Tuesday Evening Crab

My team, the Women's team, has practice on Tuesday evenings. It is sometimes difficult for me to make this practice because I have to stay home with the Princess whenever my husband cannot be back from work in time. Tonight though, I made it.

The lake was a busy place tonight. We had four boats out on the water--1 eight, 1 quad, 1 double, and 1 men's single. In addition, we had the Bay Blades, a gay and lesbian friendly group of LMRC, with 1 quad and 1 double. As we were all launching at the dock, we also had 1 mixed double come in from their workout. LMRC is not a big club so it is great to see so it's great to see many boats out.

The flat water of this morning was gone by the evening, and the wind was picking up at about 10 mph. The conditions were perfect for practicing for San Diego Crew Classic, which is known for having windy conditions, especially at the 600m mark. I was in the 8+, at 7 seat, starboard. We did a whole lake loop warm-up and practiced some starts. The boat struggled with the set, teetering between starboard and port. This is a change because for whatever mind-boggling reason or reasons, our boat usually sits down on starboard. In the stern, the set felt shaky, and I can only imagine how much worse it was in the bow. The starts were bad; they felt like a free-for-all with water splashing everywhere. The main workout was 2x(4'/3'/2'/1') at rates 26-28-30-32spm, with enough recovery time in between sets to paddle it back to the finger, so about 5-7 minutes of rest. The 4 minutes at a 26spm were okay; we had some good set of strokes where the boat had good run, but it was not consistent. We had no problem bringing up the rate to 28spm and 30spm. I attribute this to our very strong stroke seat who, no matter what, was solid on the rate with no rush. The 32spm was more chaotic. Overall, the intent of hard effort was there, but the distraction of the set prevented us to really consistently apply powerful strokes to the water.

On the last piece, in the last 20 strokes, 5 seat caught a boat-stopping crab. There was a moment of confusion and panic before we extracted the blade and jumped right back into the piece at a 33spm. This was actually a good opportunity to review what to do in the case of a crab during a race. When there is a boat-stopping crab, one that cannot be extracted without slowing the boat down first, the rest of the boat should lean away from the crab. This allows the oar to rise closer to the water's surface and hopefully "pop" right out. The rower who caught the crab should also turn the oar so that it is perpendicular to the water's surface. Catching a crab does not mean your race is over. You might lose time and probably will not win, but you can finish your race. If you catch a massive crab that ejects you out of the boat (*knock on wood), however, that's a whole different story.