Immortalized in Bling
Today we raced the Head of the Lagoon down in San Mateo.
Not a massive race, and not one in which we expected major competition in our events. None the less, we aimed to go down and do well.
There was a last minute substitution: The guy who had been rowing 5 (big, strong, but not so smooth and a little fidgety) hurt his back, so the guy who's arguably the best starboard oar on the team filled in. I knew it was gonna be a good day.
I love head races with windy courses in 8+'s. Anything can happen. And you get called on to help the cox execute turns. We on the port side, and I and the guy in 2 seat, in particular, were asked to "crank it" on numerous occasions. Our cox had to yell at a few crews to yield to us. That's always fun. Cuz when he essentially tells another crew to get the fuck out of your way, you need to bring it and row through them like cheese through a goose. Ya gotta back up the little man in the stern. He's the consciousness of your crew.
There was a collegiate novice 8's race right in front of us, so we tried to give them a lot of room, knowing we'd catch boats and not wanting to catch them at times inconvenient for ourselves.
Our stroke had hoped to pace at 29 strokes per minute. But the boat settled to about 31 1/2. And it was comfortable. We were sharp, we were standing on our catches and we were moving. We rowed down three collegiate novice boats in the race ahead of us before we finished.
We finished confident we had won our event, and feeling like we had put in the best piece we could have, as a crew. We were told by our coach that we looked low (like we were pacing to slowly) as we came by. He was shocked to hear we were at a 31-32. When you're making it look easy, you're going fast.
When I got to the boat house at 4 PM to unload the trailer, I got some good news. Our 8's had come in 1,2,3 in our event. So our third fastest 8 was faster than the competition's best boats. And then I got some great news. My 8 had turned in the fastest time on the course that day. Faster than the novice 8's and the collegiate 8's and the open 8's. We won, essentially, the regatta and we got to take back to our club this massive old skool cup trophy.
It'll stay in the club's trophy case till next year, when we have to put it on the line for that race. But it's really nice to walk into your club and be able to point to some of the hardware in the trophy case and know that you brought that back. It won't have my name on it, but the club's name will be on it as this year's winner for as long as the cup is around.
Workout stats for the race piece:
Time 17:40 (includes pre-start build and maybe 30-40 seconds post finish line)
Average HR: 175 bpm
Max HR: 182 bpm
Kcal: 309
Not a massive race, and not one in which we expected major competition in our events. None the less, we aimed to go down and do well.
There was a last minute substitution: The guy who had been rowing 5 (big, strong, but not so smooth and a little fidgety) hurt his back, so the guy who's arguably the best starboard oar on the team filled in. I knew it was gonna be a good day.
I love head races with windy courses in 8+'s. Anything can happen. And you get called on to help the cox execute turns. We on the port side, and I and the guy in 2 seat, in particular, were asked to "crank it" on numerous occasions. Our cox had to yell at a few crews to yield to us. That's always fun. Cuz when he essentially tells another crew to get the fuck out of your way, you need to bring it and row through them like cheese through a goose. Ya gotta back up the little man in the stern. He's the consciousness of your crew.
There was a collegiate novice 8's race right in front of us, so we tried to give them a lot of room, knowing we'd catch boats and not wanting to catch them at times inconvenient for ourselves.
Our stroke had hoped to pace at 29 strokes per minute. But the boat settled to about 31 1/2. And it was comfortable. We were sharp, we were standing on our catches and we were moving. We rowed down three collegiate novice boats in the race ahead of us before we finished.
We finished confident we had won our event, and feeling like we had put in the best piece we could have, as a crew. We were told by our coach that we looked low (like we were pacing to slowly) as we came by. He was shocked to hear we were at a 31-32. When you're making it look easy, you're going fast.
When I got to the boat house at 4 PM to unload the trailer, I got some good news. Our 8's had come in 1,2,3 in our event. So our third fastest 8 was faster than the competition's best boats. And then I got some great news. My 8 had turned in the fastest time on the course that day. Faster than the novice 8's and the collegiate 8's and the open 8's. We won, essentially, the regatta and we got to take back to our club this massive old skool cup trophy.
It'll stay in the club's trophy case till next year, when we have to put it on the line for that race. But it's really nice to walk into your club and be able to point to some of the hardware in the trophy case and know that you brought that back. It won't have my name on it, but the club's name will be on it as this year's winner for as long as the cup is around.
Workout stats for the race piece:
Time 17:40 (includes pre-start build and maybe 30-40 seconds post finish line)
Average HR: 175 bpm
Max HR: 182 bpm
Kcal: 309
posted by Kenneth at 6:07 PM
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