Finally a few things worth actually blogging about, part 1 [rowing]

[rebeccmeister]

So, yeah. What a week. Where to begin. How about Friday morning. Much of the rest of the week consisted of too much time spent in meetings, which aren't particularly interesting to blog about. Friday morning I headed down to the boathouse for practice. There wound up being 6 of us in total, so we took out a quad and a double, which was just wonderful. Once again I found myself in bow seat in the double, which is fantastic because that's a great arrangement for me to help my newer teammates work on a lot of technical stuff one-on-one. You can really feel what you're doing when you're in a double, and develop a better sense of feel for the boat when it's moving well. Valuable positive feedback.

I did notice on our way up that we seemed to be going especially slowly. My SpeedCoach provides a readout for our stroke rate and also our 500m split, much like with the erg. In general, on-water splits tend to be slower than erg splits, but still, a 4-minute split seemed dreadfully slow.

When we finally weighed enough just before turning around, I got my full explanation for the slow split, and also for the extent of the debris we had to dodge on our way upriver. When I glanced over to shore I could see that the current was so strong we were swiftly moving backwards. The calm surface of the water was deceptive, and looking at the shore was disorienting. When we spun around and started to row back downriver, our 500m splits dropped to right around 2 minutes. Flying along! I also noticed at that point that the water level was unusually high, starting to encroach on some of the grassy riverbanks.

By the time we got back to the dock, the water level was so high we could barely see the sign at the edge of the bulkhead that talks about the docks. I think we made it back to shore just as floodwaters started to crest from the overnight storm the night before.

Originally we were going to work on putting in our main docks this morning, but in the face of the flooding it became clear we'd need to scrap that plan. So instead a subset of us just came down to the boathouse for our regular Saturday practice. While biking over to practice I could see that the current was still extremely strong - stronger than Friday morning - and there was still a ton of debris, including some large object wedged against one of the train bridge abutments:





Here's hoping the waters subside soon.

Comments

[cmcmck]

I never tire of this bridge!

[rebeccmeister]

The somewhat unfortunate news is that the bridge itself is getting tired! It is so old and worn down by now that trains have to slow to a crawl when crossing it. There aren't any specific plans in place just yet to construct a replacement, but it's only a matter of time before that happens. One silver lining to the replacement is that it is highly likely to include a bike/pedestrian crossing in addition to providing the train crossing. That would greatly improve access across the river for people who are not in cars.