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Sep 3 2018

Riding the bus in a rowing uni and flip flops

You will have to read until the bottom of this post to understand the weird title.

It’s been a while since my last blog post. In the beginning of August, we went on a vacation to Italy and had a great time. I purposely did not do any planned exercise, but there was plenty of (sea) swimming, hiking, and bike riding. Nothing very intensive.

After my vacation I was back in the office for four long days. I did manage to get two rows in, one in the single and one in the double with Romana.

Then, I hopped on a plane to India and spent a week in Bangalore. Working days were long and I prioritized socializing with my Indian colleagues over any structured working out. It’s the off season.

Now I am back and it’s time to prepare for the head race season. I am looking forward to it. This year, I am doing three races over three weekends. I start early October with a 6k head race in the single, then, two weeks later, the Prague Head (mixed 8+), and finally the Novembervieren in Amsterdam, rowing a 4x with my old rowing mate and two other guys.

I did my planning for the 2018/19 season and the main events in the run-up to the first head race are long, hard distance pieces in the single. Using the power values given by the Empower Oarlock, these pieces give me good info on where I stand, helping me to select a sustainable power for the 6k head race. I started last Thursday with a 10k piece. I targeted 200W.

It was pretty winy and choppy, and it was hard. I had to row this in the gorge, but because the lake water level is low because of the the draught, we cannot row all the way up to Bityska, have to turn at the castle and thus I had to start and finish on a very choppy lake. You can see the power and pace starting to drop aroun 7500m when I returned to the lake. With 1000m to go, I decided to turn again and stay on the north end of the lake to avoid the worst chop (white caps).

I was slightly disappointed by the power levels, but I did hold a 198W average power, and that is including two 180 degree turns and rowing in the chop.

I spent the weekend cycling through the South Moravian vineyards with Romana (and getting very wet on Saturday, when we were riding in heavy rain).

Today, I arrived at the club around 6pm, and got ready for another hard distance piece. First I had to chat with our medal winners from the U23 European Championships (silver in the LW 4x-). There was a frenzy of activity on the club. The kids had raced in Litomerice and there was a trailer to unload and boats to wash.

I told everybody I was going to go out on the single and set off for the workout.

Pretty calm weather today. Just a slightly nasty crosswind making the 1k part on the south end of the lake a little slower. You can see that in the chart between 0 and 1000m and between 6200m and 7800m. The heart rate sensor had some difficulties in the first 1000m.

The average power was 211W (224W rPower, higher because the turns are lowering the average) and I liked how I rowed, especially the part between 4000m and 6000m where I think I hit a pretty efficient stroke, not too hard on the catch and with a clean tap down. The final 2000m were a struggle, and especially the final 500m required a bit of toughness to keep going.

That was a good 41 minutes of rowing.

I did a very slow cooling down. And that was the moment where I will explain the title of this blog post.

I arrived at an abandoned rowing club. The boat house was closed and locked. The club house closed and locked. The problem was that I had been so lazy as to leave the club house keys in my pocket, relying on the usual Monday evening rowers. Apparently the last one to leave hadn’t checked the dock or the rowing log book to see if there were any boats out there.

They did forget to clean up two pairs of slings, so at least I could get my boat out on dry land. Then I had to think. My car was on the parking, locked. All my other stuff was in the dressing room and I literally had what I was wearing, plus a seat pad, a half empty bottle of water and a NK SpeedCoach. Plus an empty battery that I had replaced in the Empower oarlock.

There was only one option. I climbed over the rowing club fence, hiked 15 minutes to the nearest tram stop, took tram 1 for a few stops, changed to trolley bus 30, then took bus 70 to the bus stop nearest to my house. I was wearing my sweaty rowing uni and flip flops. I didn’t have my bus card with me, nor did I have any ID. If I had been checked by a ticket control, I would have to explain and if they wouldn’t believe me they would probably take me to a police station. Luckily that didn’t happen. It was a bit unpleasant how people were looking at me, but I could deal with that. At home, I rang the door bell, and then explained the situation to my beloved wife. We got in her car and she dropped me off at the rowing club. Using her keys, I was able to get in, get a shower, clean up the boat, get into my car and drive home.

I guess I have learned a lesson and will not rely on ‘the usual training times’ any more, and take the keys with me in the boat as I do on my morning outings.

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Adding Empower Oarlock metrics for later analysis. I have lost an hour riding the bus in a rowing uni, so I have no time to do a deeper analysis. I think the values are reasonable.

