Ethereal Rowing

Today’s main indoor rowing was 10K done online with two other guys.  One of them was in England and he was the one who scheduled the session.  He named the session “Hillbilly_10K”.  I asked him about the hillbilly part and he said that’s his nickname because he makes home brew.

I know that making home brew of various sorts is a hobby for some people and that you can even buy kits, to get started.  But that’s another topic.

The description he gave for today’s online 10K included the question, “are you tuff enough?” which seemed to add to the enjoyment of the whole thing by defining the completion of the 10K as an accomplishment worthy of some kind of recognition.

We all started out at about 2:04.  After a bit, “Hillbilly” slowed a bit and gradually dropped further and further behind. Joe Vanischak and I kept that pace of 2:04 point something until about halfway then I slowed down.

I continued to row at a slower pace until “Hillbilly” caught up, then I picked up my pace to stay even with him.  When the distance counted down to less than 200 meters, Joe started a sprint, then Hillbilly started sprinting.  When the remaining distance was less than 100 meters, I did a little sprinting also and we all finished very close to each other.  It was fun.

The session was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording at: Indoor Rowing 10K friendly online race 04202018.

Happy rowing to you.

Today’s indoor rowing was done online.  It was done online because there was a 10K scheduled, with several rowers already signed up and the description for the 10K included the words “Every pace is accepted”.  So my slow pace wouldn’t be any bother.

Not that anybody rowing slowly should be a bother – I like to row online with other people, no matter how slow or fast they row.  Company is good.

The Olympian in the group was Wolfram Huhn.  There’s a Wikipedia article about him.  That article is classified as a “stub” waiting for expansion, but it has links relating directly to him.

There was a nice race between Wolfram Huhn and Tomek Kobryzyniecki during this session.  Tomek started out to take the lead, getting a few meters ahead of Wolfram.  Wolfram picked up his pace and caught up to Tomek after about 1300 meters. Then, for a few hundred meters, Wolfram seemed to be pacing Tomek to stay even with him.  After a few hundred meters of pacing him, Wolfram pulled ahead by a meter, then gradually, meter by meter, continued to pull ahead of Tomek until he had more than 20 meters lead.   During the last 1,000 meters they both rowed harder as Tomek tried to catch up to Wolfram.  Their paces had been in the low 1:50s until then but during the last 500 meters they worked their hardest and each showed paces in the high 1:30s near the very end.

The winner was Wolfram, who reached the finish line about 10 -15 meters and about 3 seconds ahead of Tomek.

The entire session plus the warm down afterwards was uploaded to YouTube as a screen recording and may be viewed at the following link: “Online Rowing 10K then warmdown 71 years old 04072018”

Happy rowing to you.