Tag: san diego

A brief escape from endless erging

Leave a comment

I am in San Diego on a business trip.  I arrived last night and didn’t have any meetings until late this morning.  I saw an opportunity, and I reached out by email to the fine gentleman from the San Diego Rowing Club who I rowed with last winter to see if I could maybe jump into a boat on Wednesday morning.

I got a positive reply from the master’s coach, and was invited to show up at the boathouse at the ungodly hour of 5am.  I arrived and they decided to put me in a quad with Dan, Mark and Kyle.  I was in the three seat, and Kyle was stroking.  I had the good fortune to show up on a morning that was a reasonably low intensity day.

The session plan was split into a warm up and two 25 minute chunks.  The warm up was feet out rowing.  The first 25 minute piece was 5 – five minute segments of 4′ steady state and 1′ of drills

  • pause at the finish
  • pause at body over
  • pause at quarter slide
  • quarter slide rowing
  • heels down rowing

Then for the second 25 minute piece, a 22/24/26/24/22… rate ladder.

I was really glad for the technical focus.  I have not been in boat since November, and I was sure I would be really rusty.   I was pretty worried that I’d be a lousy person to have in the boat.

It was a good boat.  Kyle in stroke was a metronome.  He didn’t have a speedcoach, but he was hitting the rates.  I had some trouble matching up to his stroke just because he had an enormously long reach.  I would hit the front stops and he would seem to keep going forever afterward.  I had to literally slow my roll to get in sync.  Some times I was OK, but it came and went.  I hope it wasn’t too annoying for them.

The drills were really useful and it was great to get some coaching from the launch.  The coach (Patrick) nailed my technique problems right away (not rocking over completely before breaking my knees on recovery and then lunging at the catch), and provided good real time feedback.

The ladders were not as neat.  The boat was not set very well, and I suspect that I was the main problem.  I was having trouble sitting vertical in the boat.  I was tending to drag my port oar on recovery and my oar work was sloppy in general.

Having said that I was delighted to be on the water and I had a total blast.

Screen Shot 2019-02-13 at 12.07.08 PM

I hope I didn’t wear out my welcome.  I’d love to get back out with this group of guys again.  With all the time I spend alone on an erg or in my single, getting into a quad is a fantastic, fun experience.  It’s a great challenge to get synched up with another rower.  It’s great to get into a boat that is so stable that I can work on getting my blades way off the water on recovery.  And the whole tempo is much faster, even at low rates because the oars are going a lot faster through the water.

Now I’m sitting in the airport waiting to occupy my middle seat on the red eye back to Boston.

Tomorrow:  The schedule calls for a 3 x 20′ L4, but we’ll see how I feel after this flight.

 

6/7 – San Diego Rowing Club

Leave a comment

I flew out to San Diego on Wednesday.  I had a business dinner that evening.  Through facebook, I had made contact with the Dan O’Neill of the San Diego Rowing Club, and he graciously offered to row a double with me on Thursday morning.

I showed up a bit before 6am, and met Dan, along with a whole slew of other master rowers.  The SDRC is a remarkable club.  They have hundreds of members, an active and successful juniors program, a fleet of shiny well maintained boats, almost all of which are bright red, and a beautiful location, right on Mission Bay.

We launched from the beach.  I was embarrassed that I didn’t know how to do a stylish beach launch.  It’s sort of like the european dock launch where you push off with one foot on the seat deck and then sit down smoothly as your boat glides sideways to deeper water.  Instead, we paddled a bit from the beach and put on our socks, got our feet in the shoes and began our row.

Dan is a great rower.  He has been rowing for decades, and knows every nook and cranny of Mission Bay.  We worked our way through a pick drill and he tried to get used to my stroke style.  We rowed our warmup out to the spot where the club tends to gather to start their workouts.  We were supposed to meet a men’s quad, but we didn’t see them around, so we started on our own.

The planned workout was

  • 2 x 19′ rate ladders with a few minutes rest between.
    • 4′ at 20
    • 3 at 22
    • 2′ at 24
    • 1′ at 26
    • 2′ at 24
    • 3′ at 22
    • 4′ at 20

I think I was a bit too self conscious and insecure in the first pyramid.  I rowed at much higher pressure for the rates than I normally do and I think my form suffered for it.  I also suffered in general, since my HR shot up quickly and stayed there.  After the minute at 26, I managed to relax a little bit.  Or maybe I was just to winded to care too much, and my rowing seemed to improve.  My finishes got a bit better and I felt like I was doing a better job in general.

After the first piece we hung out for a while just chatting.  Dan is a really interesting guy.  He has been a principal in a number of software startups and is active in some really interesting STEM education stuff like first robotics.  We ended up resting a bit longer than we should have, but eventually got going again.  The second ladder was much smoother then the first and I didn’t push quite as hard.  After that one, we did a couple of starts, which were pretty shaggy, but fun nonetheless.  Then it was time to get back to the boathouse.

 

Screen Shot 2018-06-16 at 7.54.00 PM.png

Workout Summary - media/20180607-1521040o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|13796|77:29.0|02:48.5|000.0|23.4|150.5|176.0|07.6
W-|09237|42:19.0|02:17.4|000.0|22.1|165.6|176.0|09.9
R-|04570|35:10.0|03:50.9|000.0|24.9|132.3|176.0|05.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00924|04:00.0|02:09.9|000.0|20.3|148.0|157.0|11.4 - 4
02|00837|03:44.0|02:13.9|000.0|22.0|162.1|166.0|10.2 - 3
03|00454|02:00.0|02:12.2|000.0|24.0|167.9|172.0|09.5 - 2
04|00229|01:00.0|02:11.2|000.0|25.8|169.9|172.0|08.9 - 1
05|00471|02:12.0|02:20.3|000.0|23.6|172.4|173.0|09.1 - 2
06|00757|03:38.0|02:23.9|000.0|22.2|170.3|173.0|09.4 - 3
07|01055|04:56.0|02:20.3|000.0|21.0|170.1|173.0|10.2 - 4
08|00914|04:07.0|02:15.1|000.0|20.6|147.8|159.0|10.8 - 4
09|00619|02:46.0|02:14.1|000.0|22.0|164.2|168.0|10.2 - 3
10|00447|02:00.0|02:14.4|000.0|24.0|167.4|170.0|09.3 - 2
11|00233|01:00.0|02:08.7|000.0|26.2|172.0|173.0|08.9 - 1
12|00434|02:00.0|02:18.4|000.0|24.1|174.1|176.0|09.0 - 2
13|00630|03:00.0|02:22.9|000.0|22.5|173.4|176.0|09.3 - 3
14|01234|05:56.0|02:24.2|000.0|21.4|173.3|176.0|09.7 - 4

I enjoyed this so much.  I am very grateful to Dan and all the friendly folks at SDRC.  I can’t wait to get back to San Diego and row again!