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Aug 17 2018

Back OTW – short and intensive

After two weeks of vacation, spent doing nothing apart from walking around in nice Italian cities, and swimming, I was back on the water this morning.

I had told myself that actually swimming in the Mediterranean had kept my fitness sort of OK, but when I paddled away from the dock in my single, I had to check if I hadn’t caught some weeds around the fin. It felt … hard.

Apart from that everything was fine. I was geared up fully. My usual basic electronics set was expanded by a Scosche Rhythm 24 on my right upper arm (with the Polar OH1 on my left arm). The Scosche was connected to my iPhone in a waterproof bag and logging HRV. I am doing a little mini project trying to figure out the good, bad and ugly of HRV measurements for myself, so I needed to log the basic HRV measurements. More about this project later.

This would also be one of my few opportunities to do a full, semi-hard 2k on the Brno 2k course, for a virtual regatta that we have set up. So the outing was simple. A 3k warming up. A 2k “full out”. And then a 3k cooling down. Full out, after the vacation, meant stroking around head race pace to get to a semi decent time. There was no way I was going to be able to hold my usual numbers right now.

It got quite hard in the second 1000m of the 2k, when my heart rate entered the red zone and the lake became a little choppier. Here are the stats for the interesting bits of this workout.


Workout Summary - media/20180817-0630250o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|08309|45:11.0|02:43.1|138.7|21.3|145.1|182.0|08.6
W-|02404|10:10.0|02:06.9|224.9|26.7|165.8|182.0|08.8
R-|05912|35:01.0|02:57.7|113.7|19.8|139.1|182.0|09.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00110|00:31.0|02:21.3|205.3|23.2|114.5|118.0|09.1
02|00096|00:25.0|02:10.1|257.5|27.9|118.2|124.0|08.3
03|00111|00:28.6|02:09.1|249.1|27.4|147.0|164.0|08.5
04|00108|00:27.2|02:05.3|219.7|24.5|141.0|148.0|09.8
05|01979|08:18.6|02:06.0|223.4|27.0|173.8|182.0|08.8

The empower metrics were in the usual ranges, so that may mean that I haven’t unlearned rowing entirely.

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9BA6ADF8-B0B5-46C1-A0D8-7094FC937E0B

Jul 17 2018

Czech Open Masters National Championships – Saturday Race Report

This is it. The end of the sprint season is slowly arriving. This is my #2 race of this season, the Czech Open National Championships for Masters. My #1 race is the Euromasters in Munich, in the last weekend of July.

It’s actually hard to tell which race is tougher. The Euromasters regatta attracts more rowers, but that also means that races are divided in multiple heats, and that means you are not always up against the fastest rowers. The Czech Open attracts rowers from Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria and Germany, but especially from the Czech Republic there are a few Masters rowers who only compete in the Czech Republic, and they are pretty hard to beat.

I had three races scheduled for Saturday, the single at 11:40, the quad at 15:00, and the Mix 2x at 17:40. The weather was gorgeous. This is how the lake looked before the start of the racing, and when I raced my single, it was pretty much the same:

Race 1 – MM 1x C

Starting with a race in the single is always hard. It’s the boat type I train in most often, it is closely watched by everyone, and it’s the first race of the regatta. This one requires a very thorough warming up and strong nerves. By the time it is time to boat you see a lot of very serious looking masters rowers walking around the venue. “You look like you are about to go in front of the firing squad,” I heard one of the single scullers being told. The guy answered that he might prefer the firing squad.

I considered myself an outsider. My training has been less consistent that I planned, mainly because my work and travel has become busier than anticipated, which is a good thing for me but it conflicts with training consistency. Also, I have done fewer “practice” regattas this year, so missing some race sharpness.

After a long warming up, we lined up at the start. I had a nice lane 4, with the two strongest competitors Petr Mitas on lane 6 and Kazimir Nedoba on lane 3. A strong rower also was Alexander Farkas from Piraten Wien, who had beat me by 8 seconds at the regatta in Vienna.

After a strong start I found myself leading for the first 250m, but Petr and Kazi were just a few meters behind me. In the second 250m, as I was slowing down a bit to find my sustainable pace, they rowed through me. With 600m to go, I rated up a bit, but Kazi was fending off pretty well. Then, with 300m to go, Alexander started to push pretty hard. I guess he wanted a bronze medal. And I didn’t want him to take it, so I rated up again. That brought both of us a bit closer to Kazi, but he managed to fight both of us pretty well. It also seemed that Alexander was not pushing any more, so with 150m to go pretty much nothing was happening any more in this race.

