Row for the Cure 2010 - video

Here's a short video I made before I went out in Pepe:



By the way: There is a good article in Seattle Times about the 2010 edition of Row for the Cure. Read it - all the pics are from Lake Union Crew!

Row for the Cure 2010

Row for the Cure 2010 in Seattle was Sunday September 19.  Crews from 22 boat houses participated, more than 660 rowers in total!  I rowed my Pepe in the M1x Masters category.

The master category is tricky, I've learned after only 3 competitions. You get a handicap which is roughly 1.6 second/year/km, with year being computed relative to the youngest competitor in the class. At 39 years, I turned out to be the youngest, so I would get no handicap at all.

In the end I ended up as 4 out of 6 participants on raw time, and 6 out of 6 in handicap time, as I wasn't able to keep the old-timers at bay. Definitely need to get faster and control the check better.

The race is interval 3 in the map below. I did reasonably well staying around 26 spm for the duration of the race, although the speed went down a bit. But at least I have something to compare to now for future races.


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3x(10x8[Power];30s@20)@24,26,24;3mins@20

Tuesday morning practice. It's 3 sets. Each set you do 8 strokes at power, then rest for a bit (30 seconds in this case), then you do another 8. Repeat until you've done this 10 times. First set you do all the power strokes at 24 strokes per minute (spm), 2nd set at 26 spm, 3rd set at 24 spm. Do 20 spm between repeats, when you're resting.

This set is the 2nd interval. Couldn't count properly after first set, as you can see. Also, stroke rate was a bit high for the 2nd set. But otherwise not too bad. Was told to initiate my drive a little bit faster after the catch, in order to get quicker through the drive and get a slightly longer recovery at that rate.


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Row for the Cure!

19 September 2010 is Row for the Cure in Seattle! I'm rowing my 1x and you can help me raise money for breast cancer cure here: http://www.active.com/donate/seattlerftc/greatdane

Racing at Greenlake Extravaganza!

Here's a little video from my first race - Greenlake Extravaganza 7 August 2010!

Mercer Island Marathon

So, Sunday 29 August was supposed to be the day where I would be the 3-seat in a quad, rowing all the way from Pocock around Mercer Island and back again - a full Marathon of 42.2 km for the benefit of Rainier Valley Rowing.

The route was s'posed to be something like this (thx to Kim); a nice little Sunday morning row:

So, at 5 am Sunday morning we all met at Pocock, where another quad, a four and 2 eights were also departing for the row. Hugo was stroke, I was in 3-seat, Kim in 2-seat and Elizabeth in the bow, guiding us around the Island.

We got down and got hands-on our boat and got it launched. Then we got in, pushed off, adjusted the stretchers and we were off!  The wind was breezy, to put it mildly. When we cam out to SR-520 bridge and went through, we had - almost - whitecaps on the water, and a wave now and then coming over the gunnel. 

The support launches told us to go back to the lee of 520, and we rowed to the far east end of the bridge, so try and make it down the coast on the east side instead of on the west side (normal traffic pattern). 

But alas, as we came to the east it was pretty obvious that the wind and waves were also too much on this side, so we turned back towards Pocock and the sheltered waters of Lake Union.  Even that turned out to be a bit of a challenge, as the wind picked up a bit during the early morning hours...

However, we made it through the ship canal and all the way to the far end of Ballard, only half a mile from home for me!  In Ballard we stopped for a few minutes for 'lunch' - a few sips of Gatorade and a power gel...

From Ballard it was back through the ship canal, down around the bottom of Lake Union and then home to Pocock where we docked around 9am, about 3 hrs after the start.  We had managed 32 km out of the 42.2, so we'll grab the last 10 k next year - that will be easy peasy, even if the wind is rough!

Here's a map and stroke info of 18k of the route (click the triangles). I had some issues with the otherwise *Brilliant* SpeedCoachMobile app - not sure it can handle really long rows...

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Thursday morning row on Lake Union

So the iPhone SpeedCoach Mobile app really does a decent job of getting ones track down:

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We did a 12000 m row, and a 500 m piece towards the end. More later from the water!

Oars!

All mine: A brand-new pair of Croker S2 Superlights with standard stiffness, 288 cm median length, Slick blade, Mk3 asymmetric sleeves, adjustable carbon handles and standard grip size. Yay!  Only problem: How do I get them to the boathouse…?

London-Edinburgh-London 2009, the prologue II...

LEL - the prologue part II

Tuesday morning I boarded the train for Portsmouth (via Crediton, Exeter St. Davids and Southampton) and Tuesday afternoon I was in Portsmouth.  The train took me right down to the Harbor and I walked down to the Gunwharf Quays. The Gunwharf Quays are the old gunwharfs(!), where the once so majestic British Navy would be outfitted with guns, gunpowder, biscuits, rum, bullets, shanghaied sailors, opium, prostitutes and whatever else was needed to run an empire.  Nowadays it is full of fancy shops and small ugly hotdog stands.

There were plenty of memorabilia left from the golden old days when the Brits ruled the 7 seas and everything inbetween: HMS Warrior , HMS Victory, which Nelson, the scoundrel, used to defeat the Glorious Danish Navy in the Battle of Copenhagen 2 April 1801 . Maybe I could smuggle some gunpowder onboard and, if placed in the right locations, finally get some revenge for the defeat...?

But first I had to meet Kathryn for a beer or several (well, it was a given that it would be several; only question was the time between them). After some serious txting Bar 38  was chosen as a starting point and I sat down in an enormous chair shaped like a crown, waiting for her to get off work.  While waiting I had a Fosters , and then another when she showed up.  After chatting for a bit about what had happened since last time we saw each other (15 months), we dropped off my stuff at her place on the outskirts of town and I had a Carlsberg from her fridge.  She had a nice view of the tidal channels and the mudflats in front of her apartment, something I could appreciate with my sedimentology background. 

Then we were off to an Indian restaurant for some typical classic British food - the curry - and a seriously sized Cobra beer. After dinner we walked along the now most empty Gunwharf but ended up in The Old Customs House , where 2 Seafarers Ale ended their life in my lager-lined stomach. At midnight the establishment decided it was time to close down, so despite our reluctance to leave we had to, although we were the absolute last to haul ourselves out of there. Then it was back in a taxi to Kathryn’s place and off to bed before next mornings most delicious treat - a fried brekkie from a greasy spoon on the waterfront. It wasn’t Mike’s Bites - it was almost better (!) and I left Portsmouth for Bangor with a happy stomach and liver.  

Tally for the 20 hours or so I spent in Portsmouth: 2 Foster’s, 1 Carlsberg, 1 Cobra and 2 Seafarers Ale, roughly on par when compared with my time spent in Crediton. What was not on par was the train fare for my trip Portsmouth-London-Bangor-London-(Portsmouth), which were cheaper than any other return trip option to get me to London after visiting Bangor. However, it still came to bloody 97 quid for second class tickets!  Normally one should be able to get a flight from the UK to Mallorca and back for that kind of money, but unfortunately I wasn’t going to Mallorca. I was going to Bangor. To visit friends. So I had to pay. And with a lighter wallet I was on my way to the green pastures of NW-Wales and the slate-grey streets of Bangor.