Entries for Head of the Cam are now closed, thank you for your entries.
For any last minute entries please contact headofthecam@gmail.com, we still have some spaces left.
Race control at Queens College Boathouse will be open from 9.30am on Saturday, we look forward to seeing you then!
Wednesday, 27 April 2011
Thursday, 7 April 2011
Your ErgMeister Speaks
James T appointed me "Lord High Tsar of the Erg Table" but I'd rather be an ErgMeister so I'm grabbing my own title. We need some way of recording training, praising the valorous, shaming the wicked, encouraging the timid, and so on. And perhaps this blog is it. Lets try, anyway. Hopefully, every week I'll get a good crop of scores in, and will produce an updated post so we know who is hot and who is not.
I think I only have ultimate erg-authority over M1, but I don't see why M2 and M3 shouldn'tshare the pain join in the fun too, in the spirit of healthy competion. Hot women are also welcome to join.
This post is long and rambling because (a) I'm bad at organising things, (b) this will hopefully be a useful reference for the future and (c) I don't have any scores yet to talk about (OK, I do have two scores, Tom and me, but I want a few more than that).
Quite a few of us record our training on HeiaHeia (http://www.heiaheia.com/) on a daily basis - its a sort of Facebook for exercise. Go get a free account if you haven't already, friend people, and join the Chesterton Rowing Club group (although now I think about it, it says it is a closed group, so you might need an invite).
What we're looking for is for people to do ergs, and tell me (email is fine, wmconnolley(at)gmail.com) and I'll make up cute graphs and tables and stuff. We're going to pay attention to both "raw" and "weight-adjusted" scores, and I think this is a convenient place to tell you about them, so see the section below.
And one last word of intro: please don't be shy. The last thing we need is for everyone to not want to put up their scores because they aren't quite good enough to hang out in public.
All else being equal, a bigger person can pull a better erg. But, a bigger person will also weight a boat down more, increasing the drag. Therefore, some kind of weight adjustment is fair. The one we're going to use is from the Concept2 website, and is basically a 2/9 power law.
However, talk of a simple thing like a 2/9 power law makes the Arts Side folks heads explode, so I've drawn a pretty picture instead. Click to enlarge as usual. It is all very simple: all the curves are normalised to what I've asserted is a typical weight of 85 kg. So, suppose you weigh 80 kg and are aiming for a 7500m weight-adjusted score. Then you look at the deep-red dots at the 80 kg point, and see you need to do about 7400 m. Conversely, if you weighted 90 kg you'd need to pull ~7600m.
If even the picture makes your head explode, then don't worry: just get on the erg and do your best. Tell me your distance and your weight, and I'll work out the conversion.
Or just use the Concept2 weight adjustment calculator yourself.
For now, do 30 minutes pieces. As the great James T said:
30 minutes is good for long-term fitness - there is still time to improve this in the next few months.
Settings: all settings give you the same amount of distance for your effort, so use whatever setting you like, but some will fill more comfortable than others. Wanging it up to 10 will make it heavy. Down at 1 you'll struggle to rate high enough to pull a decent distance because it will be too light. Most people use a setting around 3 or 4, or if you want to get fancy a drag factor of about 125. I use 4, if you care.
If you're not in the habit of doing ergs, or possibly have never done a 30-minute one before, then fear not. Just turn up to one of the <ahem> regular sessions (wednesdays at 7pm is looking good) and we'll introduce you.
All ergs are the same, so feel free to use a home / gym one if you have it. The club ones are in Queens and hang near the back on the right. There are 4 of them, and (although there is a booking system somewhere if you're feeling bureaucratic) generally available.
Erg sessions will probably move around to avoid conflicts with outings etc etc, but 7 pm on wednesdays is looking good so far, on a sample of one out of one.
I need:
* your raw score
* your weight
* date done
* witness
The weight is necessary for calculating the weight-adjusted score (duh) if you want that done. The adjustment is moderately sensitive to the weight (see graph) so please make sure the weight is accurate and not deliberately flattering. "I'm sure I weighted only 75kg a month back" isn't really good enough. There is a set of scales at Queens which I believe are fairly accurate.
