Rudder and I rowed together in the double this morning, not a usual thing. The plan four July 4th week is to spend a few days with his family, race on Saturday in the Rural Henley, a small race at Klamath Falls, OR, drive to Sacramento (6 hours) immediately after the race, where we'll meet a bunch of other Outlaw rowers, then race there on Sunday and drive home on Monday. Since it will be just the two of us and a small race, we plan to race a double together. We've never raced a small boat together and in fact today was only about our third time in a double together. (We have raced in the same boat often, but usually with me coxing and him rowing in an eight. Not at all the same.) It went very well, I think better than either of us expected. It helps that we've worked with the same coaches and have critiqued each other and row in the same style. We were actually pretty fast, certainly faster than I'd have expected. Today's planned workout was to do three laps of our lake, including warm up, 4 ten-minute pieces each consisting of 4 min at a rate of 28, 3 min at 30, 2 at 32, 1 at 34 and a cooldown. Rudder went a little easy on me, at least; we did the first piece at rates from 22 to 28, the second from 24-30, and the third and fourth from 26-32. For the two of us, rowing at 34 strokes per minute is clearly a little silly - that is, we could do it but on the recovery we'd be hauling ourselves up the slides instead of letting the boat move under us. It was good though, smooth and coordinated and with only minor issues. We did well at correcting any problems. It was much better than a usual third row with a new partner, but I suppose you could say we've been working on matching our rhythm for a long time now.
I'm tired still. (Though not as tired as I'll be after two back to back races and all that driving!)
In other news, in the sweater I'm knitting, I've gotten as far along as I was on Sunday when I had to frog the whole thing. (Sort of a standard knitting joke; frog because rip-it, rip-it.) This time I am sure i's not twisted. (Of course, I was pretty sure last time too. Still not sure how that happened.) Also, I have a bunch of tiny jasper stars, one larger jasper star, one moon bead made of some kind of black sonte (maybe a different sort of jasper) and a shard of jasper that reminds me of a comet that want to be something together. Problem is, I'm not sure whether they want to be earrings, a necklace, or maybe even a barrette, and then what shape they want to be in. (I think the little stars want to dangle, though.) I may just wait a bit and see what other night-sky beads I come across (if I wait for November I'll have a meteorite bead!) and what ideas flutter by.
Posted by dichroic at June 8, 2006 02:25 PM