Woke up several times during the night, so much for being tired enough to sleep through, woke up at 04:00 to the sound of foxes fighting in the garden, then struggled to fall back asleep, so just dozed until 05:30.
Repeat of yesterday morning and head off to Dorney for more of the same.
Apparently they have made some adjustments for today to help keep things on time, the main one being a 1,500m time trial instead of 2,000m so it is quicker to get into your lane and line up.
We were on the water at about 08:30 for our 09:01 time trial, normal warm up, then a couple of power 10’s before reaching the top end, where we were advised to do another loop as we were a bit early, so we practiced our rolling starts before heading back up again.
I managed to forget to fit my SpeedCoach to the boat for the first session so did not record the warmup or the time trial, however we all felt it went well and my watch suggested I was doing a rowing workout just as we were crossing the finish line and when I accepted, it showed about 6:30 for the 1,500m which we felt was probably about right.
Took the boat back to the trailer and started fueling up again for the finals.
Results came out a bit quicker today and with slightly fewer entrants we were in the E final against some of the same crews as yesterday.
Back on the water at 11:00 for another warm up, I remembered to attach the SpeedCoach this time and recorded the warm up, but then forgot to press start for the final after resetting – really going well with the data collection today!
Wind had picked up which made staying straight on the stake boat difficult, I would take Bow’s oar and row us sideways to beyond straight, then within 10 seconds we would be blown well past straight the other side again.
Eventually everyone was straight enough and we were able to start, Liverpool University did not show up to this final, so we were chasing down Putney Town in lane 5, we started hitting the bow side bouys within the first 500m which didn’t help, but we finally caught then at the 1,000m mark.
Shortly after this the Rex crew caught a crab, so we made the best of their misfortune and powered past and made sure they did not catch us in the closing stages.
Auriol Kensington took the win with a time 14 seconds faster than yesterday, whereas we finished 3 seconds slower than yesterday – full results of our final:
Recovered our insides and headed in and took the boat back to the trailer to de-rig, decompress and de-brief.
We were happy with the result, especially as we felt there was a lot more wind today, we managed to hit bouys on both sides today, more steering fun was had by all.
Some pictures from yesterday and today:
One of the open Doubles finals from yesterday.
Boat racks for the eights on the left of the boathouse looking out
Looking out from the boathouse, warm up course off to the left under the bridge
More racks and vendor stalls to the right of the boathouse, most of the trailers are behind the trees to the right of the picture and go back several hundred meters.