8x500m

Tuesday evening:  In a mad dash to get out of work, pick up the Princess, drop her off with a generous friend, and get to practice, I was pretty frazzled by the time I arrived at the boathouse.

The women's team had 1 eight and 2 doubles out on the water, and the Bay Blades had 1 men's quad and 1 men's double.  I was in four seat, a seat with which I am pretty familiar from college days.  In fact, I enjoyed rowing in four seat today and just looking up ahead at six seat and not worrying about anything except for pulling.  We warmed up to the log boom.  Chris told us that the workout would be 500m pieces.  All the odd pieces would have starts, and all the even pieces would have sprints.  The Bay Blades quad would also be doing the workout with us.  Misery loves company.

I distinctly remember that Chris did not say how many pieces we were doing because I was waiting to hear him say a number.  Other teammates though can almost swear that Chris said we were doing six pieces.  In our training for San Diego Crew Classic, we have done 6x500m pieces before so it was perfect reasonably and rational to assume we were doing six pieces.

1.  The eight and the quad lined up at the log boom for the first piece.  In the eight, our start was bad, unset and not together.  My body felt shocked from the accumulation of lactic acid, and the whole piece hurt like hell.  I knew this was a pretty typical reaction for me on the first piece and that the shock would disappear as the pieces went on.  

2.  The second piece was more together, but the water was also rougher and a tailwind followed us in that direction, making the boat harder to set. 

3.  The third piece had a much better, cleaner start, and our coxswain called a ten for swing during the settle. 

4.  The fourth piece had the longest sprint in the world.  Chris told the coxswain to call the sprint before we passed the blue boathouse, and we must have sprinted for the last 300 meters, if not 350 meters.  After we had already brought up the rate to our sprint rate for 20 or 30 strokes, the coxswain told us we had 20 strokes to go.  That makes a really long sprint. 

5.  The fifth piece was solid with a clean start again.  The headwind on all the odd pieces helped with the set and helped us find our rhythm and swing.  

6.  While we lined up for the sixth piece, I was waiting for Chris to say, "Last piece of the day" or "Leave it on the water," something to rally the troops, but Chris did not say anything of the sort.  Instead, he came around and said, "I want you to move on that quad in the first 50 meters, and I want you to start your sprint earlier.  I want the rate up to a 38 or 40spm.  I do not care how ugly it looks."  Earlier?!  What did he think we were doing before?  Not hearing the word "last," I had the foreboding feeling that this would not be the last piece of the day.  This piece started out ugly and got uglier with our seven seat catching a violent crab about 150 meters in.  The crab knocked her back, and her red Lake Merritt Rowing Club hat flew into the water and was lost.  We have had before one or two boat-stopping crabs , and the boat knew what to do and reacted quickly, allowing the oar to be extracted. 

7.  After that piece, Chris said to line up the boats again and that we had two more pieces to do.  There was a bit of aghast and murmuring in the boat.  We had never done eight 500m pieces before.  Did he not see the six 500m pieces that we just did?!  The seventh piece actually ended up being the most relaxed piece.  

8.  Before the eighth piece, Chris did explicitly say that this was the last piece and that we should leave it on the water, just in case he was lying to us and we were actually doing ten pieces.  The eighth piece was again rough and crazy with the us trying to maintain the sprint rate, and my hands hit my legs once as I came up the slide.  Eight pieces and we were done.

Today, I officially feel out of shape and under prepared.  My lower back hurt from the even pieces, which included the sprint.  For some reason, although we had a tailwind for the even pieces, the boat felt heavier and had more check.  When your back hurts, it is very important to monitor it closely.  High intensity and large volume are often the culprits of back injuries.  You must be strong enough in the back and core to be able to support that type of intensity and volume, and I definitely did not feel particularly strong.

To Chris' point, we are moving away from 2,000 meters like for San Diego Crew Classic and towards 1,000 meters, which is the distance for most masters racing.   For 1,000 meter races, you have pretty much a start, settle, short body, and sprint.  For an eight, the race is over in 3-4 minutes.  You cannot dilly-dally at a low rate, trying to find the rhythm.  As we practiced with the 500m pieces, you just have to go, go, go.