Frustration

This was the night of frustration. Kat coxed and George coached. We were missing Matt, Allan and Rich (and Sikander, which wasn’t much of a loss), so we all moved up two seats, so the boat looked like this:

Stroke – Liz

7 – Zak

6 – Martin

5 – Ashley

4 – me

3 – Fran

2 – Claire (sub)

Bow – Ewan

There was unbelievable traffic on the river. There were crews and scullers everywhere. There were no incidents this time, but we were quite held up at one stage. Zak’s seat came off about 5 times, which made me angry at the boat – some of the riggers have started making ominous groaning sounds too. I wonder how much pressure would make them break.

We warmed up, then did sixes all the way up to the lock (might have done eights for a time). It was going fairly well, and then we stopped and spun and George gave us some feedback. He said that I was looking fine and that I was setting a great rhythm for the others to follow. He had the idea of us trying outside hand only, which I’d been wanting to try. It was to think about the function of the outside hand without the distraction of feathering, and to use the other hand to test how the slide is happening. The stern four tried it first and didn’t do it terribly well – there were blades skidding all over the place. Then the bow four tried it and we kicked arse. I had no trouble controlling the blade, but had to consciously add the fast arms away and body over before the slide. In the end I think I successfully linked the exercise with my normal rowing action. It was good practise for me to get my tap-down for the finish better.

We did a few starts from frontstops and rowed all eight all the way back. The balance was ok at times, but there were a few quite unforgivable violent lurches. We did one section of firm pressure rowing (I think Kat was saying ‘firm’ – it sounded like ‘half’ to me. Maybe it was ‘hard’) and the balance was very good and the boat was moving quite fast. Then in the very last section, Liz’s rhythm went completely barmy. She was going so fast that no one could follow her – I kept shaking my head and Fran was laughing at me.

So there were good things about this session, but on the whole I was just frustrated. Kat told me my squaring was too late or non-existent but when there’s water directly below my blade for the whole recovery there’s not a lot I can do.

This night was the first night I felt the motion of the boat while lying in bed. I suspect it won’t be the last.