes on the back of the car, and wing riggers in the back. We arrived in Třeboň after a 2.5 hour drive which passed without major incidents. Checked in to the hotel and drove to the rowing club/lake/regatta venue to claim rack space for our club’s boats.
We arrived there about 10 minutes after our trailer. We just saw the trailer driver speeding off in his car. He is not a Masters rower, so I just drove the trailer, parked it, and left. So it was up to Romana and myself to claim rack space and a space for our event shelter tent. We had a choice between selfishly just taking care of my single and our double, or try to unload the fours and eights, pairs and doubles, as well as set up the tent. We took a middle road, first claiming our own rack space, then trying to claim a few places with piles of oars and sculls. Then we towed our very heavy tent to the last suitable sport for event tents, and tried to set it up. By then we were helped by Petr “Bulda” Novotny and Romana’s doubles partner Slavka.
It was about 13 degrees and windy and the lake didn’t really look inviting. Also, it was getting late, and we had to drive to the local camping to make arrangements for our club’s training camp in August. So in the end we decided to skip the training and just head back to the hotel after all the chores were done.
Saturday
At 8, we were present at the club representatives meeting. No big changes, except that my doubles race on Sunday was moved to an hour earlier, because some rowers competed both in the Masters C Double and in the Masters D 8+. I noted the change, and that was that.
Before, during and after the meeting there was a lot of hand shaking, nodding, and small talk. For Masters rowers in the Czech Republic, this is the annual event, and it is as much a social event as a championship event. And this year was even better, with a big participation from Austria, Poland, Slovenia, and a few rowers from Germany. The Czech Masters scene, completed with 60 crews from abroad may make this the biggest Masters event in Europe after Euromasters and Masters Worlds. So there was a lot of catching up to do, especially with rowers from Prague and Bohemia, who row their regional races and I don’t meet them very often.
The races are run like most Masters races, i.e. if there are more than 6 rowers in one category, several “finals” are rowed, and medals are handed out for each “final”. Gold medals for a first place, and silver and bronze only if there are 4 or more competitors in the same age category in the same race. Sometimes races are combined for different age categories because of a lack of competitors, so the race can have several “winners” (one for each age category). That is nice, because you have a higher chance of racing in a full field, but can be slightly confusing because you have to remember which lane numbers you are competing with.
After that, it was time to retreat to the tent and concentrate on my first race of the day. The Masters C single. In the mean time, Romana rowed her first race, coming second in the mixed eight, D category, finishing second out of three D boats.
Then it was time for me to do my warming up and row to the start in the single. I was quite nervous for this race. There was a nasty side wind and I rowed in a heavy field, with Mr Mitas who beat me by 9 seconds (probably easily) a year ago, and Mr Nedoba (“Kazi”) who is back after a year of absence and has always beaten me on the Nationals (but I have beaten him twice this year, once in his home regatta and once on the Slovak Nationals).
The alignment at the start was a tricky thing as there are no stake boats and there was a strong side wind. You have to start lining up in the buoys to your right, and hope that the lining up goes fast enough that you only drift to the middle of your lane. I used my tactics of being slightly behind all the others. When you succeed in that, you are the guy who is moving in the right direction and when they start fast (because of the wind), you have a slight advantage of a slightly lighter first stroke and achieving a slightly higher end speed. The tactics succeeded very well this time.
I started off well and was leading the pack, with Kazi less than half a boat length behind me, and Petr Mitas, who was caught by surprise by the fast starting commands, half a boat behind.
The leading position didn’t last long. Petr rowed right through me in the first 150m and took over the lead. Kazi was still half a length behind. During the first 500m I managed to make that a full length. There were a few very strong wind gusts around the water slide (see map above) and some nasty chop from an umpire launch right at the 500m point. I rowed through them slightly better than Kazi and he started to fall behind.
There was no point in trying to catch Petr Mitas. I will show you why. Here’s a snapshot I took from the grandstand during one of the other races (Masters D 8+). Mitas is the smiling giant body builder who is waving at me. The grey haired guy next to him is Mr Polasek, another fast rower from my region,who beat me in Hodonin. The bald guy with the blue uni is Kazi.
