rowing
stoat | August 5, 2010Bumps is over, so tis the season for off-the-river exercise again. Yes, I know that no-one but me cares about this but it is *my* blog.
30 minute erg, heart rate. Split varying from 1:56 to 2:00 for most of it, down to 1:39 just before the line (yes I know: it means I should have pusehed earlier), distance 7582, so overall split around 1:59. Sadly no speeds on this - the watch got confused since I was wiggling back and forth in place.
Lunchtime run with Ian. 3 laps of Milton Country Park, last lap alone and faster (note it is plotting pace not speed), peak heart rate on the "sprint" coming…
stoat | July 24, 2010 Oh dear, and we were rowing so well, too. Our best row of the week, and we pushed hard to get Cantabs, but while we closed on them (again!) it wasn't enough to hold off the Leys who came up astonishingly fast to get their blades.
But a good night for the club overall. M3 put in some very tenacious rowing to hold off City 10, who were on for blades, until Grassy. With a large overlap (but not quite big enough for an automatic bump without touching) Emma Howard steered a brilliant line, helped (apparently) by M3's natural tendency to turn to strokeside. And then City's cox put too much thought…
stoat | July 22, 2010A somewhat disappointing day today: we rowed well, but only achieved a row-over. Nines 5, as expected, succumbed quickly to Leys behind us, perhaps depriving us of that vital spark of being chased. But while we closed to within a canvas of Cantabs 7 just before Grassy we didn't quite have the oomph to catch them. So here is a picture of us from yesterday, rowing up to the start.
Day 1 | Day 2
Pic courtesy of itinerant bow-bobble supplier Andy Nicol (well, when I say courtesy of, I mean I've ripped it off but provided you with a link to him. In fact Andy credits "Ivan Edwards" with the photos…
stoat | July 21, 2010 Yesterday we rowed over, but discovered that we could leave the crew behind us and most likely catch the crew (Nines 5) that Cantabs 7 dropped for us. And so we did, just under the motorway bridge, which was a pleasantly short row. We had just a teensy tiny little moment of panic on the second stroke when someone on bowside got a minor crablet but we recovered from that quite nicely (we had managed a truely storming practice start on the reach that fairly whizzed us along. Alas that used up our one good start of the day :-(). We'll need to row rather better tomorrow if we want to get Cantabs…
stoat | July 20, 2010It is the first night of the bumps (and see? I haven't bored you with the boaties for ages).
This isn't us - this is Cantabs II in M1 just about to catch what must be 99's III, I'd guess. Congratulations to all of them and in particular Petr Arnold at bow. He certainly looked very happy afterwards. Slightly bad news for our M1 who are now ahead of them tomorrow.
To explain my cryptic notation in the title: W2 went up; M3 went down; we (M2) rowed over; W1 and M1 rowed over.
Our race was quite interesting. St Ives (rather an unknown quantity behind us) gained a little on the start but fell…
stoat | June 26, 2010
'You are old', said the youth, 'and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak -
Pray, how did you manage to do it?'
'In my youth', said his father, 'I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life.' [1]
Yes, yet another post with zero science but don't go away - there is some rowing later after the tedious bits. And so: exhibit 1 is the glasses, which you'll immeadiately note are varifocals. I have spent the past 2 years…
stoat | June 20, 2010Yes, another of those posts about the tedious details of my life that you care nothing about. And also an advert for my honey, hurrah.
In the middle you'll see my beehive. I've finally done most of the honey-related stuff this year (see-also previous bee blogging) so if you live nearby and care to purchase some finest quality Stoat honey with only a few bits of dead bee in it, please email. This year it does seem to be rape, judging by the speed at which it sets. The "comedy" aspect of the beekeeping was the way I managed to stumble around knocking the supers nearly off as I tried to get the…
stoat | June 12, 2010
A glorious days bumping action on the Cam, rounded off with a confident row-over by First and Third. Here they are looking happy afterwards, as well they might. The jollity here is in marked contrast to the totally zoned-in look all the top boats had during the race, where everyone was staring past the end of the world. There is a bit of crew commentary here.
And also congratulations to Pembroke who had a similarly untroubled time as head of the Women's divisions, though not by quite the margin FAT had. But I don't have a pic of them, so here is LMBC (5) just about to bump Caius (6).
Full…
stoat | June 6, 2010We' re recently acquired the second half of that vital twosome, the cat, to complement our Roomba. And so, here is a picture of our cat, Phoebe, on a Roomba.
I hope you're not too disappointed. Alas the book has not been much used - I've read it a bit for fun but never got round to the projects - life is too short.
Meanwhile, in other non-climate news, we went to Peterborough regatta today. It being Sunday, it was the sprints (500m). We did OK, though not well, as a mens novice VIII: 1:36 in both the heats (2nd, by 1 second) and repechage (2nd, by too small a time to measure but about 1 foot…
stoat | May 23, 2010 Sunday was the Champs Head. It is a slightly odd head race: a short course (1200m, from the Plough to the Pike and Eel) from a standing start, but the start is just for fun, since you get timed from a few strokes in. It was a blazing day, it felt like the heights of midsummer not late spring, lovely to be out on the river.
I rowed for our M1 in the first division at 12, which was a fair enough race. James Tidy won the not-quite-too-far-over-the-top total coxing arrogance prize by overtaking everyone dawdling about by the railings. This raised a few eyebrows (this is England, don't y'know,…
stoat | May 8, 2010There is some more Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality up - go get it now (ht: Paul).
