September 2009 Archives

My first head race, the Head of the Harlem Regatta was this weekend.  The course started near Yankee stadium and finsihed at the Peter Jay Sharpe Boahouse on the Harlem river.

Head of the Harlem Regatta 2009 Pictures Posted: http://stoked.cc/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=4044  

About a month and half ago someone clued me into the fact that head races were 3 miles or about 5k.  This is about 5x the length of the 1k sprint courses I rowed this spring as a novice.  I'm not going to lie, at first I was less then optimistic, as I started working on more 5k erg pieces.   

It turns out I kind of like head racing.  In sprints you have about 3 1/2 minutes in which to determine the outcome of your day, and what may be the result of several months of training.  In the short race every second and every stroke counts, if you make a mistake you may easily not have time to recover from it.  In the head race, technique is key, and your in it for the long haul. You can't muscle the boat down the course, if you did you would exhaust yourself long before the finish line. if you miss a stroke, or catch a crab you have time to make it up. The roughtly 18 minute race is also suficiently exhausting.  It feels like you put out enough effort to justify your time of prepping and getting up much before the crack of dawn.  I much prefer the sailing methodology where you get to do a series of races and the winner is the one with the best score overall. It eliminates the "got lucky" factor. 

It was also really cool to actually race on the Harlem.  Rowing a single on the river was no small feat, But I kept it dry side up despite some swells and large wakes from passing motorboats.  

Last week I realized that setting my alarm clock to go off early enough to go to the gym was less effective when it was still dark when the alarm clock went off.  If it's dark out I inevitably whack the snooze button for an hour or so until I absolutely have to get out of bed.  If I set the alarm 30 minutes later to go off when it's actually light out, I am much more inclined to actually get out of bed. Since then I've started making it to the gym in the morning before work.  

After dragging myself out of bed, I sat down to eat a bowl of cereal.  I started to contemplate what am I doing here.  Here meaning both geography and space/time.  I think much of it was brought on by a conversation with my brother who was extolling the benefits of living in Manhattan.  My rebuttal that living in Manhattan would bankrupt me fell on deaf ears.  Whether or not Manhattan is a great place to live is an entirely separate debate, and plenty of people like it well enough. The issue has much more to do with that in order for me to live in Manhattan I would have to substantially degrade my standard of living, and commit to just surviving in an apartment the size of a shoe box.  Also left out of the discussion is that unlike him, I don't go out to dinner or to drink very often.  Not that I'm in any way opposed to either, but I've got higher priorities from a time and money perspective, that just make a night on the town inconvienient. 

This train of thought brought me to a rather depressing thought that don't have as much of a cushion as I would like to defend against the unknown.   Around this time As i'm grabbing the last few flakes out of the bowl, I realize I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. 

The cooler air has brought back my enthusiasm to train for head racing season.  I'm currently a week a way from what might be my first head race.  A significant 3 mile challenge that makes my previous 1k sprints look easy.  To get ready I've started breaking out 5K pieces on the erg, and started hitting the gym.  I'm trying to lift once a week, run 10k 1-2x a week, and erg 2x a week.  In an effort to get back in shape I've brought in a couple 2x a day sessions.  Despite all this I noticed I've been gaining weight or at least not dropping the weight I accumulated over the summer.  I think I might need to take a harder look at what I've been eating.  But I may need to focus on that more in the off season.  

last weekend I jumped in the boat with the learn to row guys,  and I realize that in a year I've come along way.  I also was able to get in a boat with Chris and Mike in practice last week, and had a great row both times.  They also noticed an improvement.   On Saturday I managed to jump into practice with the HS kids again and this time NONE of them passed me on the 2 mile piece we did.  Although one of their guys definitely tried to close it in, particularly at the end.  To his defense, i had a head start, but this is still an improvement over where I was when I rowed against them before my first sprint race.