I had a lot of fun yesterday.  Because of spring racing, the lake has been unavailable most weekends in the month of may, so I have mainly been rowing on my little stretch of the Charles.  Lovely water, but the same thing all the time was starting to get a bit old.  But it was great to back among other folks that love to row and to have some company on the water.

This morning, I decided to go row out in worcester again today.  Today we had seven of us.  We boated a straight four, me and Joe in a double, and Deb in a single.  She had said that she wanted to get some video for coaching and feedback, so, I rigged a single up with the gopro on the bowstay out to the side.  That video is slowly uploading as I write.

It has been about a month since Joe and I rowed together in the double, and I always enjoy it.  Today’s joy was somewhat impacted by the world’s most uncomfortable seat.  My ass was really sore by the time we turned around at the south end of the lake, and for the rest of the row, it was basically agonizing as soon as I took pressure off and paddled.  At full pressure, it was fine, but paddling was hellish.  I have to remember to use a pad if I’m going to row in that boat again.  It was awful!

But, the row wasn’t awful.  In fact, it was a blast.

We launched about 5 minutes or so after the four and single did and after a little bit of warming up, we spent the trip down the lake trying to catch up with them.  We caught the single with about 1000m to go.  We didn’t quite catch the four, but it was close.  I quite enjoyed the last 500m or so.

Then we turned north and worked on slow roll ups for about 1000m, and then just rowed steady state up to the narrows.  Then we did a 10/20/30/20 stroke pyramid.  We were waked a couple times during this, but it’s much less of a disruption in the double than in  the 1x.  After we went under the bridge, we paused for me to try to find a more comfortable alignment on the seat (which failed).  We then did 10 strokes on / 10 strokes off the rest of the way up the lake, finishing with a 20 at the north end of the lake.

From there it was back to the dock.  For some reason, Crewnerd stopped recording about 500m from the end, and missed what was no doubt the fastest piece we did of the day ;-).

No useful stroke rate data from CrewNerd today because I forgot my hard mount and just left my phone sliding around in the foot well.

Tomorrow I am back on the road.  First to San Francisco, then on Wednesday morning to Dallas.  I get back to Boston during the day on Friday.  I think I might try to do a nice Friday afternoon row on my way home from the airport.