May 18, 2005

small victory

I'm grinning like a fool this morning. I don't suppose the story will have quite the same impact after all the necessary explanation, but bear with me anyhow.

Saturday is one of our biggest races. Before a big race, you do a taper for a week or two (or a month, if you train at Olympian levels) in order to build up energy for the race. Current recommendations are to decrease volume and maintain intensity, meaning you row hard but not as far. There's a particular workout Rudder has devised, in which you do three sets of one minute on, one minute off, rest five minutes after doing all three, then repeat. The catch is, you use those three sets to simulate the beginning, middle, and end of a 1000m race piece, so for the first set, you do a racing start, for the second you just row at race pace, and for the third you finish with a sprint. For a usual practice he does this about three times; for tapering twice. It's a fun workout. This morning, he and his doubles partner were doing this one and had also roped in another male double, a male pair (one oar each instead of two as in the doubles), and a female double.

The female double was two former collegiate rowers: one a couple years older than I am, one a decade and a half younger, both very strong and much larger than I am (though not all of that "larger" is muscle, not by a long shot). I'd been talking about doing this race with the younger of the two, but told her my feelings wouldn't be hurt if she fund someone faster, since I'm not training hard, and she did.

I should have known they'd be doing that particular workout because it is the last practice before a race; I figured it out just because they were doing such short race pieces. They were a little behind me on the lake after their first three sets, had rested, and were coming up behind me ready to do it again. There was enough separation to not have them run over me, so I started a 300m race piece (my second of the morning) as they started their first set. I kept all four boats behind me, and noticed that the pair and the female double hadn't picked up much distance on me. I paddled lightly to recover, and let them come up on me.

I started level with the other boats or just a little behind and took it up to full power as they did. The two male doubles pulled way ahead, as expected, but the pair didn't gain too much, and I stayed right with the female double. (I wasn't sure exactly what variation of the workout they were doing, and how long they were going for, so I took the power down a little before they did and let them get ahead then). But I stayed with them.

That's not really supposed to happen - two of them, one of me, both much bigger. Or in other words:

Nyeah, nyeah, nyeah, nyeah nyeah nyeah............

But the one of them who was steering kept looking over at me. I hope she noticed the big grin.

Incidentally, the grin was supplemented a little later when I was stretching out at the gym and noticed a shirt that read, "Motorcycles: helping ugly people have sex since 1901."

Posted by dichroic at May 18, 2005 01:43 PM
Comments

Thanks for the heads up. I'm thinking that I might stop by. I think it'd be fun.

Posted by: Cruel-Irony at May 18, 2005 03:25 PM
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