BRIC 2016

[mdpfirrman]

Just got back from walking my 3 dogs and ran to the computer to see if results were up. Saw the results (and the splits) before I read the accounts of how things went. The splits tell a whole lot! I could see Piers that the last 500m was a real battle for you, even before reading your account. Still yet, for your first race, amazing job! Nice PB!

All of you, very impressive. Rohan - a much better reflection of your times in that race than your last one! John - I think none of us had a doubt you would break 7. I certainly thought you would. How much you had in the tank is impressive! You might be very capable of breaking 6:50 by next year.

Very impressive venue too. Makes my little indoor races look pathetic. That alone (along with being with guys who are some of the world's best) would certainly intimidate me. Those were some tough fields. My PB time would have been last place in that group John (but technically I'm in the 50s group). I can't say I've been this excited about a race result that wasn't my own until seeing this. Great job!

5:55 for Graham Benton - wow! Nice work Richard!

[jackarabit]

Everyone home and dry in fine form. Glenn or anyone hanging about here, did John A. run in 30-39 LWT or 40-49? Made several attempts to refresh and can't find.

Definitely tapped the third rail on the last split, John!

Solid foundation Rohan. Looks like Corio Bay will remember you!

PIers, lot of grit in the final split. Enjoy your minty home machine!

Looking fwd to some video and Olivier's stills.

[JohnAd]

Jack I'm very much not a LWT you should be able to spot the times here
http://indoorchamps.britishrowing.org/e ... 49_Men_2KM a very proud 43rd=

[jackarabit]

Thanks, John. A vivid, lucid, thinking man's 300 finishing meters for you I think.

[JohnAd]

Piers and Rohan's race in full wobble-vision https://youtu.be/vGe6Y0-5k40 apologies to Rohan for failing to keep him in shot throughout and for missing the finish

[jackarabit]

No missing "The Orangeman" or 'The Beard."

[lindsayh]

Bravo to all - might fine Richard and great efforts Mike Rohan and Piers - gotta love a race day and the stories always get the pulse going - should be more of it.
(The results page is only missing the 60+men hwt!)

My buddy George Petelin was second in the 70+ hwts by 0.1secs! He and Roger Stainforth were within a second of each other the entire way - looks like a real race. both in 7:08s which is not shabby at all. (George is going to get really serious in 2017!)

[hjs]

Well done guys, always nice in my view to race. Never easy but rewarding and a nice way to get in contact with other ergers.
Congrats to the pb ers, others, toughen up plan your next one!

[Papy]

Congratulations to you John, Piers and Rohan. It was great to meet you guys at BRIC and now reading your impressions of the event, and that you somehow enjoyed the day I'll contact you once I have sorted the pictures (hopefully not all are blurry, but you guys kept moving too fast )

Congrats to Richard too for his winning race as well, very impressive !!

Really glad I came down to rebuild the motivation for 2017 and see your races, but it is definitely not the same when you are not racing. It actually hit harder than I thought, seeing my empty erg on the 1st race of the day, even if that was really the only wise decision.

I left shortly after lunchtime, wandered down to Westfield shopping centre, bought a sports book called "How bad do you want it - Mastering the psychology of mind over muscle". That will set the tone for the year to come. I got my disappointment out of my system this morning too at the gym with some 30'/30'r sprints and my third fastest 1min (327m) at the end of the session. See you there next year, on the erg

[Gammmmo]

Congrats guys...much respect for laying it all on the line there. Hope this spurs you all on to faster times and more competitions!

P.S. Open LWT 40-49M division...how far in front was the winner!!! Unreal.

[Rowingdad1]

Hi Folks,
I hope you don't mind a returning forum member crashing in?
I used to enter what was called the BIRC and train on something called a 'rowing machine'. I last entered in (I think) 2002 and was quite disappointed with 6.44 something for the 2k.
Since then my daughter was born and it wasn't as easy to train when I felt like it.
She is now 13 and has a season of on the water rowing behind her and turns out to be pretty good at it and very keen.
I managed to dust off my old concept 2 model C (PM2+) and have done a few pieces myself on what I now realise is an 'erg'.
I had a look to see if the BIRC still ran and saw that it had become the BRIC and we entered my daughter in the sprint event for her age group.
I wasn't sure what to expect but it was a fabulous event in a great venue and I was really proud of her silver medal.
I hope she has been inspired by her success which was done on the back of general rowing fitness and no specific focus on this event.
So it is time for me to get some focus back in my own training and aim to join her at BRIC 2017. I will 'qualify' for the male heavyweight 60-64 age group by then and really have no idea about how close to my 'glorious' past I might get but I must aspire to get back under 7 mins by then.
There I have stated it 'publicly' so I am committed, at least 4 seesion/week and tonight a time trial 2k just to get started! Well done to those who competed at BRIC 2016 and here's to BRIC 2017!