So with 400m to go I was in second position. I was rowing away from Kazi but sprinting to catch up with Petr Mitas was pointless. He would just accelerate slightly. I also had to row another race that day (the quad), so I just rowed to defend my position. That still required rowing pretty fast, because I didn’t want Kazi to come any closer, in case I would catch a crab or hit a buoy.
So I got silver. Overall I am not so happy with the rowing. It was erratic in places, but I guess the side wind is the reason. It was a gusty wind, which catches you by surprise, and I had to work hard to not be blown into the buoys.
I wore a HR belt during this race and exported the data directly to TrainingPeaks from CrewNerd, after which Tapiriik.com took care of syncing with Strava and SportTracks.
The two plots are made from the same data set, but one was imported from Strava while the other was imported from SportTracks. I will stick to importing the data from SportTracks. It seems that Strava is doing something “smart” which leads to the funny pace peak directly after the start. Here are the full results for the two “C” races.
Two races after my singles race, Romana rowed a combined B/C/E/D race in the four (4-). She won a gold medal for showing up at the start in this race with one boat from each age category. 🙂
Just before my quad race, a few hours later, Romana came second in the Women’s D 8+. No medal for her, because there were only two D boats in a combined D/F race. I stroked our quad. This one was even more difficult to align at the start and we only succeeded with the second attempt. I wasn’t sure at all what to expect here. I have proclaimed before that we have a slow quad this year. The race was very hard work. The guys behind me were not completely in sync, which drives a stroke to row a too high SPM with a wrong rhythm. Exactly that happened, which means that you cannot take that fraction of a second rest during the recovery and the whole 1k becomes a cramped affair. I didn’t wear the HR belt during this row, but I am sure my heart rate was very high. We did a successful 10 stroke push to defend against Blesk who were closing in on us. Then our bowman called for our “legendary strong last minute”, but I didn’t have the energy to raise the stroke rate. By that time I was so exhausted that I had difficulty with steering. I managed to stay away of the buoys, but there were a few zig zags around the center line of the lane.
We started at >40spm, rowed 38spm for 200m, then dropped to 35-36spm at cruising speed. We were beaten by an “A” crew in lane one and by Neratovice, who also beat us a year ago:
That was the Saturday for me, but Romana wasn’t done yet. She was doing a 4 race Saturday. I moved to the grandstand and arrived in time for her race in the double. Together with her bow girl Slavka from Breclav, they won a race with four C doubles, beating the silver crew by 10 seconds. Lucky number 13.
And here are some pictures from our club’s team competing in the “giga eight” category. Not sure what the English word is for this historical boat type. Clinker eight? You may wonder what the kid is doing in this crew. For this category, the minimum age of 27 years was dropped. Only the average age of the crew decides the category:
After the races ended, Kazi and I took my double for a quick 4km of testing. In Hodonin, we had been rowing a Hodonin club boat. My double is newer (that’s unimportant) and better rigged (that is important). So we had to do a few km to make sure we had Kazi’s footstretcher in the right position. We did a few race starts and a few race pace pieces. Just a few strokes, but we were flying!
We ended the day with a restaurant dinner and a brief visit to the local brewery where we met many of the other competitors.
This was a very nice outing, during the day between meetings. Overcast, 24 degrees. I took out the single and did a very short row, mainly steady state but also a few practice starts and race pace pieces (10-20 strokes max). Nice to see 1:45 and faster paces.
The water was mirror flat. The rowing felt good. Three days to go to the Masters (Open) Nationals … Here is the line-up:
So … Kazi is the guy who is training to beat me (I beat him twice this year). I have never beaten Petr Mitas (he came first last year, beating me by 9 seconds). If one of the two others beat me, I will eat my hat.
The other race with C guys has one Czech boat, two Polish boats, an Austrian boat and a Slovenian boat. Don’t know how I would fare there. Will be interesting to compare times.
The 4x- race will be interesting as well, but I am afraid we will not have the quality this year. Let’s see. Neratovice beat us last year (we caught a crab).
The 2x mM field is also divided in two fields. Polasek beats me in the single but I beat Brazda on any day. Don’t know about the Smichov (VKSM) guys from Prague and the guys from Poznan, Poland. The other race is a clear win for Mitas+Cernak. A pity we don’t row against them. Perhaps one boat withdraws and they merge the races …
Two very strong races in the mix 2x. Romana and I are defending champions. Again, Mitas has found a strong partner, so that boat will be hard to beat. Masatova is a fitness trainer. Let’s hope she has a lot of work this week and arrives tired.
