Monday, rest day after the weekend, took the dog for a nice long 1 hour walk, but gave my body a rest after the weekend’s activities.
Tuesday morning, another rest day, not even a long walk this morning as I was initially going to row, then had a change of heart.
Tuesday evening archery, I decided to have a go at a 252 at 40m with my longbow, only scores 115 of the required 164, so not today, way too many misses for a decent score.
Wednesday morning rowing, C2 WoD for 7 June 2023 is 10 rounds of 1 minute max effort, 1 minute rest.
I have had the last two days off as recovery from the weekend’s racing, except for long walks with the dog and archery yesterday evening.
I came into work this morning as we have an OTW training session for the weekend’s racing at Reading this evening (and tomorrow evening) so came in early to use the work gym.
2,000m (9:36.8) warm up concentrating on good technique, then thought I would have a look at what the WoD was, saw it was sprint training and thought ‘why not? This is good training for starts, let’s give it a go.’
I bumped the damper setting up for the first round:
Legs were screaming by the end of this one, I was determined that all rounds were going to be 290m or above.
I spent about half of most of the ‘light’ minutes re-tightening the foot straps as I need to ‘tie’ the ends of them to prevent them from coming too loose during sprints and even so they still come loose (I really wish they would replace the straps, I have asked several times, but it just doesn’t happen).
Spent a few minutes cooling off and recovering before settling into a 5,004m (25:46.8) cool down and some stretching, shower and breakfast in the canteen.
More sitting on the Erg is planned for later on while I wait for everyone else to turn up, then an OTW session at about 18:30 with the Senior Men’s Reading crew.
The evening workout ended up being 5,005m (24:04.6) on the Erg, then 8,892m OTW, warm up, steady state, 1,500m piece at race pace (34spm), back up to the bridge and then a 600m(ish) piece at race pace to the church before heading in.
Turns out I managed 2,960m at an average pace of 1:41.3 for the WoD which ultimately placed me 80/1464 worldwide and 13/352 50-59, 17/218 in the UK and 6/70 50-59 in the UK.
Thursday morning, someone posted a comment against my workout from yesterday stating “I’m curious as to how you would go with this workout at 20-22SPM”.
I thought: “That’s a great question – let’s find out”.
I was in at work again this morning, as I have more Reading prep on the river this evening before de-rigging the boat to put it back on the trailer ready for the weekend.
I started off with my usual 2,000m (9:55.6) warm up, before setting up the intervals on ErgData and entered an average rate requirement of 21 to keep me honest and off we go.
Numbers are down from yesterday, although only by about 10-15m per round, heart rate is much lower, more UT1 than AT. At no point did I manage to get below 1:44 pace even for a single stroke, whereas yesterday I averaged 1:41.3.
Total distance is 2,774 compared with 2,960m from yesterday, so down by 186m over the 10 rounds, but some of the latter rounds were within 6m of yesterday’s equivalents.
Yesterday’s effort placed me 80/1464, today’s effort would have placed me 262/1464.
I finished off with 8 laps of the 1,000m real-time loop on ErgData, including one ‘flying lap’ at 34-36spm ‘race pace’ and completed it in 3:31.
In total the cool down was 8,014m (36:30.4) and then finished off with stretching, a shower and breakfast.
Thursday evening rowing, 10,017m (43:46.3) 10 laps of the real time loop as a warm up, it was a lovely evening, no senior men’s training, so went out in my 1x ‘Dark Horse’ for a leisurely row for 4,632m.
Friday, rest day after two days of sprint intervals.
Saturday, Reading Regatta Day 1, another bad night before a race, I think I woke up half a dozen times, although this was more because of humidity than excitement/worry about the race.
Our race is at 11:15 so I only need to be there at 09:00 which means leaving home around 08:00, so plenty of time to walk the dog and have breakfast before I leave.
I arrived first and took the oars down to the river, set out the trestles and unstrapped the boat while I waited for the others to arrive.
The view up the river from the finish.
After the rest of the crew arrived, we took the boat off the trailer attached the riggers and were ready to go, unfortunately we don’t need to be on the river for nearly an hour and a half!
It seems I have been bumped from next week’s Marlow Regatta at Dorney Lake and also from the potential Henley crew. This was apparently a coaching decision made at the Friday evening committee meeting.
My guess is that it is not a ‘good look’ for the club having a 55 year old racing in ‘Open Club Championship’ (yet it is still ok to have a slower 40 year old – I’m not bitter at all) back to master’s it is next week then, it was fun while it lasted.
We eventually get out on the water and perform our warm up, and a short power piece and a practice start before lining up for the race.
We are up against a Reading crew who were faster than us over the first 1,500m of a 2,000m course at Dorney last weekend by 30 seconds, so I don’t exactly fancy our chances.
Sure enough they had us off the start and were over a length ahead by 250m and that was the last we saw of them until we crossed the finish line and were turning back to the dock.
They only give official times for the winning boats, so my SpeedCoach time of 5:47.1 will have to do for us, Reading finished in 5:24 and the victory was listed as ‘easily’ and I am pretty sure they eased off after they had a good lead on us.
Back in and put the boat on the trailer, some of the juniors are racing in the afternoon and need the trestles.
Hung around for another half hour watching some of the racing before heading back.
