So the regatta is underway...

 

With all the NZ crews racing on Monday and four of them within an hour, things were always going to be hectic. We traditionally head down for a pre-race row before racing begins, most of the other cres staying at the hotel had similar ideas so the buses where pretty packed with athletes (and spectators who we share buses with) trying to get down to the course.

 

The weather was pretty much perfect, though a little on the hot side for my liking. I didn't feel as affected by the heat as the first week we arrived which lends some truth to the theory of the body adapting to conditions. Considering the state of the river when we first arrived the course was pretty much picture perfect, a slight tail breeze and, depending who you talked to, a slight tail current as well.

 

Our pre-race paddle felt reasonably good, and the way they seed the heats, I knew we should not come up against any crews that were a real threat. There were plenty of unknowns though, a few combinations had changed since racing in Lucerne and we hadn't had a decent hit out at 200 metres since leaving Europe six weeks before. But hey what are you going to do, lay down with 300 to go? we'll leave that to the Australians I think,  (disclaimer: not intended to cause offense to any readers with Australian heritage).

 

Due to the heat we shortened our warm-up for the race only get on 30 minutes before hand (normally we would do 40) and cut down the number of pieces, the heat is pretty sapping so not much point cooking ourselves before time.

 

The race itself pretty much went to plan, we got out of the blocks in front pretty much from the first stroke. I have to mention this is a much better and less nerve racking way to race than the old 'wind through the field' approach we used to be associated with.

 

The only completely unexpected event was a couple of random buoys at about 850 metres gone, which seemed to be attached to a wire, smack bank in the middle of our lane!!! being fellow rowers you will all know that the laws of nature dictate that carbon fibre oars are magnetically attracted to plastic buoys and that it takes all the efforts of the stroke to stay off the lane wires at the best of times. So we didn't really stand a chance of missing these particular ones. To cut a long drivel short, I hit one, didn't really slow us down, I swore, we moved on.

 

I was pretty statisfied with how we raced, is wasn't perfect but it felt reasonably strong and pretty stable with room to lift, thats about all you ask I guess.

 

All bar the four had wins through their heats. Mahe, after an intial burst from a young Russian upstart, cleaned out to a 7 second lead and a personal best time (tail 'current' coming into play again? a win's a win I guess). Juilette and Nikki won comfortably over Romania, a good sign. Their only unknown is an Australian crew who is doubling up in the eight and went 2 seconds faster than them in their heat. The twins were paddling by the end of their race, not a good for the Belarussian rivals if you ask me.

 

The four had the a hellish draw having not managed to get a seeding from the world cup regattas and drawing the hardest heat. They were leading through the 1000 but lost a little bit of control as the other crews started to exert pressure ending up 4th. They have a repecharge tomorrow.

 

So thats about it, semifinal on Thursday for Mahe, the four and us, girls went straight through to final. Will send out a briefer update of fours result tomorrow, you'll probably be thankful of less prose I'd imagine.

 

Also some new photos up