Fri AM
This morning was about unsustainable raw speed. When we are paddling around in our little pond in Vermont, we are definitely the big fish. I mean, our quad can CRUSH women's doubles and men's singles. It's not even close. But this morning, it was eye opening just how much power these guys can produce. I think we have done a good job since coming back from Europe of working on base speed and trying to make our slowest strokes in a race a little faster; however, it's still really important to be able to produce a ridiculous max speed. It was clear to me on the first piece this morning, a starting minute, that we needed to turn the intensity up a notch, because the other boats were really bringing it. We were pretty even with the four off the start and the 8+ left us. I don't think we were going slow by any means, but we were on the brink of being left behind. On the second piece, my GPS recorded our fastest starting 250 to date, 38.6, and we were still only a couple seats up on the four. The next four pieces were at 36-38 spm. I thought we found a much better rhythm at base rate and were able to move a little better comparatively to the four, but still I felt like those guys were sticking with us. For all of the base rate pieces, we were holding 1.18-1.20 for the entire minute, paces that we basically never see in a race, yet we were not moving a whole lot. I think its speaks highly of our efficiency when it comes to a race, that we can row at a high percentage of our max, but more impressive to me is the raw power that we are obviously lacking. It's definitely an area that we can and probably will focus a lot of our time in the future but don't really have the luxury of doing right now as we prepare to peak in Amsterdam. The greatest spectacle of raw speed this morning was on the final 1 minute piece. Luke told all three boats to go 40 spm for thirty seconds then shift to max. I felt like we were moving simply and efficiently at 40( maybe a little higher) and had room for an effective shift. We got a few seats on the four quickly, but then when we shifted, they started moving back on us. It is disconcerting to be going faster yet losing ground. Again, its just an impressive amount of power. Looking at the GPS data afterwards, we recorded our fastest 250m split ever, 37.96, which translates to about 1:15 avg. I guess the only thing wrong with that is the fact that the four was level or ahead us. Regardless, I think we enjoyed ourselves out there. Peter was a little upset with the quality of some of our rowing, which I don't disagree with, but I do think that on max pieces like this, its just not going to feel that great. That being said, I trust Peter and know that without him and his standards for the feel of the boat, we would not be rowing as well as we are right now, so it's important we take everything he says seriously. Well, not everything. Like yesterday when he was focusing on getting a bicep pump on every stroke because he and Steve watched "Pumping Iron" before practice, I don't take that very seriously. If there was any question, Peter is by far the best rower in our boat. Sometimes Ben and I just laugh when Peter is talking about the boat feeling bad because we know that it feels bad because of us! Peter just doesn't understand how much worse at rowing we are than him. Sometimes I feel bad that he has to put up with us.
More pieces tomorrow, probably 1500s. Then back to VT.
Here is some video of one of the 5 min pieces yesterday vs. the 4-. The quality is awful. It looks like footage taken from the day JFK was shot, but it's something.
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