Today’s session was 10K online with several other rowers who were located in Canada, France, Italy, Germany and one other guy besides me who was in America.
Before the 10K I did a 7 minute warm up.
For the 10K I planned to row a pace of 2:12.7/500 meters, which would be fairly easy and 1/10th of a second/500m faster than I’d entered into this season’s rankings so far for a 10K.
But after it started, the guy in Italy kept even with me and then picked up the pace slightly. I picked up the pace slightly also, to stay even with him and we settled into a pace of about 2:05 for a few thousand meters. At a little more than halfway, he went a little faster and so did I. It was turning into a race but so far it was fun and there was no strain.
He picked up the pace a bit more and I started thinking about whether I wanted to continue staying even and wait until the last 500 meters to do a finish sprint or… if perhaps he would be able to sprint faster than me in those last 500 meters then perhaps I should pick up the pace earlier and see if he would let me get a lead before the last 500 meters.
I did the latter and picked up the pace to 1:59+ for the last 2,000 meters and gained about 35 meters on him to finish ahead. I looked him up on concept2.com and he appears to be quite competitive because his photo shows him at the C.R.A.S.H.-B. races in Boston in 2014. So maybe he let me win. Whether he let me win or not, the race was fun and a nice change of pace from rowing a slow 15K with my eyes closed.
So this is for him if he happens to read this blog post: Grazie, Matteo.
Happy trails.