One of our athletes sent me the above picture, taken on Friday morning after we tried to launch and got fogged off. Our dock is in the middle of the fog bank dead center, you can see the river and Willamette Park in the clear. The fog on Friday was patchy and frustrating-- one minute the river would be clear, the next completely covered over. Although I was quite frustrated by the missed opportunity I clearly remember as an athlete how welcome unexpected rest can be.
Today was much better. We got smart and went behind Ross Island and as a result got a great row in. On the woman's side we boated an eight and a novice four and went out for some solid independent work; both crews made lots of changes. A bit of redemption for the crash-n-bash last Saturday.
Another highlight was a sighting of a Willamette River Otter. Jim & I spotted one on shore during the rest between a couple of pieces; it was trotting along and almost seemed to be following us. Very cool.
The eight did three pieces before we linked up with the four to work on our starts and high strokes. When I got home I started geeking out with data from our Speedcoach; this will be my first spring season using one of these gidgets. We have yet to calibrate the system, so we don't know how accurate in an absolute sense the speed is yet, but it was very interesting to me to look at data from the pieces and compare relative speed to rate. Already I can see that we have some work to do with our 'stride' strokes after the start, and also with maintaining good send and speed through the main body of pieces. I'm pretty excited to get this system calibrated and start working the data into the main body of our workouts.
Here's the graph of our last piece today; 4' of 2' @ 25, 1' 27, 1' 30. Things were starting to come together well at this point and you can see a good build of pace and rate throughout.
Today was much better. We got smart and went behind Ross Island and as a result got a great row in. On the woman's side we boated an eight and a novice four and went out for some solid independent work; both crews made lots of changes. A bit of redemption for the crash-n-bash last Saturday.
Another highlight was a sighting of a Willamette River Otter. Jim & I spotted one on shore during the rest between a couple of pieces; it was trotting along and almost seemed to be following us. Very cool.
The eight did three pieces before we linked up with the four to work on our starts and high strokes. When I got home I started geeking out with data from our Speedcoach; this will be my first spring season using one of these gidgets. We have yet to calibrate the system, so we don't know how accurate in an absolute sense the speed is yet, but it was very interesting to me to look at data from the pieces and compare relative speed to rate. Already I can see that we have some work to do with our 'stride' strokes after the start, and also with maintaining good send and speed through the main body of pieces. I'm pretty excited to get this system calibrated and start working the data into the main body of our workouts.
Here's the graph of our last piece today; 4' of 2' @ 25, 1' 27, 1' 30. Things were starting to come together well at this point and you can see a good build of pace and rate throughout.
