Yay!!! (tournament's over: UPDATE on the races)

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I'm a light-weight and I do 6:27. That doesn't even make me the fastest on the crew though (I think that's 6:24). As my personal best was 6:27 last year, I planned on going below 6:20 this season, but I failed to put on enough strength to do so. I did improve on my PB, though, I got it from 6:27.4 to 6:27.2

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Oh, and just to make things clear: 2k (2000 metres) is the standard distance for a rowing regatta (it's the Olympic distance as well). Usually to judge how strong someone individually is, they do an erg test [on the rowing machine] over a distance of 2000 metres.
The world record for heavyweights is 5:39 (which is amazingly fast) and for light weights (below 75 kg on erg matches) is 6:02 (which is blazing fast as well). You have to imagine that a decent freshman eight rows approximately 6 minutes flat over 2000 metres on the water.

[shadowhound]

Wow excellent work, I am sure you will do well
I am going to stick with my excersize of getting out of bed, walking to computer and getting roaring drunk during the weekend... and thursday nights... and whenever (at least until uni starts again).

[johnny]

Let me know when exactly it is, and we'll try to be there to fire you up a bit.

[N^N]

Good idea johnny, we support you all the way Link! KICK ASS! (congrats btw! [img]smile.gif[/img] )

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Alright, after two weeks of virtual silence, I'm back and running. It's been a real hectic training period, and the following tournament was both extremely cool to have participated in, but at the same time something that was physically and mentally so demanding that I'm glad it's over.

Past thursday we had our first race, we were in heat 3 competing against Japan, Russia, South Africa and Great Britain -- we only knew about Great Britain, having rowed against them in Holland once before. The other crews proved to be of lesser stature, even when considering our crew had only been rowing together for 4 weeks!*
With a strokerate of 39 strokes a minute (according to the race commentator "Extremely high!") we lost to the British by a mere 0,08 seconds (over a distance of 2000 metres!). Again the commentator: "The closest of margins". On worldrowing.com we were even compaired to our senior heavyweight counterparts (coxless fours); the past year and a half The Netherlands and Great Britain have been battling it out for the gold medal in that field.
Anyhow, our second place was more than enough to go through to the semi-finals on saturday. Even a third place would have done nicely, and that seat had been taken by Japan in our race, following a whopping 6 seconds (which is much!) after both GB and us. Russia and South Africa were lagging even further behind.

Our success in the heats meant that we had a day off on Friday, because we didn't need a Repechage to get into the semi's. We used that day to take some rest; we had an outing to get things together, but all in all that day was over in no time. Come saturday, and we knew we had to give it all. Most of the times, the semi-finals in any sport are the most demanding, because ALL athletes wish to compete in the grand final. On top of that, we really had a tough group to compete with: Greece (the silver medal winners of the year before), Italy (a true light-weight rowing country -- they won the tournament in the end), France (who are up and coming in light weight rowing and whose rowers all had international experience), Switzerland (three out of four had competed last year in different boat types) and finally Portugal. We gave all we had, battling against the others and the fierce head wind that suddenly arose, but to no avail: after 1500 metres of the total 2000 we were in fourth position, 2 seconds behind France. A third place would have been enough to reach the final, but we were spent. In the sprint to the finish Switzerland steamed past, and we were fifth across the line.
Of course, we were depressed. The past two years the Dutch four had been 5th in the tournament, and this time we couldn't get better than 7th. Our coach forced us to regain our spirits to battle it out in the B-final on Sunday 23rd of July.

Alas, this B-final didn't go as planned. The other crews, America, Canada, Switzerland, Portugal and Japan were as keen as we were to get 7th place. We managed to stick to the USA en Canada for a long time, but our inexperience, and the burden of being lightweight for over four days (you can imagine it's hard weighing 71 kilograms when your natural weight is approx. 77...) kicked in and we had to let them go. We did manage to overhaul Portugal in the finishing sprint, giving it all, raising the rate to an astonishing 44 strokes per minute.

And so my first international tournament was over. I had lots of fun, learned incredibly much, traded one of my outfits for an Australian one, but most of all: EAGER FOR MORE. Disappointment with the tenth place overall (although for the amount of time we had certainly not a bad performance!) is a good thing. I want to compete internationally again, preferably anytime soon.

Thanks for the support guys. Here's a picture of me and my crew at the start of our thursday heat:




* Take it from me: most crews participating in the World Under 23 Championships have either been rowing for a very long time to begin with, or have at least rowed together for a year or so.