Pre-Race Day

Hi All,

Some insights from our strokeman on the last day of prep...

Stardate No????? The vacuum before big race day

And so the annoying ‘hurry up and do nothing’ day before competition is upon us. This is a tricky time since the aim is to keep occupied enough to distract, but not become too engrossed or overtaxed. Essentially it is a fine balance between rest and active recovery. The worst case scenario is to become too agitated through unnecessary worry or repeatedly overemphasising the significance of the very near future before it is upon us. Everybody knows but none of us mention that by this time tomorrow many hours of time and effort, not just ours but all those who have helped get us here, may be over in roughly 7 minutes. Yesterday I ran into a very old rowing comrade, not only a former coach of mine but also an East German national and ex West Australian institute of Sport, head coach. He was one of the former Eastern Bloc coach’s who did a runner shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Unfortunately his current crew, all the way from QLD, was eliminated in yesterday’s pre-selection trials by less than one second, a very long way to travel to narrowly miss qualifying for the actual regatta itself.

This might be a good time to mention how we’ve decided to tactically tackle tomorrow’s race. Although we can’t or don’t have any direct influence over what our competition is going to do, based on our experience so far we can have a fairly educated guess. Most crews at Henley tend to bolt out of the block at a furious rate and don’t seem to slow down till at least “The Barrier” approximately 400m into the race. The course keeps a record of fastest times for all boat classes to the ‘Barrier’, since it is apparently a prestigious title to hold. Except perhaps for a certain Fawley Cup crew that last year smashed the ‘To the Barrier’ record but still managed lose the race.  At Henley, there seems to be a culture of retaining the psychological advantage of covering or controlling the race by remaining in the lead at all costs. This tactic is pretty effective if you happen to find yourself in 1) an extremely powerful and aggressive crew and 2) racing against a crew that is likely to become rattled or intimidated into making mistakes or losing confidence.

Unfortunately we are not, comparatively speaking, a particularly powerful crew, but fortunately rarely become overly stressed, since we are expecting it, when crews annihilate us out of the blocks. Therefore our tactics will be and have pretty much been for the last couple of years, to grind our way through the middle 1000m. We tend to make very few, often no calls throughout the race. Usually our starts consist of 30 strokes rating 40-43, before settling down to 33-36 strokes per min. However, if we find ourselves too far behind after 600m Sam (3seat) and I (stroke) seat will start the push for the line early, slowly adding half a point to the rating till we fight our way back. Personally when stroking boats against  powerful and aggressive crews that have opened up a  significant lead I often pretend that the race is now over 1500m not 2000m. It is one of those do or die situations, if you do not get within striking distance within 400 – 450m to go then you’ve just lost.  Conrad’s (2 seat) job will basically to work and transfer the rhythm changes to Drew (bow) seat. Drew, who is usually in the position to make calls, will have his hands, or shall we say feet full, steering the boat.

This evening we had our last training paddle for the regatta. Typically it wasn’t our best, but then again before a major race it never is. Good to get all the average rowing out of the way.

Shane

We'll post again after our race, hopefully in a positive frame of mind!  Once again, the race will be 6:45pm GMT or 3:45am EST.  Thanks for the overwhelming number of messages of support, sorry we haven't had time to reply to all of you but you have been heard!

Cheers, Drew