If you're going to do a mind-boggling oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-he-did-that sort of erg, then it would be prudent to have a reliable witness, not because we don't trust you (obviously) but just for that comforting feeling of security. On the other hand, for run-of-the-mill everyday about-the-same-as-last-week sort of times, you don't need a witness.
Tom did some looking up scores on the web, and found that, considering world-record times, the lightweight record was (weight-adjusted) almost exactly the same as the heavyweight record. Which tells you that the adjustment is pretty well exact ignoring boat and cox weigt. So in the real world which features boats and coxes who both have non-zero weights, you'd expect the heavier rowers to have an advantage. And, as Tom also observed, if you look at world records on water, heavier crews go faster. Also, Andy observes that short pieces favouring heavier rowers (short term power => muscle size => cube of size) but not so much in longer pieces (long term power => lung surface area => square of size). He thinks. So maybe the Big Boys can pull things back when we drop down to 2k later on.
The point is, in the end, that neither a raw score nor a weight-adjusted score is a perfect measure of strength. Which is why we'll use both, as well as a healthy dose of prejudice.
In adjusted-to-85kg-weight order.
[*] Approximate adjustment
I guess I may as well update this post with this weeks scores as I get them. So far we have (in weight-adjusted-to-85kg order):
Note: my table can only cope with integral weights, so all recorded weights are adjusted to the nearest kg. This shouldn't matter too much.
Good to see people taking a creative approach to proving their erg scores in the absence of witnesses. A slightly thinner crop of scores this week, with the Easter break eating into availability, including mine.
We'll be back to full nagging mode next week.
Rumours exist that James H has been erging but is "not happy with his weight".
Just recording some incoming, not a full list yet. Please send in yours:
Rumours exist that James H has been erging but is "not happy with his weight".
No 30 mins so far (are we getting bored?) but I did a half marathon in 1:27:37. It made a change. My bum hurts.
Or is it 7? I lose track. Andi R puts up 7623 on Sunday (followed by 7621 on Wednesday) and is 76.5 kg. I went running :-). Chris Wood offers "10m + (5x500m r3 @ 1.44 32 spm) +10m" (r3 = rest for 3 minutes).
I think I only have ultimate erg-authority over M1, but I don't see why M2 and M3 shouldn't
This post is long and rambling because (a) I'm bad at organising things, (b) this will hopefully be a useful reference for the future and (c) I don't have any scores yet to talk about (OK, I do have two scores, Tom and me, but I want a few more than that).
Quite a few of us record our training on HeiaHeia (http://www.heiaheia.com/) on a daily basis - its a sort of Facebook for exercise. Go get a free account if you haven't already, friend people, and join the Chesterton Rowing Club group (although now I think about it, it says it is a closed group, so you might need an invite).
What we're looking for is for people to do ergs, and tell me (email is fine, wmconnolley(at)gmail.com) and I'll make up cute graphs and tables and stuff. We're going to pay attention to both "raw" and "weight-adjusted" scores, and I think this is a convenient place to tell you about them, so see the section below.
And one last word of intro: please don't be shy. The last thing we need is for everyone to not want to put up their scores because they aren't quite good enough to hang out in public.
Weight-adjusted scores
All else being equal, a bigger person can pull a better erg. But, a bigger person will also weight a boat down more, increasing the drag. Therefore, some kind of weight adjustment is fair. The one we're going to use is from the Concept2 website, and is basically a 2/9 power law.However, talk of a simple thing like a 2/9 power law makes the Arts Side folks heads explode, so I've drawn a pretty picture instead. Click to enlarge as usual. It is all very simple: all the curves are normalised to what I've asserted is a typical weight of 85 kg. So, suppose you weigh 80 kg and are aiming for a 7500m weight-adjusted score. Then you look at the deep-red dots at the 80 kg point, and see you need to do about 7400 m. Conversely, if you weighted 90 kg you'd need to pull ~7600m.
If even the picture makes your head explode, then don't worry: just get on the erg and do your best. Tell me your distance and your weight, and I'll work out the conversion.
Or just use the Concept2 weight adjustment calculator yourself.
