Head of the Charles 2011

Well, racing season is over – sort of.  With today’s 20k ‘Row Down’/'Smack Down’ (depending on who you’re talking to), we won’t be rowing out of the MRRA boathouse anymore this fall.  Richard and Michael will be going to the East Coast Fall Speed Order in the 2- in a few days, so they’ll spend a bit more time on the water this season.  But for most of us, it is now winter training time.  Which is great, because I know that means I’ll spend alot of time training – or at least thinking about training while I type away on this here blog.

The Head of the Charles went pretty well.  We placed 7th in the Championship 4+, ahead of summer rivals Penn AC and NYAC and within striking distance of some of the crews we really wanted to upend.  In fact, 10 seconds separated us from second place and a medal – which was a bit of a disappointment.  We’d been training since last fall with our minds set on winning, despite having absolutely no frame of reference as to what that would require.  We’ll definitely need bigger pistons for our trash compactors to squeak out that 25 seconds that we would need to pull off the W, but that is what winter training is for.

We had a video camera in the boat during the race, and were hoping to post that but it turns out it was pointed at the gray skies until it essentially fell off of Sarah’s head – so we won’t be looking at that.  Fortunately, Carl P – one of the Masters rowers from our club – had our back, and slapped together some footage, which saves me from posting a text only blog entry.

Sarah also has an mp3 of her coxing the race, which I’ll have to get from her and scan for pottymouth.  It might be good to have on the internet so some youngster coxswains can hear how to cox the Charles course like a boss.  It will also be really good to have so that I can put it through autotune, match it up with some Justice techno beats (or the Imperial March from Star Wars) and make some dope remixes.

Look at that determination on our faces.  We were determined to not have a photo on row2k that looked like we just consumed a gross protein shake (or worse) that was now coming out of our nose (see: Stanford).

We were also disappointed that our B four did not get an entry for the Club four at the Charles this year.  We raced the weekend before at the NH Championships (which I believe I wrote about), and we were the bread to an Australian University sandwich in the Men’s open 4+ event.  It had taken us all fall to determine what the fastest B four (and really, A four) lineups were and that was our second four’s first outing in their lineup.  They placed third, 10 seconds behind MacQuarie University – and we finished 40 seconds up on them to place first.  Turned out, MacQuarie University ended up pulling off 6th place in the club four (eighth originally, then the top 2 crews were DQ’d for eligibility violations).  I think with a little bit more time on the water, it would have been reasonable to expect our B four could have placed top 7 in that event as well – and top 5 would not have been a stretch.

MRRA’s Women’s four had a strong showing in the club event, placing 15th and earning an automatic reentry for next year.  We also earned an automatic reentry for the Champ 4 next year.

Well, I really should be working on other things right now.  Stay tuned for shenanigans from our top secret training camp known as DTF.

-tc