Weather: Sunny, nice temp, around 60. Quite windy, about 15 mph gusting to 20 from the West.
Plan: Row the course a stately pace, count strokes to critical turns and follow the planned line through the most challenging parts of the course (Weeks, Anderson and Eliot). Return down river in the travel lane.
Well, it didn’t work out that way. It was like merging on to a super highway. There were so many boats! I was almost always two abreast with another boat, and close on the tail of a boat, with yet another boat crawling up my stern. And since most of these boats were eights, fours and quads, I felt the need to push the pace a bit more than I originally intended. It was also generally into the teeth of the head wind.
I must admit though, that nerves and adrenaline played a part. Finally, in the critical bits, like counting the strokes from the Western Ave bridge to my turn toward the weeks footbridge, I wanted to do that stuff with close to race pressure so that I would have a better feel for trying to get my points and find my line. At any rate, I probably pushed a touch harder than I should have, but it was a lovely row.
tart_|_Dist_|_Split_|_Pace_|_Strks__|_Rate_|_DPS_|_AvgHR_|_Remarks
00020_|_0440_|_02:27_|_2:47.3_|_044___|_17.9_|_10.0_|_133___|_w
00460_|_3480_|_17:00_|_2:26.6_|_365___|_21.5_|_09.5_|_165___|_m
03940_|_7180_|_39:07_|_2:43.4_|_737___|_18.8_|_09.7_|_142___|_c
Dist__|_Time__|_Pace___|_Strks_|_SPM__|_DPS__|_AvgHR_|_Remarks
00440_|_02:27_|_2:47.3_|_044___|_17.9_|_10.0_|_133___|_warmup
03480_|_17:00_|_2:26.6_|_365___|_21.5_|_09.5_|_165___|_Main set
07180_|_39:07_|_2:43.4_|_737___|_18.8_|_09.7_|_142___|_cool down
11100_|_58:35_|_2:38.3_|_1146___|_19.6_|_09.7_|_149___|_Total
The rules for practice day are to launch from your launching site and proceed up river along the course to the end, then go all the way back to the start, and then follow the rest of the course back to your launching dock. So I did the last 3.5km of the course, and the paddled to the start and then did the first 1km of the course. This was the fiestiest traffic of the bunch. I was sandwiched between 2 eights, and there were a other boats along side as we squeezed through the BU bridge. I was glad to peel off to the dock. I’d had enough of rush hour traffic.
After my row, I drove over the the finish area and picked up my registration packet. I guess I am now official.
Forecast for tomorrow morning is 47F, wind building from W 10 mph at 9am to 12mph at 10am.
I’m bow number 36 in event #4 (Grand Master Men’s 1x). Live stream is at this link:
Quantified Rowing 
Sleep well and good luck for the race.
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Best of luck, wasn’t able to find you yesterday but will give you a shout from weeks
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In a crowd of 200,000, I can understand why it’s hard to meet up with anyone. I launched from down at the SADL area, so it was hard to find people that were mostly up in FALS. I saw the results of your race. It looked like much stiffer competition than last year.
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Yeah i was boating from BU so I was just round the corner but you’re right it was hard to find anyone really!
Yes obviously a shame to slide down the results today from 4th to 8th, quite a few new racers who were pretty tough, felt like a good race tho which is all you can ask for really
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