Training Day Report Weekend

Racing Weekend

This weekend was my second regatta ever. It was very exciting for me to see how I could compete in calmer water with someone who I have never rowed with before. During the camp Nikolai only came one day, then we could finally row together twice in a doubles boat. The water in Aegeri was good so I had 2 nice rows. On Saturday we were supposed to go train on the water before our race so we could see how we row together in a cox-less pair (a doubles boat where each rower rows sweep (one oar per person)) this didn’t happen due to the bad weather. We had the first race of the day in the cox-less pair and that went better than expected. The guys I row against have rowed for years and I have only rowed seriously for 4 months. The other boats were much faster than ours but we kept pulling through during the entire race. This exact same thing happened with our doubles race.  During both races the weather turned a bit better but overall the entire day it was pouring rain the entire time. We were freezing cold and not in the mood to race. The next day we raced the same races again but we were already done at 11. The most it rained all day was during our second race and this one was the hardest. When you’re in a boat in a race it is difficult if you haven’t done it many times. A 2000m race takes around 8 minutes and these will feel like 30minutes. What you are supposed to do in the boat as well is look at the distance cones in the water that will appear every 100 meter but it seemed like ages for the next cone to come, in the last race especially. We were cold tired and worn out. The last 300 meters we tried giving everything we could. We started getting this feeling in our bodies that we had enough but we kept pushing through with the rain falling on our face and then finally the finish line. We basically just collapsed we were so worn out and tired.