[le grand fromage]

Cheers guys for the congratulations, always appreciated.

I've written my 'blog' for this year if anyone's interested. Tucked away in it is 'how' you get a 20 minute warm up prior to your race at BRIC Don't mind giving the secret away as I probably won't use it again, mainly as I'm going to try and develop a 'shorter' warm up.

Well, another badly executed race. Pleased to get the win and defend the title for the 4th year and not as disappointed this year as last, in not threatening Andy Ripley’s BR but really disappointed in not executing my race plan. Never got on it at any time!

The day.

Good nights sleep and up at 06:00 for a breakfast of cereal and a couple of breakfast bars. Decided to take the train/tube this year, don’t think there was much difference in time to get there (against driving) but was certainly better coming home. Caught the 07:20 to London Bridge then Jubilee line to Stratford, no issues and remembered to go to the bathroom in Westfield, Then we wound our way through the roads to the Velodrome. Bumped into Andy Townsend on the way and caught up with each other. Said goodbye to my wife outside then through to registration. No issues, as straight forwards as last year, got changed and had a brief chat with a few of the guys in the changing room (noticing a small queue for the gents) then off to bag drop, all of which was painless.

Time now was around 09:00 so figured to go up to the spectator level and see if I could find an erg on one of the marketing stands to start my warm up. However, on the way met a marshal on the stairs who said I could go straight to the warm up area as they weren’t being as strict this year so I went to marshalling. Classic case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing as when I got to marshalling I was told I couldn't warm up until my allotted time of 09:20. So back up the stairs to the spectator level where I found an empty erg on the ‘Live Rowing’ stand, asked the lad could I jump on for a quick 10 minutes to which he said yep and that’s how you can get a 20 minute warm up done before your race. After 10 minutes on the liverowing erg I then went down to marshalling, who were still holding the 09:20 group. Finally let through to the warm up machines I later wished I’d noted the time.

Got on a machine and then got the 2nd 10 minutes of my warm up done, however before I’d finished the marshals were call us through for the race!. Took my time and changed my sweaty warm up top to my race top before being one of the last in the queue to be led up to the race floor. Found my race erg, set it up and gave it a few pulls. It was probably about this time that I realized that everything was a bit ‘rushed’. I heard the 40-49s being started and made a point of spinning my erg, just to buy a bit of time why I tried to settle.

Pretty soon the 55-59s came under starters orders and we were away first time. I think the only part of my plan that went to ‘schedule’ was the 1st 4-5 pulls, from then on it all went to ‘rat$hit’.

So the plan was to go out hard and be at 455 av watts after 10 strokes, in training I’d make that in 4-5 strokes and even allowing for the race lag, figure it wasn’t going to be a problem. Wrong, after 4-5 good strokes I was still only on around 310 av watts so gave it some more ‘bean’s and I think I made about 450 av watts after 10 strokes. The plan then was to sit on 435 watts for 20 strokes, then 415 watts for 10 strokes then 410 watts for 10 strokes so that at 500m I’d be on 430 av watts. Well to be honest I didn’t have much of a clue what I was rowing, the trick with this type of fast start is to keep a handle on the breathing rate, so I can remember hitting some 435s early doors and trying to regulate my breathing and sort my stroke out, as it didn’t feel ‘smooth’. Then the commentator mentioned my name and started to read out my biography and suddenly I found myself listening to my own press rather than concentrating on what I should be doing! Consequently I forgot where I was in ‘the plan’ so started to try and hit ‘my cruise’. Somewhere around here I also noticed I was leading by around 15m. Cruise for me was to be 390 watts but I was going to do it by alternating 10 strokes at 380 watts and 10 strokes at 400 watts, seem to remember hitting 10 at 380 but the stroke (mind) wasn’t good enough for 10 at 400 so I muddled through. I guess this got me through to halfway, which I think I hit around 403 av watts (the plan called for 409 av watts).

