There's an entry from earlier today href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/donanobis.html">here.
That
one's more global, about the antiwar protests and the news coverage, but I did
also want to talk about the more immediate issue of my race this
weekend.
I came in third of four, as I'd more or less hoped: behind a
large girl from Texas and Dr. Bosun, but ahead of Hardcore, the only other
lightweight in the race, so I'm happy with that. There are a lot of oddities in
the way AUssieCoach set up the race though. I could gloat that I won the
lightweight division, but ... he had at least one other W1X race, 2000m instead of
the 1000m I raced, and there's a woman who raced in that who might be a
lightweight. There were supposed to be two others who are down here training for
Nationals in the Ltwt W2X -- in other words, the single isn't their primary event
but it's very similar to the boat that is, so there's no question they'd beat me
by boatlengths and boatlengths. They declined to row that race, though, because as
a matter of teamwork they don't compete against each other. Sensible.
Also, the Texan woman in my race (who won) really probably shouldn't
have been there, because it's a Master's race and there's no way she was 27.
Apparently in several races AussieCoach listed people as being 27 just to give
them a place to compete. Stupid, because he could as well have raced her as a 21-
26 year old with a negative handicap, by current US Rowing Association rules. In
other words, he appears to have just put races together however he thought they'd
work, in defiance of any actual age or weight categories, at random distances (1K
or 2K) which makes the whole thing hard to take seriously. Though the 2K race may
have been classed as Open instead of Masters, which would make more
sense.
If you're not a rower and you've read that far, your eyes have
glazed over by now. It gets worse though - I was happy with my placement, but not
with my time. There's something about the latter I don't understand, though. They
timed me at 4:45 for the 1K. I forgot to zero my StrokeCoach at the start of the
race. It was running, though, so I could look back in the memory for my average
time in each 100 meters. I did the math and ended up with an average split
(predicted time to row 500m) or 2:08, which would give me a time of about 4:16 for
the race. Sometimes races vary in length, but this was a buoyed course, so
couldn't vary much. So now I don't know if the timers were slow or my computer is
off. I'm sure if they were slow it would have been consistent so that it wouldn't
affect the race results, but I'd like to know about those times. I suppose
miscalibration is more likely, though. *sigh*
And then Rudder asked
to look at the StrokeCoach and accidentally reset it -- oops! I think he was
scared of my avenging wrath, but I'd already done the math to check my time. Lucky
for him.