And finally, the eights. Two races:
Here, Blesk are the guys who beat us in that terrible race in Prague. The International crew will be hard to beat. We haven’t trained much in the eight (zero trainings since the Prague race).
Back to today’s training. Here are the plots:
The training was interrupted by an important work-related phone call. So important that I stopped rowing, took the phone from the watertight bag and answered the call. That is the 7 minute interruption in the middle.
After the training, I prepared the single for transport. Then I drove back to work.
Finally, a few more pictures from the Youth Nationals:
We rowed it in hard summer rain and almost now wind. I was glad it rained so hard. Temperatures have dropped from >30C to 19C, and all the swimmers and recreational boats have disappeared. We had the lake for ourselves.
This wasn’t an easy workout. Martin hasn’t sculled since the race in Piestany. He has trained, but only on the erg and in the pair. The high rates were a bit of a shock to his system. Also, I had the feeling the boat was lying to the port side and there wasn’t the lightness that is required for a fast quad.
I think our paces are slow compared to the competition. Well, we’ll see on Saturday.
Romana and I drove down to Hodonín today for a day of rowing. Romana met with the eight (and the quad) she will stroke in Munich, and I met my double partner Kazimír. A kind of a Masters training camp. On the Morava river, the border between Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Masters on the river.
We arrived just before ten. The ladies of the eight arrived a few minutes after us. I had to wait for Kazi, as usual. No problem. I asked one of the Hodonín ladies if Kazi is training hard, and she answered that he is. Apparently his single goal for next weekend’s Masters Nationals is “to beat Roosendaal”. I smiled and said we could do that race this afternoon on the river. I am not sure if she knew that “Roosendaal” is me. 🙂
I beat him twice this year. He used to beat me two years ago and was out of the running last season because of hip surgery. Most probably, coming weekend we’ll be racing each other in the single at the Masters Nationals.
Anyway, Kazi turned up and we took a double for a steady state row with technique exercises.
When I asked him about his training regime, he commented that he “was just fooling around and will start serious training next year”. 🙂
Hodonín is on a river, so I was looking forward to try out my wind and stream correction algorithms on rowsandall.com with river data. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing in the opposite direction of the stream and the stream was a very lazy summer stream, so there wasn’t much pace corrections going on.
Before lunch, Kazi and I rowed a bit more than 13km, mainly steady state and technique exercises. After lunch we spent an hour adjusting the boat. There was a lot wrong with this double. The height differences were different for stroke and bow seat. The bow starboard scull was set at a very high oar angle so Kazi had difficulties keeping his blade in the water.
After lunch we did speed work, the main part being three times 250m from a standing start:
Workout Summary - media/20160710-203236-2016-07-10-1458.CSV
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07874|47:36.0|02:04.6|26.8|152.8|175.6|10.3
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|02803| 18:50 |03:19.1|13.3|141.0|172.0|11.3
02|00250| 00:49 |01:39.8|36.0|156.0|178.0|08.3
03|00250| 00:50 |01:40.7|34.5|158.0|175.0|08.6
04|00250| 00:51 |01:43.3|33.6|158.0|177.0|08.6
05|04321| 26:16 |03:02.0|16.4|151.0|176.0|10.0
As you can see from the summary, we did those 250m from standing starts around 1:40 pace. I am quite happy with that. Kazi and I managed a 1000m in 3:17 at the Masters Worlds in Varese, which to date is my fastest 1k (in the double) as a Masters rower. I think we could be close to that in good weather. So nothing wrong with Kazi’s training regime.
We did the first 250m full out and at high rate. For the subsequent two 250m intervals we lowered the rate, trying to find that “fast yet light” stroke.
For the 250s, I set CrewNerd to row a single distance of 250m. After the finish, we just continued rowing for a km or more, and I didn’t reset CrewNerd, so the data were not captured.
After the rows we jumped into the river for a swim. It was 35C today. The river water was nice. We swam to the Slovak side and back. First time I crossed a border swimming.
Too windy to row, so 45 minutes on the erg. Steady State.
Thursday
Rest day.