Distances and settings
For now, do 30 minutes pieces. As the great James T said:
As we come closer to Bumps, I would like us to move onto 2ks and sprint work, but for now, the erg is a way of assessing and improving what your body can do. And you'll even see me on one of the torture machines at some point in the near future.
30 minutes is good for long-term fitness - there is still time to improve this in the next few months.
Settings: all settings give you the same amount of distance for your effort, so use whatever setting you like, but some will fill more comfortable than others. Wanging it up to 10 will make it heavy. Down at 1 you'll struggle to rate high enough to pull a decent distance because it will be too light. Most people use a setting around 3 or 4, or if you want to get fancy a drag factor of about 125. I use 4, if you care.
If you're not in the habit of doing ergs, or possibly have never done a 30-minute one before, then fear not. Just turn up to one of the <ahem> regular sessions (wednesdays at 7pm is looking good) and we'll introduce you.
Ergs and sessions
All ergs are the same, so feel free to use a home / gym one if you have it. The club ones are in Queens and hang near the back on the right. There are 4 of them, and (although there is a booking system somewhere if you're feeling bureaucratic) generally available.
Erg sessions will probably move around to avoid conflicts with outings etc etc, but 7 pm on wednesdays is looking good so far, on a sample of one out of one.
Information required
I need:
* your raw score
* your weight
* date done
* witness
The weight is necessary for calculating the weight-adjusted score (duh) if you want that done. The adjustment is moderately sensitive to the weight (see graph) so please make sure the weight is accurate and not deliberately flattering. "I'm sure I weighted only 75kg a month back" isn't really good enough. There is a set of scales at Queens which I believe are fairly accurate.
If you're going to do a mind-boggling oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-he-did-that sort of erg, then it would be prudent to have a reliable witness, not because we don't trust you (obviously) but just for that comforting feeling of security. On the other hand, for run-of-the-mill everyday about-the-same-as-last-week sort of times, you don't need a witness.
Weight-adjusted scores - the small print
Tom did some looking up scores on the web, and found that, considering world-record times, the lightweight record was (weight-adjusted) almost exactly the same as the heavyweight record. Which tells you that the adjustment is pretty well exact ignoring boat and cox weigt. So in the real world which features boats and coxes who both have non-zero weights, you'd expect the heavier rowers to have an advantage. And, as Tom also observed, if you look at world records on water, heavier crews go faster. Also, Andy observes that short pieces favouring heavier rowers (short term power => muscle size => cube of size) but not so much in longer pieces (long term power => lung surface area => square of size). He thinks. So maybe the Big Boys can pull things back when we drop down to 2k later on.
The point is, in the end, that neither a raw score nor a weight-adjusted score is a perfect measure of strength. Which is why we'll use both, as well as a healthy dose of prejudice.
Season's best scores
In adjusted-to-85kg-weight order.
Who Raw weight Adjusted Witness Notes
Tom 8350 81 8441 William Week1
William 7933 71 8255 Tom Week1
Sipper 8023 83 8073 Ext Week4
Chris W 7906 79 8037 - Week4
Ollie 7850 81 7936 William Week2
Andy S 7896 85 7896 Photo Week3
Andi R 7623 76.5 7800[*] Wife Week6
Simon 7324 65 7771 - Week3
Dave R 7412 68 7710 - Week3
Lorraine 6550 60 7072 Ev Week1
James T 6530 65 6928 W+O Week2
[*] Approximate adjustment
Week 1 scores
I guess I may as well update this post with this weeks scores as I get them. So far we have (in weight-adjusted-to-85kg order):
Who Raw weight Adjusted Witness
Tom 8350 81 8441 William
William 7933 71 8255 Tom
Simon 7306 65 7752
Lorraine 6550 60 7072 Ev
Week 2 scores
Note: my table can only cope with integral weights, so all recorded weights are adjusted to the nearest kg. This shouldn't matter too much.
Who Raw weight Adjusted Witness Notes
William 7938 72 8233 Ollie
Ollie 7850 81 7936 William
James T 6530 65 6928 W+O
Chris W 7561 79 7686 -
Week 3 scores
Good to see people taking a creative approach to proving their erg scores in the absence of witnesses. A slightly thinner crop of scores this week, with the Easter break eating into availability, including mine.