So here is the end result. A bronze for me. I think it was the maximum achievable in the circumstances, and looking at the time, I am pretty happy with the result. The 3:42 would have been competitive in the Masters A and B categories as well, although the fastest time of the day was an amazing 3:30 by Marko Milodanovic from Donaubund Vienna.

Here are the power, pace and stroke rate charts.

You can clearly see the points where I upped the stroke rate. The 310W is 10W above my target, and looking at the data I am wondering whether I can gain a bit by not dropping the power and stroke rate as much after the initial 150m as I did in this race. Good preparation for Munich. In one of the races there, I will be up against Kazi again.

Race 2 – MM 4x B

My second race of the day was postponed by one hour because of a thunderstorm approaching the lake. For about 30 minutes, the lake changed from mirror flat to heavy wind and waves with white caps. Racing was suspended for one hour , postponing everything.

The lake didn’t return to its magical mirror flat quality after the thunderstorm, but when we were lining up for the quads, it was pretty rowable.

Five boats at the start and on paper no one was a clear winner. I was sitting on stroke seat. I have raced one quad earlier this year, as had Tomas and Eduard, but Ondrej was new to this crew. And because of my business travel, the only training we had together was the row to the start. In other words, our training attendance was 100%.

On our practice start, we lost one of the red C rings above the oarlock, so Eda on 3 was rowing with a slightly misaligned oarlock on his left hand scull.

Our first race start was called back for a false start by Blesk on lane 1, next to us. The second start was okay from the false start perspective, but in the fourth stroke of our start sequency, there was a big vibration going through the boat. Then I heard Ondrej shout “OK I have it” and we continued. After the race, I learned that he had lost his right scull but managed to grab it in the air.

With 500m to go we were five boats in one line. We may have been leading by a bit, but it was hard to see from the stroke position.

Then Blesk II (lane 5) and Hodonin (stroked by my friend Kazimir Nedoba) overtook us.

With one minute to go we upped the stroke rate, and we kept increasing it. With 100m to go we had passed Hodonin and were closing the gap on Blesk.

We kept increasing the stroke rate. In the final 10 strokes I was doing 38 or 39 spm and we just kept going like crazy.

Beep. We crossed the line.

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The speaker announced Blesk as the winner, we shouted our three hurrays for the winner and turned the boat, waiting for our turn to receive the silver medal. The commentator was going on about Tomas Karas (Olympic silver medal in Athens in the M4x) who was part of the Blesk crew. Blesk were getting their gold medals and hand shakes. Then, the speaker announced that the jury had come down from the tower to tell him that they were still studying the finish video.

Then, he announced us as the winner. Blesk didn’t believe it and demanded to see the video still. The Blesk stroke disappeared into the finish tower, only to turn up a few moments later admitting that they hadn’t won.

Their gold medals were taken back and they received the silver. And then it was our turn to receive the gold. We had won by a margin of 0.09 seconds! With our boat speeds, that is about 40cm.

The chart tells the story of the stroke rate. Average spm over the race almost 38spm. This was a great race. Exhausting also.

Winning Quad

Race 3 – MMix 2x C

Another strong field of C rowers. The Dekanovsky’s, the Prihoda’s, the Cernaks and us all being married couples (imagine the pressure). The Cernak’s were feeling strong after a recent international win at Trakai Sprints. The Dekanovsky’s had upgraded their boat, and the Prihoda’s were considered strong outsiders.

Initially, the race looked quite different. We started pretty strong, but Pardubice (the Prihoda couple) just jumped away from all the other boats. Over on lane five, they just disappeared from my vision. I was aware they were in front, but they seemed very far away. We were rowing hard to fence of the Dekanovsky couple, and over on lane six the Cernak couple was about level with us.

With 500m to go, Jan Dekanovsky started a push and they just rowed through us. We seemed to have no answer. I was already rowing 35spm and we seemed to have a good rhythm.

Then I started to push a little and we got back a little. Still, it looked like we were going to end in fourth place.

I was counting strokes, and every five strokes I increased the stroke rate by a small bit.

This killed the Cernaks who were now falling behind.

Three boats storming towards the finish line. I kept increasing the stroke rate. Romana on bow was following flawlessly and we kept pushing.

I didn’t look at the other boats any more and just kept pushing. I noticed how we managed to take back the Dekanovsky boat, but I was totally unaware that the Prihoda boat was now behind us. I had to listen to the speaker to hear the result. We won! By half a second.