Friday
Had to row in the afternoon, because I didn’t have the car in the morning. It was a warm day, and a Friday afternoon, and it is school vacation, so the lake had turned into a giant swimming pool again. I did steady state in the single, with start practices. I set CrewNerd to 250m with 2:30 rest, and started each 250m with a start plus a few strokes, then paddled.
I caught a crab in one of the starts, right in front of a little beach with a few young ladies in bikinis watching me.
Saturday
No rowing. Romana and I took the train from Brno to Vlkov, a small village about 30km into the highlands. From there it is a very pleasant ride on mountain bikes, along a small stream called Bílý Potok. What makes it special is the abundance of old watermills, that are now turned into weekend residences, most of them in a very tasteful way. Another fun aspect of this ride is that there are no less than 16 places where you have to ride through the stream with your bike.
A rest day. A strange day at work. The US had a holiday, and CZ has bank holidays on July 5th and 6th. So there were not so many people, but I really had to get in and get some stuff done.
Tuesday
A holiday, but I still had to get up early and get to the lake, because after that we would be driving to family in Pardubice to celebrate my brother-in-law’s 40th birthday.
The plan was to row a full out 1000m as a race simulation. To make it a more complete race simulation, I decided to do a longer, “Fletcher”-likewarming up. Then I paddled to the start of the 2k, noticing that the Albano buoys system has been removed because race season is over on this lake. I dialed up a 1k, pressed start and got ready for a race start while CrewNerd counted down 30 seconds. The plan was to row a 3:40, which I thought would be possible in the tailwind conditions.
Go. Race start. Then execute race plan. Ten strokes at high rate, then settle a bit.
Everything was going well. I was seeing 1:44 pace right after the start, then pace slowly crept up to 1:50.
Then, 350m into the race, when things started to hurt a bit, a pair crossed right behind me. Tomas and Jakub doing their warming up.
I knew that that meant that a single was following closely behind them, and as the traffic patterns on our lake are a little vague, I was afraid it might be on collision course. So I decided to look around (I was not wearing my mirrors). I noticed that the single was indeed on collision course and I also noticed that I had drifted from the straight 2k, and was about to collide with a big yellow buoy that is just outside the (now invisible) Albano system.
I had to stop for one stroke to avoid smashing my scull into it, then continued. All this made my rate and pace drop.
To make things worse, along the course the lake became choppier and that also made me slower and rowing at a lower rate. After 100m of struggling, I had an inner dialogue that went something along these lines:
“You’re not making your pace target. Give up and paddle.”
“Man up and finish the row” – I followed that advice.
In the end I didn’t meet my pace target, but I was glad I finished the row.
That is a new plot from rowsandall.com and I am quite proud of it. I am now offering my users wind corrections. So you can see that my 1:51 pace in the first half of the row was really a 1:53-1:54 in neutral conditions. You can also see the big drop in pace, and then I recovered.
To test the wind conditions, I decided to do a hard 250m (running start) in headwind, roughly at the same place where I had done the 1k. For the 1k I averaged 1:53 in tailwind. The headwind 250m were in 1:56. I think that is a fair comparison as I did try to row as hard as the 1k.
On traffic patterns
The confusion with the guys doing a warming up made me look at my traffic pattern ideas again. The traffic patterns on our lake were agreed long ago between the two rowing clubs. I think after a few decennia, some sloppiness has started to creep in, and the traffic pattern is not the safest any more, as there are many points where traffic crosses.
I drew an improved pattern, but nobody wants to change it. And I guess even if the clubs agree, it will be hard to change people’s habits.
Here is the current pattern:
From my club, we row warming up towards Rokle. The “official” traffic pattern is to cross the lake diagonally and merge into the traffic rowing towards Rokle from LS Brno, hugging the right bank (bottom bank in the picture). At Rokle you turn and row back “in the middle”. Some rowers are convinced that the traffic pattern is that rowers from both clubs hug their respective banks when rowing towards Rokle, and in the middle when rowing towards Sirka.
Rowing from Rokle to Sirka there are two options. Either you turn sharply after the nude beach, cross the warming up traffic and row to the start of the 2k. Alternatively, you just keep going straight until you merge into the 2k Albano roughly at the 500m point.
I think the whole area between the 500m point and Rokle is confusing and has a high risk of collisions. Here is my proposal:
The idea is that from our club we should do warming up towards Sirka instead of rowing directly towards Rokle. Then all traffic from Sirka to Rokle should hug the right (bottom) bank.