We'll be back to full nagging mode next week.
Who Raw weight Adjusted Witness Notes
Sipper 8013 83 8063 M1 and W1 of Anglia Ruskin
Andy S 7896 85 7896 Photo!
Chris W 7645 79 7770 -
Dave R 7412 68 7710 - Approx adjustment
Rumours exist that James H has been erging but is "not happy with his weight".
Week 4 scores
Just recording some incoming, not a full list yet. Please send in yours:
Who Raw weight Adjusted Witness Notes
Sipper 8023 83 ? Tom
Tom 8153 81 ? Sipper Casual
Chris W 7906 79 ? - Phoned in
Simon 7324 65 ? -
Rumours exist that James H has been erging but is "not happy with his weight".
Week 5 scores
No 30 mins so far (are we getting bored?) but I did a half marathon in 1:27:37. It made a change. My bum hurts.
Week 6
Or is it 7? I lose track. Andi R puts up 7623 on Sunday (followed by 7621 on Wednesday) and is 76.5 kg. I went running :-). Chris Wood offers "10m + (5x500m r3 @ 1.44 32 spm) +10m" (r3 = rest for 3 minutes).
Monday, 4 April 2011
Vesta Vets Head 2011
Sunday dawned bright and clear for the Vesta Vets Head 2011. Well, it did so after we'd been burning down the M11 for about an hour, since we'd had to get up well before dawn. Simon, Ralph and I went down together, having met up with James H, Andy and Ollie at Queens. The rest of our fine crew were to meet us in London. Before we left Queens, I counted the riggers and seats again in my boot, not wishing to "do a Press". The boat itself we'd waved off on Friday night, so it sat on a trailer all Saturday (ahem). Despite getting a teensy bit lost in London once we came off the M4 (a mixture of my driving and Ralph's "old school" navigating: no GPS, just bits of paper) we arrived in good time, easily found a parking spot, and the boat and the crew. Simon and Amy were to "bank party" us, doing stuff like taking away the wellies and helping with the blades. And cheering from the bridge :-).As you see from Simon's pic (ripped from the copy on Amy's blog) it is a busy scene far removed from the quiet Cam, though not nearly as busy as the HORR the day before (see here for our 2010 entry). Also fortunately James T decided to hustle us into the water as about the second to boat, so we missed all the hurry and the crush.
We had time for a relaxed paddle up to the start, then a spin and paddle down with the stream a little, which was useful to get a feel for rowing-with-the-stream, since it is far stronger than we're used to. The wind was slight, conditions good. Spin and head back for the start, more crews around now. About half an hour of faff keeping on station as the crews around closed in; Press just near us.
And then the off; the thing embedded here (assuming it is working) is the GPS track from my watch. So we all get to see and carp at James's line, though it looks OK to me. If you know a way to compare it to the "one true line" do let me know. The splits, as measured by my watch, are awesome: around 3:05 per km to start with (i.e. just over 1:30 per 500m), falling to 3:10 then 3:15 at the end. However, those are speed-over-ground and include the stream, so they are meaningless, except insofar as they tell you how fast the stream was. James was reporting splits of 1:45 falling to 1:50 I think, so the stream was making a difference of about :15. So the stream was running at 0.64 m/s, if my maths has come out right. Does that sound right?
The row itself was quite uneventful. We were together, we were fit enough to stop getting ragged, we rowed solidly all the way at about 29 I think. We got overtaken twice: once by a bunch of Italians (but I like to think that if they had come all this way over, they were probably pretty good. We saw them in Vesta boathouse afterwards: they even had rucksacks made up specially for the occasion and had Nick Lee standard of kit), and once by someone else. It rather reminded me of a recent article in "Rowing and Regatta": with head racing, you've got no idea how well you've done during the race, or indeed afterwards, until much later when the results come out.