I can remember thinking “ you’ve still above 400 watts Richard, you can recover this”, but same as last year, I had the lead by 20+m so folded on trying for any records and just concentrated on ‘paddling’ along. Seemed to remember being pretty comfortable on 380ish watts and come the closing 300 I added some more beans, although for the life of my can’t remember what I was hitting. Finished knowing I’d won, which was very pleasing against a international field but gutted with my race execution.

I guess for anyone reading this you should be aware that last Friday week I’d done a full 1k dress rehearsal of ‘the plan’, including my 20 minute warm up with 10 minutes rest, (ie 430 av watts at 500m and 409 av watts at 1k) and definitely been good to go for more of 380/400 watts at the end of the 1k. (Andy Ripley’s British record is around 404 av watts).

Shook hands with the 2nd and 3rd and with a few of the guy’s around, then remembered I’d wanted a pic of my splits so went back to my erg but in the time it took to get my phone, the erg got reset! So next time, get the pic first!

Herded off the area allocated for medallists, along with Graham Benton and Tony Larkman from the 40-49’s, which was better than last years organisation, however, somewhere along the way the ‘herder’ missed the guy who came 2nd in my race and the guy who came 2nd in the 40-49s so consequently ‘we’ all ended up hanging around in the medal marshalling area for and hour or so why they tried to find them! Never did find the guy from my race, so only 2 of us up on the podium.

Consequently because of the hour ‘lost’ hanging around waiting for the medal’s I didn’t get much chance to say ‘hello’ to many as I’d as liked, mainly as I needed to get away and back to Croydon by just gone 12 as the car park ticket was due to run out then. Next year I’ll just get and all day car park ticket.

So, thought’s why race execution was crap.

Hadn't felt rushed until I got to my race erg but looking back I think the organisers were running late from early doors and trying to make up time.

Not enough time between warm up and race. I was expecting 10 minutes + and probably got 5 ish.

Seriously underestimated the race lag. This year was the first year racing with ‘Watt’s’ rather than pace/500, think I may have produced too much lactic early doors trying for 455 watts

DON’T listen to the commentator. Spoke to GB about this in the medal pen and he endorsed the importance of maintaining focus. Need to think of how I do this.

The biggest ‘positive’ from all this, I’ve got some motivation (from somewhere as I’ve been pretty de-motivated most of this year) to knuckle down and do this all again next year (and actually pleased to av 32 spm as well, as it’s something I’d been working on this year).

Scores on the Doors

BRIC 16 Men’s Hwt 55-59

1st Richard Cheeseman – 6:27.7
2nd Martin Schadler – 6:39.7 (RC Liechtenstein)
3rd Pierrick Moscatello – 6:43.8 (CN Solsy Sur Seine)

Splits
1:34.3 – 417 - 33
1:37.7 – 375 - 32
1:39.1 – 360 - 31
1:36.7 – 387 - 32

[nick rockliff]

Scores on the Doors

BRIC 16 Men’s Hwt 55-59

1st Richard Cheeseman – 6:27.7
2nd Martin Schadler – 6:39.7 (RC Liechtenstein)
3rd Pierrick Moscatello – 6:43.8 (CN Solsy Sur Seine)

Splits
1:34.3 – 417 - 33
1:37.7 – 375 - 32
1:39.1 – 360 - 31
1:36.7 – 387 - 32

Nice write up and great race, makes me want to race again

You 58 or 59 now?

[hjs]

Richard, every year the same You know my idea, you don,t play your strenght and what do you mean, delay got you again, you raced often, you know the drill.
You should not start fast, but sit on 136/37 right away, and negative split your races. You have relative crap speed and great aerobic fitness, so base you races/training on your strenght.

[le grand fromage]

lol great to hear from you guys, well Nick. I knew I'd hear from Henry

I'm 58 Nick, 59 in March so another year in the 55-59s for me. Unfortunately my Birthday works against me as I'll be nearer 61 than 60 when I race in the next age group at BRIC or Boston

Yep caught out at the start again Henry, rookie error My only defence being that it was the first time racing using 'watts' so I'm more disappointed not to have prepped a bit better especially being a student of the rule of 'p's' (Preparation and Planning Prevents Pi$$ Poor performance).

Na, I've gotten use to my 'fast' start and if I get the breathing right it's fine. My dissappointment really stems from my 'expectation', following my 1k dress rehersal. Hey ho there's always next year. Nothing like backing yourself into a corner to focus the training eh?