An interesting detail is that I have found old plans for the race course from the 1950s. Compared with the course that was finally built (after establishment of the LS Brno club) is was shifted more towards Rokle, and the finish was 300m past our club house, with a grandstand on the left (top) bank.
No, I didn’t participate in the National Youth championships, but I was there because two of my children participated, and also to help out the club trainers managing the entire championship.
Our club’s group was more than 30 people, kids, trainers, and me. We took our Salani 2x, “Orca”, both for the girls to race in and for Romana and myself for some early morning trainings. As I did more than 40km cycling up and down the race canal during the race days, the OTW trainings were short and sweet. On Friday we did a 1km time trial, which I already blogged about. On Saturday, we did a steady state row, and Sunday was 30″ intervals to try out various stroke rates and race paces. On all days, I forgot to charge the XGPS 160, so the CrewNerd data are noisy.
Here is the CrewNerd summary for Sunday’s sprintervals:
My son Dominik started in the boys 12yr single, racing over 500m. On Friday, he managed to beat one guy and thus proceeded to the semifinals. In the semifinal he finished last. In the double, they didn’t survive Friday’s heats.
My daughter Lenka competed in the double and the quad. In their age category, they compete over 1500m. In the double, they rowed a fantastic heat, finishing second and qualifying for the semifinals with a time of 5:58 (first time under six minutes for them). This row was brilliant. They started off quick, took a second place with a good lead over the rest of the field and defended that to the end. They rowed a quiet 30-31spm but the boat was moving very well.
On Saturday, they rowed in the Semifinals. Six boats per semi. First two would go to final A, third and fourth to final B, and the two last would be out. The girls fought hard for a place in final B but unfortunately, they didn’t make it. Again they rowed a controlled stroke rate of 30-31, but this time the boat was not moving as well. No free speed.
Less than two hours after that, they rowed their semifinal in the quad. With three girls of the four girls only 15, it would be hard to get into final A in this girls 15/16 field. Also, the girls had been competing in the double, our stroke even in the single, and they were rowing against a few quads who only focused on this discipline. And although the rowing looked tired, they managed to keep Hodonin at a length behind and made it to the A final.
A final. Yay! Mission accomplished.
Sunday. A final day. We tried to set the expectations. And even though we told them that they would probably be fighting for fifth place, being the outsiders in a very fast field, some of the girls seriously thought they had a chance for bronze. It is funny talking to children. You can tell them some things many times, but they don’t hear. I guess this applies to adults too …
Anyway, we tried to fire them up for a quick start, and try to stay with the field as long as possible, then row for a good time if they lost contact with the rest of the field. It was hard for us to coach them. For the first time, there was a big screen next to the grandstand and a camera crew filming each race. For that, they had closed the bike path next to lane 1 for all traffic, causing a huge disadvantage for boats in lane 1 and 2, because you cannot reach them by voice when you cycle next to lane 7 and try to shout across 6 lanes into a crosswind. Fifteen minutes before the start of the girls’ final, I tried cycling all around the canal to sneak behind the camera car, but I was stopped by an official. I contemplated hanging around until the start, then quickly escaping him and cycle behind the TV crew, but the official knew which club I belonged to, so I didn’t want to risk a disqualification of our girls. Because of this “incident”, I had to cycle all around the canal again, from 500m back to 0m, then to 2000m, across the bridge over the return channel, and back up to 500m. It’s a good thing I am trained. I managed it just in time.
The race went as expected. They started slow, then fought their way back to half a length behind the Pardubice boat in sixth place, but then gradually lost ground. In the final 100m, the boat rowing in third position caught a huge crab, which cost them bronze, and our girls almost passed them on the finish line.
You can see for yourself in the Youtube replay of the live stream. Forward the video to 6:36:21 and then watch. The next race is the Girls 4x- A final.
And some pictures:
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Our recent race in Prague, where we filed a protest, unfortunately boomeranged back to our kids. The cox of the boys 15/16 eight forgot to go to the weigh-in. He arrived 12 minutes late. The officials refused to weigh him and canceled the eights semifinals immediately (there were only 7 boats registered). Normally, if somebody forgets to weigh in in time, they get a yellow card before the start, and the cox has to weigh immediately after the race. If he is under weight, the crew gets a red card. So we didn’t understand the decision to just give us a red card immediately and so our trainers went to the tower, acknowledged that it was our mistake, but reminded them of the usual practice in such cases. Two of the boys had come to Racice only for the eights.
One of the officials commented that it was very bold of us to ask them such a favor, given that we had called them “čuráci” in Prague. This is very probably true. One of our guys was so pissed off after that race and how the officials had spoilt it, that he used a few strong words. In the original blog, I described that as “Our boat needed another five minutes to calm down.”
This went through my head when I heard about it: “So a couple of really disappointed Masters rowers called you something in Prague and you were just waiting for your revenge, with our boys as the victims, who have nothing to do with the original incident?” Our trainers stayed calm and managed to negotiate that our boys could row, out of contest, in lane 7 with the final. The boys ended in fifth place (but you won’t find them in the official results).
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Jul 18 2016
Czech Open Masters Day 1
Friday
After lunch, Romana and I took off to Třeboň. The weather forecast was 15-20 degrees with wind and rainshowers, so we had all the rowing/racing gear in our bags: Long sleeves, long legs uni, short sleeves, regular uni. Sweaters. Caps. Suncream as well as umbrellas. Two bikes on the back of the car, and wing riggers in the back. We arrived in Třeboň after a 2.5 hour drive which passed without major incidents. Checked in to the hotel and drove to the rowing club/lake/regatta venue to claim rack space for our club’s boats.
We arrived there about 10 minutes after our trailer. We just saw the trailer driver speeding off in his car. He is not a Masters rower, so I just drove the trailer, parked it, and left. So it was up to Romana and myself to claim rack space and a space for our event shelter tent. We had a choice between selfishly just taking care of my single and our double, or try to unload the fours and eights, pairs and doubles, as well as set up the tent. We took a middle road, first claiming our own rack space, then trying to claim a few places with piles of oars and sculls. Then we towed our very heavy tent to the last suitable sport for event tents, and tried to set it up. By then we were helped by Petr “Bulda” Novotny and Romana’s doubles partner Slavka.
It was about 13 degrees and windy and the lake didn’t really look inviting. Also, it was getting late, and we had to drive to the local camping to make arrangements for our club’s training camp in August. So in the end we decided to skip the training and just head back to the hotel after all the chores were done.
Saturday
At 8, we were present at the club representatives meeting. No big changes, except that my doubles race on Sunday was moved to an hour earlier, because some rowers competed both in the Masters C Double and in the Masters D 8+. I noted the change, and that was that.
Before, during and after the meeting there was a lot of hand shaking, nodding, and small talk. For Masters rowers in the Czech Republic, this is the annual event, and it is as much a social event as a championship event. And this year was even better, with a big participation from Austria, Poland, Slovenia, and a few rowers from Germany. The Czech Masters scene, completed with 60 crews from abroad may make this the biggest Masters event in Europe after Euromasters and Masters Worlds. So there was a lot of catching up to do, especially with rowers from Prague and Bohemia, who row their regional races and I don’t meet them very often.
The races are run like most Masters races, i.e. if there are more than 6 rowers in one category, several “finals” are rowed, and medals are handed out for each “final”. Gold medals for a first place, and silver and bronze only if there are 4 or more competitors in the same age category in the same race. Sometimes races are combined for different age categories because of a lack of competitors, so the race can have several “winners” (one for each age category). That is nice, because you have a higher chance of racing in a full field, but can be slightly confusing because you have to remember which lane numbers you are competing with.
After that, it was time to retreat to the tent and concentrate on my first race of the day. The Masters C single. In the mean time, Romana rowed her first race, coming second in the mixed eight, D category, finishing second out of three D boats.
Then it was time for me to do my warming up and row to the start in the single. I was quite nervous for this race. There was a nasty side wind and I rowed in a heavy field, with Mr Mitas who beat me by 9 seconds (probably easily) a year ago, and Mr Nedoba (“Kazi”) who is back after a year of absence and has always beaten me on the Nationals (but I have beaten him twice this year, once in his home regatta and once on the Slovak Nationals).
The alignment at the start was a tricky thing as there are no stake boats and there was a strong side wind. You have to start lining up in the buoys to your right, and hope that the lining up goes fast enough that you only drift to the middle of your lane. I used my tactics of being slightly behind all the others. When you succeed in that, you are the guy who is moving in the right direction and when they start fast (because of the wind), you have a slight advantage of a slightly lighter first stroke and achieving a slightly higher end speed. The tactics succeeded very well this time.
