HOKII

After a few hours in the car, Hugh and I were in Boston, rigging our boats at Riverside Boat Club, and getting ready for an early morning race on the Charles. I stayed with Greg Benning and his wife who served me salmon and quinoa upon my arrival. Doesn't get much better than that! Greg is a genius of head racing and specifically the Head of the Charles. I think he has won it 10 times in the single. He pretty much owns the Grand Master 1x at the Charles and set a massive course record last year. He may be in his 50's, but he is as knowledgeable about boat moving and training as anyone I have met. So, I really enjoy hearing what he has to say and listen intently whenever he has any advice for me especially when it comes to the Head of the Charles.

5 am came around pretty quick and before I knew it I was a few minutes into the piece. I started behind a Jr. 2x and promptly caught them around Riverside Boat Club. I was rowing around 32 spm and feeling good, but right about at the 10 minute mark, I started to question whether doing this race was such a good idea. My heart rate was already at 185, which is pretty close to my max, and I had probably 2k to go. So, the rate dropped, the speed dropped, and I went into survival mode. I was honestly thinking that everyone who I had just rapidly moved away from were definitely going to catch me by the end because I was suffering so badly. As I came around the Cambridge turn, I tried to keep at least my technique presentable to those watching from the Cambridge boat club dock, but I think my efforts were not very successful. I finally made it around the Belmont Hill dock and into the final stretch. At that point, I knew I was close, so I mustered a little bit of energy to lift the rate. I got it back to 32, then to 34, then to 36, and the boat actually started to feel light again! I was amazed that I was actually moving decent speeds again. Despite an epically slow 5 minute stretch I was able to put down a decent last minute or so. Still, I knew I had just blown up pretty badly. I rationalized with myself and even laughed a little bit to myself as I paddled away from the finish. I thought, " this is part of the process, I have only been training for the last week, things will get a lot better, I needed to get the shit kicked out of me,  don't worry about losing to anyone, I only want to be fast when it counts." I looked at my splits on my GPS and saw that I hit 194 heart rate at the end. I am pretty sure that is the highest I have seen this year. My first 2k was very fast, my second 2k was very slow, and my last 500 was surprisingly decent. 

So when they told me I went 17.23 I was pretty surprised to say the least. Usually the Kevin can be faster than the Charles because there are no buoys in and you can take the shore arches, but this week the shore arch was closed, so it was closer to a real HOCR course. 1723 is 10 seconds faster than I went last year and it is 7 seconds faster than John Biglow's long standing record from 1982, but that record was shattered last year by Kjetil Borch who went 1712. So while I was happy to have gone decently fast with what felt like a catastrophic piece, there is still a ways I need to go to beat the best. The exciting part is, looking at my race objectively, there's a lot to work with. 

This weekend we will be racing down in Putney, VT at the Green Mountain Head which is becoming my favorite race of the year. I am looking forward to testing out some different pacing strategies this weekend and see how they play out over the 5k race. By pacing strategies I mean, I am going to pace myself at all.