I was still breathing hard while standing on the medal pontoon.

The stroke rate chart give you a good impression of how the race went. When we arrived back at the venue, we got cheers from our club mates. They had all cheered us from about the 500m mark, and one lady apparently had commented that “she wouldn’t want to sit on bow in my boat”. Yes, it was tough, but Romana was able to follow and we pushed through them. The Dekanovsky couple was happy as well. The Prihodas were not so happy and the Cernaks were silent.After this pretty heavy Saturday it was time to relax. We went to a nice fish restaurant with the entire CVK Brno representation, and after that we went to the beer brewery to meet the other rowers. We also met the Blesk quad there, and of course we had to buy them a few beers.

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Jul 17 2018

Taper?

Wow, it’s been a long time since my last post! The reason for the radio silence is that there was just a huge amount of things going on.

On Sunday, July 8th, I did a nice workout in the single, rowing alongside a mixed quad. The mixed quad is one of our irons in the fire for the Czech Masters. We did 15 strokes on / 15 off series.

Of course, they were a bit faster than I, so I had to catch up a bit during the 15 off. In the second series I took a bit of a head start and we finished nicely rowing next to each other. I think the workout helped both of us getting sharp for the racing. Here they are collecting their bronze medal from the Czech Masters Open:

You notice that they are not rowing in our club unis. This quad has been training regularly since winter, and they have their own pink unis, hand made by Darina (bow seat). (There is also a rumor that they call each other “girls” when on the water, but they are not confirming that.)

Here are my data for the workout:

And that, dear readers, was the last training before a long hiatus. On Monday morning, at 3am, I departed to the airport, flying to Brussels for meetings. On Monday evening, I flew from Brussels to Toulouse, arriving in my Toulouse hotel room at 20 past midnight.

I intended to do a workout on Tuesday morning, and selected a hotel with a C2 erg so I could do some (indoor) rowing, but I woke up with just enough time to have breakfast and go to the office. In the evening, I had a business dinner, combined with watching the Belgium – France football (soccer) game. I was rooting for Belgium, but surrounded by French fans.

On Wednesday morning, I headed to the airport at 5am, so again no time for training. Spent most of the day in meetings in Madrid, Spain. At the end of the day, I headed home. The exercise was a sprint from the last D gate to the last C gate to catch my connecting flight at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I was in bed in Brno at 1am, Thursday morning.

On Thursday, I had a full day of meetings.

On Friday, I worked from home in the morning, and then Romana and I drove to Trebon, the place where the Czech Open Masters Championships are held. I did a pre-race workout in the single. The core of the workout was a 4x250m/250m at race pace. I am aiming at 300W of power. The challenge is to not go too far above that in the beginning of the race, because I know it will hit me back in the second half. I didn’t wear a heart rate monitor.

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aanleggen

Jul 1 2018

Saturday – Fartlek in the single

On Tuesday, I did a weights workout.

On Wednesday morning, I got a couple of vaccinations for my August business trip to India. The vaccine came with the instruction to refrain from exercise and alcohol for three days.

I was planning to disobey and do a light workout on Friday, but got stuck at work.

On Saturday morning I headed to the rowing club to do a 4x2km workout, but I changed the plan. It was pretty windy, so I had to get to the gorge for some flat water. There it is pretty twisty. I decided to do fartlek.

In the low battery electronics section, my oarlock was fine this time, but my heart rate sensor was low.

For the fartlek pieces, I chose a power level and stroke rate that I wanted to hold and then rowed until I did three strokes in sequence under the target level. Three strikes and you’re out, basically.

I rowed with the GoPro camera this time. On the row out, I had the camera pointing sternwards. I wanted to show how beautiful the rowing is in Brno, without disturbing the scenery with my ugly face.

Half way, I found a little pontoon where I could land and turn around the GoPro:

My plan B was to find a shallow part of the river, hop out of the boat, and do a “wet” GoPro change. The dry version was better, although the pontoon was pretty gross (duck poo and other dirty stuff):

Here are some of the Fartlek pieces on the way back:

No romantic video soundtrack this time. I want my readers to hear the wind and my grunts. As you can see, I am still digging deep and that causes general slowness and exhaustion.

I have mixed feelings about this workout. I knew I was tired after a long week, the vaccinations, as well as a short night sleep from Friday to Saturday. I also know that I still have to get used to the new power values (after the Empower bug fix), but I am disappointed by how long I could hold certain power values.

