Saturday- Indoor Rowing Race

Today was my first indoor rowing race. I had grand ideas that there would be an entire high school gym packed with hundreds of ergs linked together. The 5th Annual Indoor Salt Lake Sprints ended up being nothing more than a private high school's small time event for members of the Waterford High School's crewing team and their parents. It was very small and ended up taking a large amount of patience from Meg to stay into it. I was also let down by the size of the event, but that didn't detract from my feeling of wanting to crush everyone I looked at.

As I got strapped in I found that there would be 2 heats of the Men's Open division, totaling around 10 competitors. But I was also trying to beat all the high school kids' time, the fastest being 7:11. This was a few seconds faster than my current Fat Boy Personal Record (FBPR) of 7:17, but I thought I might be able to come close.

As the race started one of the high school coaches was hitting a 1:33 pace. I thought I was going to get crushed. But I decided to just row my race and let the chips fall where they may. My goal was to hit a 1:50 pace but within 20 seconds of the start I found that I could do more than that (and maybe a hint of the competitive spirit of not wanting to get crushed by the 50+ old man next to me). So I decided I was gonna shoot for a 1:45 pace and just see how long I could hold it. Half way through the race Old Man River next to me had already completely burned himself out and was barely able to hold a 1:55+. I found that I was in the running for the lead with another competitive rower off the street. He had a 10m lead on me and I set my sights on him. I decided I was going to keep the 1:45 until 200m left and then just go balls to the wall. At 200m I put it all out, not paying attention to anything- form, the crowd, anything. The room went silent and I was in “the zone.” I remember looking at the monitor that showed I was hitting a 1:31 pace. Gives me chills just writing about it. That feeling is why I workout.

At the end of the race I looked up and saw my time at 7:02.7. After several deep breaths I looked back up at everyone else's time and found that I came in just one-hundredth of a second slower than the first place finisher who got 7:02.6. Damn! Although I wished I had been able to close the gap I was still happy with my finish. Looking back I wasn’t able to hold my 1:45 target between the 1800 and 1200m. Had I been able to do so I think I would have been able to go sub 7 like Steve thought. Until next race...

A few pics of the event: