October 01, 2003

5k erg piece

Definitely better than last time. My goal in today's erg piece was to break 24
minutes, and ................

I DID!!!!

5000m in
23:58.4

My previous best was something like 24:06, and that was a couple of
years ago when I was rowing with Coach DI. (Who, incidentally, is rumored to have
been asked to leave his current gig coaching the juniors club he founded. I keep
reminding myself that I don't have all the facts and anyway, schadenfreude is an
ugly thing.) At any rate, I've only done a piece at that distance once or twice
since then.

Last
time
I did this piece, three weeks ago, I pulled a 24:59, more than a minute
faster. This time, YSam asked me not to row with the women, who were going first,
because there were just enough ergs and he wanted them all to row together. I made
it plain that if I couldn't erg with the team I was going to go row my single and
was able to erg in the second shift, with the guys, who of course all finished 4-5
minutes ahead of me. As an 80-year-old man once said about competing in the href="http://www.crash-b.org/">CRASH-B, "It hurts me just as much, but for a
lot longer." I did also finish with a slower time than all the other women but
they are all either taller and heavier -- in fact they are all either much taller
or much heavier or both, so that's OK.

I blame the slower time last
time on starting in a bad mood, on being pissed off the whole time, and on not
having brought the proper shoes, but here's also credit to assign for the better
time this time. If DrunkTina hadn't told me this erg test was scheduled, I
wouldn't have known to bring sneakers, and I'd have done a heavy weight workout
yesterday. And another of the women, a grad student who's new to the area and to
the rowing program (and is one of the better rowers there) coxed me through the
piece and helped enormously. Amazingly, she didn't even piss me off telling me to
ignore the pain and bring my splits down and such. Much. At least she stuck to
"You can do this," which I don't mind, as opposed to "Only 2000 left - this is
easy," which always makes me want to extend one expressive finger from the grip.
(That moderate response is only because by then I'm too tired to rip anyone's head
off.)

Stats from Concept II's
ranking site:
Lightweight women, age 30-39: 8 of 16, 50%
Lightweight women,
all ages: 36 of 78, 46% (finally in the top half!)
Women, all weights, all
ages: 191 of 312, 61%
Lower percentages are better, so the fastest person
would be 1%

And if anyone's wondering, yes, there were dry heaves
involved.

Posted by dichroic at October 1, 2003 04:59 PM
Comments
Post a comment









Remember personal info?