In the afternoon, I took my youngest son Dominik to a couple of exhibitions on the Brno Exhibition Center. First, we visited an ensemble of historic trains used by Czechoslovak Presidents. The Czechoslovak republic was established in 1918, so there are many exhibitions celebrating 100 years of Czechoslovakia.

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Then we visited an exhibition on Space exploration, with nice exhibits from both NASA and Russian space missions. This was a very nice exhibit, starting at the missiles from WW II and before, and ending with the Mars Rover.

Finally, we went to the exhibit of Alfons Mucha’s ‘The Slav Epic‘. The paintings are big and impressive. But I somehow like Mucha’s posters for Nestle products or Sarah Bernhardt plays better

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mapka

Jun 24 2018

The rest of the week

After Tuesday’s 3x6min session I packed my travel bag and hopped on a train to Vienna. It was nice to watch the Neue Donau regatta course when crossing the railway bridge. A few days before, Romana and I had had a few great races there.

I took a plane to Brussels and arrived late, tired, and sweaty. I knew I was really exhausted after a long weekend of racing and not taking any rest after it.

I was supposed to do a weights session on Wednesday morning, but I just stayed longer in my hotel bed instead. Actually, I did get up and put on my workout clothes, but then I returned to bed. My body just didn’t feel like it.

A long day of meetings in Brussels, then a flight back to Vienna, where a driver picked me up for the final 2 hour stretch home. I wanted to sleep in the car, but the little chat with the driver turned into a 2 hour long conversation about football (soccer for my US readers), building permits and other important things in life. It was nice.

On Thursday, I had a meeting I was moderating, starting at 8am. That was hard. At the end of the day, I had time for my weights session. Sixty minutes of various weight lifting exercises. Boring, but useful.

Rowing outside, at the end of the day, would have been very hard anyway. It was 35 degrees C.

Friday

Overnight, the temperature dropped by 20 degrees, from 35 to a cold 15 C when I launched my single on Friday morning.

It was very choppy so I rowed up the gorge to the castle, and a little beyond.

All that green is forest. When I go rowing in the morning and go in the gorge, I always feel very lucky to be out enjoying the nature. In the NW most stretch, after I turn and start rowing south again, I see a few higher hills from the Czech Moravian Highlands in the distance, and otherwise I am just surrounded by forest. The city seems very far away.

My Empower oarlock disconnected and wouldn’t reconnect with 3km to go. Only switching off and on the SpeedCoach did the trick. Luckily, I have means to glue together the data from two “workout” files, like I did in the chart above.

I wanted to work on technique but got carried away by the views and it ended up as just rowing for pleasure. Not a bad thing, I guess.

Saturday

The wind had gotten even stronger overnight and we were looking at white caps. Not good weather to do the intensive session that we had planned. Eventually we decided to do it on ergs. We put three ergs on coupled sliders, so I was stroking a 3 person “boat”, with Radka and Romana behind me. The session was a 1km/1km + 500m/500m + 1km, but we changed it to a 4min/4min + 2min/2min + 4min erg session so we could all row in sync.

As this was an unexpected erg session, I didn’t have the connector cable with me. I did record heart rate and the data show that I have been up to 186bpm, which tells you how hard work this session was. 65 minutes of rowing in total, because we did long warming up and cooling down.

This session came from our club head coach and I like it. The final 4 minute was really tough, after only 2 minutes of rest after the 2 minute work interval. Pretty good race preparation.

Sunday

It seemed to be less windy this morning, so at breakfast Romana and I said to each other that we should go rowing, in case Monday turns out to be windy again. Arriving at the lake, it was actually much choppier than we had estimated at home. We really do need that web cam at the rowing club.

We took the double up into the gorge again and I made a conscious effort to stroke at low rate today. It was a great session, although the steering did slow us down a bit. Not a very long session, because we had to be back in time to do some groceries and to be ready for our visitors this afternoon.

We took our visitors to a place to eat and drink a bit, and the guest on the neighboring table was one of the country’s most notorious criminals, who served 23 years of his life sentence for two contract killings in the 1990s (which he has denied being guilty of) before receiving a presidential pardon a year ago, after which he achieved cult status.

I guess it gave some couleur locale to our visitors from out of town.

In other news, my son Dominik stroked a 4+ to a bronze medal at the Czech Championships in the boys 13/14 category:

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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.

Yes, they made me wear a Donaubund uni

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.

Laszlo & Attila, the guys with “V8” on their uni

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.

Romana & Veronika racing the double

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.

Notice: No electronics

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.

What? Am I level with them?

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 in Argonauten uni, before the race

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.

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