Afternoon Rowers,
Firstly and most importantly, 42 days of winter left to go. 6 weeks from today, so for those bottle blondes out there just the amount of time from one hair appointment to the next. Also according to this google search, we could be just 42 days away from wealth and happiness!
A lot can happen in 6 short weeks so get cracking.
Club Races
Club races were heaps for fun we had 6 fours racing, any engineers who were clever enough to move the foot stretchers in the Latham (boat not man) had better let me know so I get to rowing the night before to readjust these.
Well done to Derek for whooping Sally, Dave M, Rochelle and Kate D into first place. The crew dominated and was undefeated for their four races.
As hypothesised yes, boys can cook great bacon and eggs and Kev made awesome rum/raisin pancakes. There was a welcome absence of cheesy noodles and noodles cooked in beer as suggested by one blogger, though I’ll make a note of that gem of a recipe idea for next time Nicole busts me on ebay and sends me to do her supermarket shopping.
Tigers on Wheels
If you even want to dream of keeping up with Sarah, Sharon and I in “around the bay” in the 60km/h section join the gang as per Sarah’s emails most Saturday’s at 7am.
Election Time – Emma 09
Club elections & the AGM are on Saturday at 10:30 am followed by a club photo at 11:30 am.
People have nominated for all committee positions, except for Vice-President. We will be taking nominations from the floor on Saturday.
So, please think about running and getting involved. To nominate for VP you need to have been financial club member for 2 years. Any questions about committee stuff, please talk to anyone on this years committee or with past committee experience including Martin, Dennis, Emma, Derek, Annalise, John Latham (man not boat), Simon Crunden (man not boat, although you will probably get more sense from the boat), etc.
Katie Gray
PANS (PA to Nicole Stupka, previously PA to JK until she was transferred to the Darwin Oar Rowing Society and now champions the DORC’s up there)
RRC Men's Squad Announces Frequent Sleeper Program
RRC mens’ squad coach Simon Crunden has announced a “frequent sleeper program” to promote promptness for early morning training sessions.
Rowers who are late for training will pay into a fund that will be used as a beer tab to fuel the thirsty men’s squad at the annual Bairnsdale camp.
Each time a rower is late to training they will be required to pay $2 into the fund. Rowers will have eight $2 credits each and if they exceed their credits, the late fee will then increase to $4.
The definition of late is if the rower is not down stairs dressed ready to row at 5 minutes before the scheduled push off time.
Mr Crunden said the program was developed after conducting an extensive physiological and psychological analysis of the mens’ squad to determine key drivers of motivation.
“Basically, they’re guys, so they like beer and sleeping in. This seemed the most sensible way to leverage those two traits and ensure on-water punctuality,” Mr Crunden said.
Mr Crunden warned that deliberate lateness in order to boost the Bairnsdale beer tab would be frowned upon, and offenders punished by extensive application of power strokes.
Frequent Sleeper points will be regularly updated on the RRC Men’s Squad blog.
with Jim Cooper
Training this week – week beginning 20 July
Great turn out on Saturday for the eight and four. According to my calculations we should have a full quota for two eights on Thursday and Saturday…..albeit with a cranky cox on the Saturday as she will be struggling with a slight hangover.
The major change this week is that training on Saturday is scheduled for 8:00am to coincide with the Annual General Meeting which starts at 10:30am.
We will need to be prompt for 8:00am as there are a couple of committee members in the squad who will need to be off the water for 10:00am at the latest.
I encourage you all to attend the meeting as the club has enjoyed a lot of success this past season and have plenty to look forward to next year including the renovation of the boathouse. There will also be a club photo taken at the conclusion of the meeting so make sure you turn up in something other than your zoot suit.
Training this week will focus on the use of power strokes. Power strokes for those not familiar with them are maximum effort through the leg drive with controlled low rate recovery (18-20 spm).
We will be looking to focus on controlled movement up the slide and a skilful placement at the catch to maximise the connection with the water. From the catch the crew will be focusing on maximising the hang off the oar emphasising the stretch through the lats making sure the seat is moving at the same speed as the handle during the leg drive.
This is a great exercise if done properly, and we will have plenty of time to practise, as we will be doing three pyramids (10, 20, 30, 40, 30, 20, 10 strokes) with 5 minutes off in between the sets.
Given the above, we will need to budget the full 60 minutes on Thursday (so we must be on the water for 0630 and no later) and 90 minutes on Saturday as the power strokes will take up to 45 minutes of the session. We will use the additional time on Saturday to do some tech work.
Thursday is a beer penalty day, so those not on time will get their first ‘frequent sleeper points’ in the IOTC (I Owe The Crew) ledger which will be redeemed at the Bairnsdale camp later in the year.
Video of the 8+
Mike Numa sent this to me this morning…check it out
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul0pgHNRJzs&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]
testing 1, 2….3
Great turn out for our inaugural Thursday morning and the rows in both the eight and four certainly provides plenty of encouragement for the season to come.
Apologies for the teething problems….I hope to have the few issues we experienced this morning under control for this weekend and the following Thursday AM.
Firstly boats – Martin confirmed the eight will be back in the shed on Friday so we will need to do some work on that for Saturday. We need to organise for a few people to be down at the club a bit earlier (say 1315hrs) so we can section and rig the eight for the 1400hrs row. If at least eight turn up earlier that will make light work of the eight.
Sam is on the case re the coxes and will be following up Elaine for Saturday and hopefully confirming another cox for the next two Thursdays while Mike is up in Sydney.
We will need a minimum of two sets of lights for Thursday AM, two which we have already got and I suspect we should have a spare set floating around in case we need to split crews down into smaller boats. I will get these ordered today and hopefully we will have them for next week.
Kev had an idea that we have some sort of board up so people could mark off their names when they arrived so we know who has arrived (or not). I think this will be a good idea as it was a bit of mayhem this morning trying to work out who was down. Kev do you have any ideas for this (or anyone else for that matter)?
Good to see a few old faces back this morning and also good to see that some have not lost any of their bravado when it comes to dealing with the cold weather….could this be a return of the legendary wife beater?
See you all Saturday….Simon
Joel in J'Bay
Straying from the bedpost a bit by posting this but for all those who are keen on a bit of surf you need to check this out. Joel Parkinson at J’Bay in South Africa riding the perfect barrel. Click on the link then click on Round 3 Heat 4.
videos.php?rLingua=gb&rDay=3
Training this week @ RRC
The plan for this week will be to get down on the knees and pray for some good weather for Thursday and Saturday.
We will be looking to splash out in two eights on both days, and judging from the turn out on Saturday we should have the numbers to do so.
Martin is applying the pressure on our good mates at Jeff Sykes to make sure the IT finds its way back to the shed in the next week or so. In the mean time, the plan will be to take the Jennifer Campbell and fill her up with some of the lighter blokes and the larger blokes will need to head next door between Merc’s and Melbourne RC for the ‘loner eight’.
This Thursday’s row will be an hour in duration. It will be mostly be steady state (20spm @ 75% max) with two 5 minute pushes at 24 spm. We will include some pauses on the recovery to work on timing and control off the back turn – all pretty simple stuff.
Saturday we will start with a 15-20 minute theory session so I can talk you through some jargon that I use when I coach so we all know where I am coming from.
Saturday’s row will be similar to Thursday’s with the exception that we will have the river to ourselves so we will use it to our advantage and do a bit of work down the river.
A follow up on last week – Need to think about a beneficial easy to manage penalty system for fixing up late comers. If you have any ideas no matter how good, bad or indifferent, post them in a comment and we will select the best on Saturday after the row.
See you Thursday…Simon
RRC Men's Squad
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