Ha ha, fooled you. This is actually a post about rowing :-). Today was the H2H or Head to Head: 2000m, a brief break (well, 20 mins wating by the bank in the rain, yummy; and lets not mention the brief altercation with the marshall over our spinning :-), then 2000m back. We took 14:22, which is quite passable... I'd be happy to do that on an erg. It was also a very clean row and enjoyable. We got stuffed by various 1st Mays crews (winner: 12:48). But in the rowing and running theme, it is…
stoat | May 2, 2010
Yes, another boatie post. I promise you a short break for at least a few days after this one. Unlike our little event on the Cam, Wallingford is The Big Time, and to celebrate the regatta is... yes, you guessed: nowhere near Wallingford at all. That confused me no end. It is in fact on Eton (old sausage) rowing lake (Dorney), a massive trench in the ground designed, as far as I can see, primarily to demonstrate that Eton has (or perhaps had, before they did this) stupendous quantities of spare cash. Though to be fair they did a decent cup of coffee and flapjack at a fair price.
Here is a…
stoat | May 1, 2010
Tis a beautiful first of May and also the Head of the Cam which Chesterton (hurrah!) organises, I think in conjunction with Press, though most of the marshalls and organisation looked to be Chesteron folk to me. I was marshalling for the first division, and my call sign was "Mr Asbo", since I was on "Asbo corner" better known as Ditton corner. My pic shows the first boat down, Caius [update: and as it turns out, the winners (oops no I'm wrong: as it turns out (thanks to James T for correcting me), that was their M2 (9:42); M1 were in div 3. Looking very good for an M2)], and this is…
stoat | April 20, 2010
As trailed in March and promised recently I owe a report on the Head of the River Race (a follow up to the Hammersmith Head). Tune out now if you don't care for boatie stuff. There is only one river, of course, the Thames; and only one head. We are insular folk. But the race isn't: although most of the crews were British there were a scattering of high class foreign entrants from Spain, Germany, Czech, Italy and so on. Full results are here; Molesey won, if you were wondering, in 17 21.76 . But we didn't concern ourselves with that end. Having started at 354 (where else do you put an…
stoat | March 14, 2010Mothers day, and so like all good fathers I went off rowing, only in this case I went Off a little further than normal, since we were competing in the Hammersmith Head.
First, however, I did my fatherly duty by assisting Miranda (who woke up especially to remind me that it was mothers day and that she ought to do this) to make M a cup of tea, and to set out her breakfast when she came down, and presenting the paper bouquet carefully.
The Ladies (or Girls, or Totty, or Wenches, or Bitches (those latter two not, I think: only Emma and Sarah were kind enough to help us with boating, so got to be…
stoat | March 6, 2010Warning: this post is of limited general interest, unless you (like all right-thinking people) are interested in rowing. More photos than you could ever wish to see are here.
We got a new eight today (well actually it turned up during the week, as Amy already noted; but this was the first outing); "we" being Chesterton Rowing Club (yes, I know, the site is in bad need of update). It is a shiny new Janousek, though I'm sorry to say I don't even know exactly which model. Having looked for a long time for a decent affordable second hand boat we eventually said "b*gg*r it" and bought a new one,…
stoat | February 26, 2010When we all wake up by the Onion.
Spam: I wrote a website for a friend who does English/German translation. This is my attempt to push it up the google rankings and maybe even get her some business: http://baumgarten-translations.com/.
ScruffyDan on the incoherent septic response to Siddall et al.
Daniel: stronger than 3/4 of a sausage.
We were going to the Head of the Trent tomorrow (well, today now, cos I delayed this post) but the forecast is looking awful: Div 2 and the novices are already cancelled (for some mad reason we were entered as IM2). Since that means I don't have to get up at…
stoat | February 8, 2010About the furthest you can row on the Cam (unless you go over Baits Bite to Bottisham) is Baits Bite lock to Jesus Lock; and that seems to have become our regular monday evening practice. Warmup, spin, down to Jesus Lock, steady state to Baits Bite, then a piece back. It is about 5 km I think; Baits Bite to the Motorway bridge must be ~30 strokes, then it was (tonight, slight following wind, rating 24) 530 strokes to Jesus Lock (and a rapid stop to avoid going under the weir). The rowcoach said ~1:55 split average, maybe a little better. We need to learn to take the rating up; the first half…
stoat | January 23, 2010In which I yet again abuse science blogs to discuss matters of little import to general readers. But it's my blog, so there.
The rowing was the Head to Head, which involves rowing the 2 km form the Railway bridge to the Motorway bridge, spinning, and then rowing back. You get a rest of ~20 mins while the division comes through, or maybe more, I wasn't timing it. Our time turns out to be a bit rubbish but we weren't that bad. The first leg, which is downstream, was OK; the second, against the stream and therefore slower, we stuffed up somewhat with poor technique and a few mini-crabs; the…
stoat | January 11, 2010So I was coming upstairs after talking to the digits about the things you talk to digits about, when a little beep came from my mobile receiving a text message and I just knew it was going to be the outing coming On. 4pm on a cold dark monday with only 4 people signed up: I thought there was a fair chance of it being cancelled and me getting a chance to work late (oooh how I love a chance to work late). But no, thanks to James (the one how lives on a boat, except that isn't specific enough, the one who lives on a boat and has a cat not a dog, that will do) we were out in the Four of Death (…