I started off well and was leading the pack, with Kazi less than half a boat length behind me, and Petr Mitas, who was caught by surprise by the fast starting commands, half a boat behind.
The leading position didn’t last long. Petr rowed right through me in the first 150m and took over the lead. Kazi was still half a length behind. During the first 500m I managed to make that a full length. There were a few very strong wind gusts around the water slide (see map above) and some nasty chop from an umpire launch right at the 500m point. I rowed through them slightly better than Kazi and he started to fall behind.
There was no point in trying to catch Petr Mitas. I will show you why. Here’s a snapshot I took from the grandstand during one of the other races (Masters D 8+). Mitas is the smiling giant body builder who is waving at me. The grey haired guy next to him is Mr Polasek, another fast rower from my region,who beat me in Hodonin. The bald guy with the blue uni is Kazi.
So with 400m to go I was in second position. I was rowing away from Kazi but sprinting to catch up with Petr Mitas was pointless. He would just accelerate slightly. I also had to row another race that day (the quad), so I just rowed to defend my position. That still required rowing pretty fast, because I didn’t want Kazi to come any closer, in case I would catch a crab or hit a buoy.
So I got silver. Overall I am not so happy with the rowing. It was erratic in places, but I guess the side wind is the reason. It was a gusty wind, which catches you by surprise, and I had to work hard to not be blown into the buoys.
I wore a HR belt during this race and exported the data directly to TrainingPeaks from CrewNerd, after which Tapiriik.com took care of syncing with Strava and SportTracks.
The two plots are made from the same data set, but one was imported from Strava while the other was imported from SportTracks. I will stick to importing the data from SportTracks. It seems that Strava is doing something “smart” which leads to the funny pace peak directly after the start. Here are the full results for the two “C” races.
Two races after my singles race, Romana rowed a combined B/C/E/D race in the four (4-). She won a gold medal for showing up at the start in this race with one boat from each age category. 🙂
Just before my quad race, a few hours later, Romana came second in the Women’s D 8+. No medal for her, because there were only two D boats in a combined D/F race. I stroked our quad. This one was even more difficult to align at the start and we only succeeded with the second attempt. I wasn’t sure at all what to expect here. I have proclaimed before that we have a slow quad this year. The race was very hard work. The guys behind me were not completely in sync, which drives a stroke to row a too high SPM with a wrong rhythm. Exactly that happened, which means that you cannot take that fraction of a second rest during the recovery and the whole 1k becomes a cramped affair. I didn’t wear the HR belt during this row, but I am sure my heart rate was very high. We did a successful 10 stroke push to defend against Blesk who were closing in on us. Then our bowman called for our “legendary strong last minute”, but I didn’t have the energy to raise the stroke rate. By that time I was so exhausted that I had difficulty with steering. I managed to stay away of the buoys, but there were a few zig zags around the center line of the lane.
We started at >40spm, rowed 38spm for 200m, then dropped to 35-36spm at cruising speed. We were beaten by an “A” crew in lane one and by Neratovice, who also beat us a year ago:
That was the Saturday for me, but Romana wasn’t done yet. She was doing a 4 race Saturday. I moved to the grandstand and arrived in time for her race in the double. Together with her bow girl Slavka from Breclav, they won a race with four C doubles, beating the silver crew by 10 seconds. Lucky number 13.
And here are some pictures from our club’s team competing in the “giga eight” category. Not sure what the English word is for this historical boat type. Clinker eight? You may wonder what the kid is doing in this crew. For this category, the minimum age of 27 years was dropped. Only the average age of the crew decides the category:
After the races ended, Kazi and I took my double for a quick 4km of testing. In Hodonin, we had been rowing a Hodonin club boat. My double is newer (that’s unimportant) and better rigged (that is important). So we had to do a few km to make sure we had Kazi’s footstretcher in the right position. We did a few race starts and a few race pace pieces. Just a few strokes, but we were flying!
We ended the day with a restaurant dinner and a brief visit to the local brewery where we met many of the other competitors.
By sanderroosendaal • Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: Czech National Championships, double, OTW, quad, race, rowing, single