Which brings me on to the results: our time was 21:21 and our place was 67th (of 204). James T had taken a flying guess and aimed for "top 20" but clearly we were some way away from that. I got all nerdy and drew a pic in Excel (it took me ages to work out how to do selections) of time against finish position, colour coded by class. We're the big blue dot. It is the familair S-shaped curve, but apart from that I'm not really sure it says anything useful.I won't overload this post with toooo many pix, because I'm ripping them off Amy, who has more and better. Go look at her post.
But I can't resist one last mystery pic, on the left: what it this, and what is missing ;-?
After the row, and de-rigging and splitting the boat, we retired to Vesta for a well earned bit of food and drink, and a stand on the balcony in the sun watching the world go by. Then home time: the drive back (in our case, via Hammersmith, to retrieve Simon's splendid banner) wasn't too painful (unless you were Andy stuck on the Sarth Circular). Re-rigging the boat at 6 finished off the day, leaving me free to collapse in a heap on the living room floor at about 9.
And lastly, here we all are (again, pic from Simon):
Left to Right: Mr L Bin; Tom Watt; William Dulyea; Mr Oliver Crabb, Esquire; Dr Andrew Southgate; James "Curvaceous" Tidy; Dr James Howard; Dr William "Please learn not to smile like that" Connolley; Chris Wood; Ralph "Distant" Hancock.And just after lastly... a pic from BigBlade embedded here with permission:
[Update: we get a mention in "Regatta", which Amy spotted: "Sixty-seventh placed Chesterton RC may not have won [the Vets Head] but they were the technical wizards of the race, leaving a GPS track of the route they steered, their splits, and even working out the speed of the stream" - Rowing and Regatta magazine May 2011.]
Refs
* Amy's view
* My pix on flickr (or will be, when I upload them)
* Simon's pix on facebook
* Full results
Monday, 21 March 2011
Head of the Cam
Entries for this years Head of the Cam race are now open!
Saturday 30th April 2011
The Head Course - Cambridge, 2600m
3 divisions:
Division 1 10:45
Division 2 12:30
Division 3 14:15
VIIIs - IVs - Small Boats
BR, CRA and College Classes
£5 per rowing seat.
For further details on how to enter, please go to www.headofthecam.org
Entries close 7pm, Thursday 21st April
Saturday 30th April 2011
The Head Course - Cambridge, 2600m
3 divisions:
Division 1 10:45
Division 2 12:30
Division 3 14:15
VIIIs - IVs - Small Boats
BR, CRA and College Classes
£5 per rowing seat.
For further details on how to enter, please go to www.headofthecam.org
Entries close 7pm, Thursday 21st April
Womens Eights Head of the River Race 2011
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Saturday morning dawned bright sunny and warm, as promised by the Met Office. Our first task was to load the boat onto the trailer, and then wave it off to be driven down to London by another club. Then we all headed for cars and trains to make our way to London.
We were boating from Furnivall Gardens which has always been my favourite place to boat from on the Thames. It is close to Hammersmith Bridge which is about two thirds of the way down the course and is the best place for spectators to watch from. It also means that you get a warm up rowing to the start and not to onerous a row back from the finish. This year Furnivall only accepted 11 boats so there was a relaxed atmosphere as we rigged the boat ready to go, and we had inside space to store kit and wellies.
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| Rigging Dawntreader PHOTO: Ali B |
 |
| Blades ready PHOTO: Ali B |
 |
| The offending component! |
Once we were roughly stationary, I tried just sticking the bare wires back into the loose half of the connector. Voices from the bow confirmed that they were getting intermittent noise from the speakers so I knew all was not lost. After a while, I discarded the loose part of the connector and tried just sticking the wires into the half of the connector still attached to the bow end of the boat, losing the part which was broken. I also cleaned the little bits of wire that were sticking out of the insulation as best I could. Stripping the insulation off would have been advantageous but I didn't have a tool to do so. Stuffing the newly cleaned wires as far as I could into the connector, I learnt from the bows that they could hear James voice. The insulation on wires provided enough friction to hold the wires in the rubber of the remaining connector and so I just hoped beyond hope that it would hold. We had another 20 minutes of marshalling and then a 20+ minute race. It held through the marshalling, and then we were off. There was nothing more I could do but hope.
