What's the Hurry?

It has been a hectic last few days for me in the non-rowing, normal person world, but ironically, on Sunday, I seemed to be the one left behind.

Sundays are usually an informal practice with several other scullers at the club.  This Sunday, we had SIX singles out on the water--2 women's singles (me) and 4 men's singles!  Because the finger was invaded with weeds that get caught in a boat's skeg, we stayed in the main body of the lake and did loops around.

With Southwest Regionals over and no other sprint races left, I thought we could say goodbye to high rates.

On the first loop, I concentrated on my own boat, rowing a nice, steady 22spm.  By the time, I bothered looking around, all the other boats were much farther ahead!  Hmm, maybe I was having a bad day and rowing slow or maybe everyone else was having an amazing day and rowing fast.  At the turnaround point at the Embarcadero, I cut my turn short and started out ahead of everyone else.  And again, everyone else was moving much faster and quickly caught up to me.

I am the slowest of all the scullers, but at least usually, I can hang with a few of them for awhile.  I thought maybe, in the four days that I was swimming, I somehow got slower rowing.  But when I looked more carefully at everyone else, I realized that they were all pounding away at a 26spm or 28spm.  No wonder I was so slow!

With head races and (god forbid) a marathon race next on the calendar, what's the hurry?  I had assumed that the workout was steady state, but who am I kidding?

"It ain't steady state when you have two boats next to each other." --Wolfe