J15 4+ Eton College vs Reading Blue Coat School (win to Reading by 1/2 a length)
Open 4+ B final University College London beating Reading (not pictured) by 1 1/2 lengths.
My archery club is running a ‘have-a-go’ stand at the Harefield Fête today, so I head over there to help out for the remainder of the afternoon.
Back home after packing up the ‘have-a-go’ and having a shower and I check the results from our final and it seems Eton College, who had a bye in the first round beat Reading ‘easily’ with a time of 5:03.
We will be back tomorrow afternoon for a 1,000m race against Imperial College.
Sunday, today’s race is in the afternoon, so no rush to get up, yet because of the heat I still had a bad night and the dog woke me up at around 04:30, so I eventually got up around 05:15 and took him for a walk for an hour, getting home around 06:30.
Fed the dog, had a shower and then settled in for a relaxing morning catching up on some TV whilst eating my breakfast.
We had agreed to meet at 15:00 for our race at 16:52, journey time was predicted as about an hour so, after having some lunch, I set off at 14:00 and as usual arrived before everyone else at 15:05.
The others arrive shortly afterwards and we take the boat off the trailer and everything is ready in about 10 minutes, still over an hour before we need to even think about boating, so we go off to stand in the shade and watch some of the racing (I left my phone in my bag, so no new photos).
We saw one junior coxed quad come past with a broken stroke side oar for the rower sat at bow. It was bent at a 90 degree angle about half way down and we have no idea how it could have happened unless he absolutely ‘smacked’ a marker bouy.
Once again there were originally 4 entries in our Open Coxless Fours category, one on each side of the draw from Imperial College and one from Northampton, who ‘scratched’, so the Imperial College A crew had a ‘bye’ to the final at 18:35.
The temperature is 31C/88F and very humid, so everyone’s main concern is staying hydrated and trying to avoid heat stroke.
After getting the boat on the water we do our usual warm up, today’s distance is slightly shorter again at only 1,000m, so practically a ‘sprint’, hoping for somewhere around 3:30.
After seeing the crew we are up against, we believe they are a novice crew and based on how they are rowing, this should be a comfortable win for us, but let’s stay calm and level headed.
We attach to our stake boat and then it is another minute or two before the other crew even reach the start, they are even asking the start marshalls which Imperial College crew is supposed to be in this race!
A Thames sightseeing river cruiser goes past in the upstream lane heading downstream while we are waiting.
Finally everyone is ready and we are off
We have the other crew off the start and immediately start to pull away and are about half a length up by 100m but then start veering to bow side and into their lane.
150m and we are a length up, but being cautioned by the marshalls for having our oars in the other lane, a call for “harder bow side” and we are back in our lane in a straight line and pulling away again.
480m aproaching half way, a length and a half up and we are again cautioned by the marshalls as we are about to hit the river cruiser on our stroke side, desperate calls of ‘Stroke Side” from the bow.
We manage about 2 more strokes before we have to stop, I practically shipped my oar after a couple of extra frantic strokes and stroke seat catches a crab after his oar hits the cruiser that was only about 1 meter the other side of the marker bouys.
The other crew steams on past, wiping out our lead and creating one of their own at up to around 1 1/2 lengths!
We escape from the cruiser and set off again chasing them down with only half the course remaining.
600m – 800m, continuous screams of “Stroke Side” from the bow as we are over the bouys yet again, but we are closing fast on the other crew, now just over 3/4 of a length ahead.
We finally find a decent line and have an all out sprint to the finish.
The two ‘beeps’ for finishing were less than 1/4 of a second apart and we have no idea who won, whoever it was won by about a ‘bow ball’, although we were all convinced that we had lost.
Full stroke data from the race, you can see the dip where we ‘hit’ the cruiser:
Desite the stop, I still make our time 3:35, so we must have been motoring by the finish, although it was with the stream.
As we were rowing back to the landing stage, we see lightening in the distance and there is an immediate call to get everyone off the water as quickly as possible.
We take the boat in, de-rig and strap the boat back on the trailer in record time and head for home before the rain kicks in.
The bow steer’sman was apologising like crazy as he is convinced he has lost us what should have been an easy race.
The heavens open just as I reach my car, the journey out of Reading involved multiple traffic jams due to flooded sections of road with the water up to 8-10 inches (20-25cm) deep in places due to the sudden downpour.
On arriving home, I check the results and it looks like the regatta was abandoned following the storm, they were having an announcement 30 minutes after I left, but the storm was only just getting started at that point and you need 30 minutes clear from the last lightening strike. I am guessing they decided they could not get through the remaining races before it would be dark and called it a day.
Still no result for our race, despite results showing for the 4 races after us that happened before racing was halted.
The published times are only shown to the nearest second, so they may yet have to declare this a ‘dead heat’ if no picture was taken of the finish and no one can definitively say who crossed the line first.
Another piece of trivia for you: The Reading Amateur Regatta was first held in 1842, three years after the first Henley Regatta on the basis of “anything-Henley-can-do, Reading-can-do-better”. The last time it was abandoned due to heavy rain was 1998 when they received 63mm (2.5″) over the weekend with 42mm (1.6″) on the Saturday alone.
According to official figures, Reading only received 1.6mm of rain yesterday afternoon, but all of it in the space of 15-20 minutes.