The race started well, and we got into a good rhythm. Rowing on the Thames is quite different to rowing on the Cam, as the water is much rougher, and rowing with the tide means that it feels strange when you place your blade in, as if you haven't really got enough connection with the water. Still, we maintained well, and James' coxing kept us going, Soon we could see Hammersmith Bridge, where we knew our supporters would be cheering for us. We could see our club flag and also a great sign made by Simon - 'ROW FASTER, CHESTERTON, THE BAR IS OPEN!' which made me smile through the pain!
 |
| PHOTO: Simon E |
 |
| That's us in the middle, about to overtake Essex on the left PHOTO: Simon E |
At this point, we began to overtake the crew in front (the University of Essex) which was great fun. James thrives on this kind of coxing - when there is a real competition on our hands, and we slowly but surely passed them by. At this point in the race, overtaking was just the encouragement we needed to keep pushing to the end. It seemed to go on for ever, but eventually there was the call to wind it down. I felt pretty wrecked at this point, and couldn't speak to ask the question to which I desperately wanted the answer: Did the connection hold? Eventually I managed to gasp out the question, and got the answer that it had held, which was the best part of the race for me!
We had a bit of a row back to Furnivall but it wasn't too bad, and the sun was still shining. Our supporters met us on the pontoon and we took the boat apart to put back on the trailer before heading for a meal at Pizza Express. While we were there we learned that we'd come 271 out of 302 boats (all results by division), with a time of 23 minutes 21 seconds which wasn't too bad considering that we were a 'scratch' crew - with a sub (thanks so much, Mel!) who was rowing for one of the girls who was too ill to join us. Thanks also to our supporters on the bank and to James for his coxing.
Sunday, 27 February 2011
Norwich head
[A belated post, but I've edited the post date to match the event]Norwich head is what you get to if you turn right; if you turn left you get to the half marathon (and if you go by train you meet the foul-mouthed old ladies). But we turned the right way and (unlike Press) had remembered to bring our riggers and (unlike the nameless Quad) we remembered not to turn turtle. And I was unaffected by the rain while waiting for the start because I'd brought my collapsible umbrella, and even if everyone else mocked me I was dry.
However, after this comprehensive list of things we got right, I now have to come on the the rowing itself. We had a good strong steady row, nothing spectacular, but it didn't feel as though we weakened. The Essex Boys came up on us off the start, and were on our tail after ~1/3 the course. Then we pushed back a bit and maybe they tired and we had the corner and we held them for a bit, before finally they had the inside of a bend and got past us. That took us to about 2/3 of the course, which is nearly back; just under the motorway bridge and home. The course itself is pleasantly rural.
And the end result? 15:28 for us and we were 5th in Division 2 4th of IM3 VIII's. I suppose we might have hoped for better, but we are just one small town boat club and Essex are an entire university, and only beat us by 30 seconds.
In the evening afterwards, a crew curry in the Maharajah. Here we all are:
Photo credit: William D's camera, photographer: Emma? L to R: Tom Watt, Andy Southgate, Chris Wood, Simon Emmings, William Dulyea, James Howard, James Tidy, Ollie Crab, William Connolley, Ralph Hancock (yes I know we all know who we are but I write them out sometimes so the search engines will find us).
You see from this (and the top pic) that it was really fairly muddy or (as James T put it) "like the Somme".
Refs
* Norwich head
* Norwich Rowing Club
* William D's pix
Sunday, 12 December 2010
Christmas Head
We won (jointly with Cantabs) the Mens IM3 VIII category in a time of 7:02; see results.We also entered a Womens VIII, two mixed VIII's, and two pairs, all of which performed creditably:
104 Chesterton Rage Against the Machine cra m IM3 8+ 1 7:02
103 Champion of the Thames campbell cra m IM3 8+ 1 7:02
225 Chesterton Band Aid cra mx Nv 8+ 2 8:08
218 Chesterton Westlife Invitational m IM3 2- 2 8:10
224 Chesterton Slade cra mx Nv 8+ 2 8:29
133 Chesterton Girls Aloud cra w Nv 8+ 1 8:35
245 Chesterton East 17 Invitational m Nv 2- 2 8:37
Refs
* William's blog
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