Vancouver Rowing Club holds very good respect in the rowing community. We have a large membership, which can seem intimidating to other rowing clubs, but our members are welcoming, inclusive and fun - whether we are first or last or somewhere in between. To row well is a difficult thing - we always have something to work on, to tweak, to try to find more speed - but VRC has cooperated and competed with many other rowing clubs who look forward to meeting us in competition.
Looking at the results from this year's premier sprint races we show a great deal of promise. While not everyone medalled, many of our rowers made it to the finals, which shows our training is working. In the cases where some fast crews didn’t make it to the finals, many times they were in the fastest heat, which again shows that we are on the right track. This year we made it to the following finals: NWM – 35, Cascadia - 85 finals, US Masters Nationals - 22 finals. The number of people attending and the time of year explain the disparity in the number of crews attaining finals races. At NWM, it was early season and very, very stiff competition. While we brought large numbers of athletes, our competition did as well. Cascadia was a local regatta but again, we had very good attendance by seasoned crews. US Nationals gave us some very clear indications of where we need to train for the next Nationals in 2020. While we did very well with our small contingent, the US crews showed very strong middles and we took notes. As Kieran Walsh said at the meeting, the competition had a very fast 500m start and then wound it up for a fast 500m finish; there was no settle. We will prepare for them in 2020 and see if we can’t surprise some crews.
In 2019, we have our usual head races with just the 2 sprint races-NWM (our fingers are crossed as they are having water access issues at Lake Vancouver) and Cascadia. To prepare for the level of fitness you need to access during multiple sprint racing, we will follow our training program found in the Masters 'blog'. You can link to the ‘blog’ HERE. This link is found on the Vancouver Rowing Club’s website in the Rowing Section, at the bottom of the Saturday Masters program. If you have any trouble finding this link or subscribing to the pages, let me know. Definitely you should subscribe to the Masters Training program and your Coaches Messages channel to keep up-to-date.
Looking forward:
To prepare those of you who are looking to take it to the next level, we will be raising our sights to the US Masters Nationals in Lake Merritt again in 2020 as noted earlier. We had a successful regatta at the US Nationals this year but we found that while we have competitive crews at VRC, the nationals attract some very tough and experienced competitors.
Some of our athletes thought that they would be well served by working on their strength and conditioning in combination with our erg sessions. I’ve contacted a company that works with my school’s athletes who agreed to offer us two 3-month concurrent packages of twice monthly (or monthly depending on what I hear back from everyone) sessions with groups of 12 people. Once a seat has been confirmed, the athlete would be billed for this 3-month block of sessions through their club account. The idea is that this guided training will enable us to condition and build stronger muscles that we need to find that extra gear. To show interest in this program, please complete my online form. Completing this form does not yet commit you yet - it is a tool for me to get an idea of the number of people I need to set up sessions for and what times are preferred. Once I have the information, I will send out a sign up sheet to the interested people with the limited, first come/first served seats.
In brief, the idea is these sessions will occur at my school’s gymnasium (Jericho Hill on 4th) on Sunday’s. There is a morning session and an afternoon session option and the sessions are 75 minutes with trained specialists. See more information about Saltus on the SIGN UP FORM. This form will only be open for a week so reply soon!
This year we had a successful summer morning program, Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Depending on coach availability, we think this will resume next summer. As well, I'd like us to take a page from Delta's rowing book and think we could have weekend afternoon rows during the winter months from 2-4 so a person could have a double row on the weekend. I am offering this to all SatM, SunM, and new Novice/Masters once you’ve moved over to one of the Masters programs. This will be handled like the Wednesday noontime rowing sessions with myself or another volunteer qualified to operate a coach boat). Sign up on this form to indicate which day you’d prefer to do the double session. We will go with majority rules.
Of course, the Wednesday noontime rowing program has also been very successful (thank you to Dimas, Alex, Joanne, Margo and the other people sitting in the coach boat allowing this program to continue). These extra opportunities to get some water time are all there for you to work on technique, power, speed, endurance and even form crews.
We are proposing to hold some mixers with Delta Deas, over the winter months. Delta has some fast rowers and we thought it would be fun to have several 'get togethers' where some of their athletes come to VRC or we go to DDRC for a session. This is just in the early stages of planning but we think this will be an opportunity for both clubs to have fun and get to know one another. As most of you know, Delta offers us some of our toughest races so this can also give us a gauge of where we are in our training.
Speaking of mixers, Saturday Masters are holding a mixer with our new Novice/Masters group who will be joining SatM in October on the ergs and then on the water in November. Please join us on Saturday 29 and the time to meet us on the dock to form crews is 7:45am for 8:00am start.
Note to the incoming Novice/Masters to Saturday’s program, I will send out a doodle poll after we receive our new membership lists at the beginning of October so that you can indicate which Saturdays you will be at practice that month. Our intention is for our seasoned masters rowers to get into mixed boats with you for the first couple months to help you improve your technique, get to know one another and have some fun. Once spring starts approaching, we will be making suggestions for crew boats based on several factors, being erg scores, age categories, preferences for sculling/sweeping, etc.
We are also planning to have 1 to 2 small boat time trial sessions at Burnaby Lake sometime in March and possibly early April. This will help us help you put together some set boats for the upcoming sprint racing season as well as give you an idea as to where your fitness is versus your on-water technique after the winter's erging is winding down.
Boat maintenance expectations:
This is a volunteer based club. All the shells you row in, the club blades you use, the docks you launch from are maintained by volunteers – i.e., YOU. If you hear or feel something in your shell that isn't 'normal' - investigate and diagnose. If you can't figure out what is wrong, ask your coach or another rower to help you figure out what might be wrong. Do NOT ignore it or write it on the white board and walk away. There is no equipment genie that fixes things for us. This is not like an exercise club where your membership pays for full time staff. This is a rowing club where we are lucky enough to be able to row in some very expensive shells. We row on salt water which means corrosion occurs quite quickly when shells aren't washed and rinsed down with fresh water (and even when properly maintained corrosion still occurs - it just takes longer.) For example, if your seat is sticking, it might be one of three (at least) things: 1) the wheels could be worn down (least likely as this takes a long time), 2) the wheels may not be tracking in the centre of the rails, 3) the axles could be corroded at the ends causing uneven track width.
We will hold the next masters meeting late in November and will announce the date on the dock and through the practice blog.
Thank you for your time and attention. Ask Coach Elizabeth or me any questions you may have concerning the above information.
