Octogenarian Oligarch
Quote of the moment:
"The Queen sent her first email in 1976 from an Army base."
- From the Queen's 80th birthday factlist. I wish her a happy birthday and eagerly await the Prince of Wales' blog.
Today was the first day of "rowing camp". The introductory 2k ergo test was a joyous experience. My supposed target of 6:45 (most people were about 10 seconds off theirs after relaxing in the holidays) required an average split time (time it would take to go 500m at that pace, measured at every stroke) of 1:41.67, or 1:42 plus faster start and finish. Pumped up with adrenalin I "took off like a demented rocket" (- Pest) and hit 1:21 within 4 strokes. My previous fastest split was 1:29. I then settled to 1.24 for the first hundred, at which point Todd started yelling "SLOW DOWN!" in my ear, at which I progressed gradually down to 1:34. By 1k I was pulling a solid 1:40, but fairly simultaneously developed a stitch, cramp all the way up my left leg and a flashing-light kind of headache. Oops. Slightly over-ambitious. I ended up doing a psuedo-'Cool Runnings' limp to the finish in 7:22. Major oops.
The afternoon's outing was rather more positive, at least for me. It was much delayed by the senior men’s eight ("the Sims") missing a seat and the senior women’s then being tested for watertightness and found to be leaking from crash damage from last term, but eventually two fours took to the water. As the boat of second eight guys, myself included, flashed past the boat of first eight guys, they were told to look at our superb balance. Yay for us. They then turned around and tried to start off again, but due to an over-enthusiastic first drive and complete lack of balance, they capsized. No yays emitted from Pest, who was coxing them.
The best part of the day, however, came in the pub later when Pest told us that not only are we racing on the first day of the 3 day BUSA Regatta in Nottingham (Saturday, April 29th) and thus able to take advantage of the Pimm's tent while encouraging les autres, but since only the two novice men’s crews are racing on Saturday we get to use the two spanky boats. In the BUSA head we used the bath-tub and were a minute slower than the first eight in the Sims, but when we did a time trial in the run-up to it in the Sims, we were only 6 seconds slower than them. A chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to show his quality.
"The Queen sent her first email in 1976 from an Army base."
- From the Queen's 80th birthday factlist. I wish her a happy birthday and eagerly await the Prince of Wales' blog.
Today was the first day of "rowing camp". The introductory 2k ergo test was a joyous experience. My supposed target of 6:45 (most people were about 10 seconds off theirs after relaxing in the holidays) required an average split time (time it would take to go 500m at that pace, measured at every stroke) of 1:41.67, or 1:42 plus faster start and finish. Pumped up with adrenalin I "took off like a demented rocket" (- Pest) and hit 1:21 within 4 strokes. My previous fastest split was 1:29. I then settled to 1.24 for the first hundred, at which point Todd started yelling "SLOW DOWN!" in my ear, at which I progressed gradually down to 1:34. By 1k I was pulling a solid 1:40, but fairly simultaneously developed a stitch, cramp all the way up my left leg and a flashing-light kind of headache. Oops. Slightly over-ambitious. I ended up doing a psuedo-'Cool Runnings' limp to the finish in 7:22. Major oops.
The afternoon's outing was rather more positive, at least for me. It was much delayed by the senior men’s eight ("the Sims") missing a seat and the senior women’s then being tested for watertightness and found to be leaking from crash damage from last term, but eventually two fours took to the water. As the boat of second eight guys, myself included, flashed past the boat of first eight guys, they were told to look at our superb balance. Yay for us. They then turned around and tried to start off again, but due to an over-enthusiastic first drive and complete lack of balance, they capsized. No yays emitted from Pest, who was coxing them.
The best part of the day, however, came in the pub later when Pest told us that not only are we racing on the first day of the 3 day BUSA Regatta in Nottingham (Saturday, April 29th) and thus able to take advantage of the Pimm's tent while encouraging les autres, but since only the two novice men’s crews are racing on Saturday we get to use the two spanky boats. In the BUSA head we used the bath-tub and were a minute slower than the first eight in the Sims, but when we did a time trial in the run-up to it in the Sims, we were only 6 seconds slower than them. A chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to show his quality.
3 comments:
*Todd, the hot one,
Hehe. Ahem. I see you have lots of pics of Matt up on your MSN space. Were they taken especially for me?:P
i didnt know there was email in 1976... how rare
Yes, Prill m8. Pics of Matt were just for you. Will try to get you a picture of Todd too. And yes, email, like the internet, was devised for Nato communication during the Cold War, but not by Al Gore...
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