At the Mercy of the Elements

Driving to the course this morning for the Fall Speed Order I saw mirrored reflections on Lake Carnegie.  I was thinking to myself that this will be a fast race with perfectly flat conditions.  In the back of my mind I was remembering the wind forecast I looked up the previous night that said a 8-9 mph headwind would appear between 8 and 9 am.  However, I ignored the forecast saying to myself, "There's no way the wind will pick up from 0-9 mph in 1 hour.  I WAS WRONG (we started at 9:15)

Will and I shoved from the dock at 8:38.  We wanted to get a good warm-up in to row the 6k erg test out of our legs before the race.  About 3k in to the warm-up I noticed there were no more mirror reflections and the wind kept building over the next 10 minutes in to a pretty stiff head wind headed straight down the first 1/2 of the 3 mile course.  I told Will it would be awesome.  We would just pound it in to the head wind and make everyone hurt.  What I forgot to think about was how much it would hurt me as well...

We had a solid piece, but that first 1.5 miles was tough.  After every stroke it just felt like the boat was slowing down way more than it should.  It was painful and I'm sure added a good 20+ seconds to the first 1/2 of the race.  Then we started to turn and found about 150 meters of shelter and started to gain some momentum.  Once the wind became more of a cross head instead of a direct head we got in to a better rhythm and moved a bit.

Rowing is funny.  Conditions can change in an instant and there is nothing you can do about it but bear down and pull hard.  At least it wasn't hailing.

Enjoy the video (Will Newell and I doing some low rate stuff earlier this week).

- Jimmy