Paul Rosenquist

Which is about the 2 lenghts of the boats we row. That was how much I was behind Lassi on this weekends longdistance race on Öresjö. That put me in 2nd place and about 50 seconds in front of the rest.
I was really unpleased with the largest part of my race, but I just kept giong and did not think the result would be any good. Needles to say I was surprised to be ‘just’ a mere 11 seconds behind the best in the world on longdistance Lassi!

Pedal to the metal! A great weekday evening last week training for the long distance race.
photo: www.arnstrom.org

Ruairi and I finally got everything packed. Only an hour later than planned we rolled out of Stockholm with the sun sitting low, just hovering above the 400km’s of forest we had to drive thru.
Two singles, oars, riggers, tools, cradles, pretty sure I did not forget anything.
This was going to be fun. A 5,5 km race over Öresjö that turned out to be a buetifull long lake in the middle of the forest with forest clad hills and sharp looking summer villas around. At 23:30 we rolled into our bunks at some hostel the organizing club had organized. Good stuf! I opened the window, turned of the heat and we froze all night. Even though I could have reached the window by just sticking my arm out of the blankets, I could nog be bothered. Why is that, that when you really want to sleep you cant think right. So…finally at 07:30 the freezing was over and I took a shower. It was overlooking the entire racing coarse which than still was flat like a mirror…an absolute rowers dream…6km’s of mirror flat water with nothing but hills around it. I however felt that is would not last. It was to good. Sure enough later on the wind picked up. I did not really care. It basically screws up everybodies rowing as much as mine. Even though I still think it really distroys a lot for me and an feel really insecure in choppy conditions, I have learnt that others are doing about as bad as I am.
I chose to test LolaII for this ride since trainings have felt so good in her. We had breakfast and rigged the boats. An great spin around the coarse. I felt that at the worst spot the wind was from the side and I did a lot of bursts in race pace to get more used to it.
I hate to warmup kind of things. You do 20 hard strokes at race pace, and it feels like you just finished a race…how on earth am I gonna row 550 strokes like this?
We had a pile of pasta for lunch and basically just chilled out in the sun. Ruairi looked tense. Lassi was babbling away with erverybody, Peter was eating sandwiches. 3 hours to start. With 1 hour to go people start to move. 40 minutes to get to the start and warmup. I started my little ritual of stretching. I saw Lassi jogging away to start his warmup. The row up to start felt endless. I watched Lassi start as he was 5 minutes ahead of my. We all started with 1 minute intervalls. The Dalashäst looked strong as always. He bolted of the startline with huge strokes and dissapeared out onto the endless lake. A few minutes later I was waiting on the startline. 20seconds….shit, reset my strokecoach, check my oars(no crabs this time!) READY: good luck! was the start signal. The first 2km was in good water so I could row nicely in my planned rating of 30 or so. Trying to drive my boat as far as possible in each stroke. A great feeling when this works! After 500meters you are dead. This is not such a good feeling, knowing there is 5000 left. Imagine every 10meters is a stroke. And Every stroke is like a small mountain to climb. And there is a paralel: summiting mountains is very rewarding!
2k’s into race and I felt pretty much spent. I battled on for 1km. By than the rating had dropped to 28. Dont care! Just keep it going nice light. I remember at one point encouraging myself by shouting a very short part of a Metallica lyric that I managed to get into my head. As I did that the hugest dallop of spit and slime flew out of my mouth and sort of folded around my rigger…I pictured my self rowing along with spit and sweat flying all over the place…It gave me a kick! An other 500meters went by. Suddenly 1500 to go. Ok, I thought, I basically have not screwed up anything to bad yet. I can still save this somewhat by rowing really hard the last part! I really did not feel that I was going extremely fast. But perhaps the lack of other boats around and the hugeness of that lake probably caused that. As I decided to push more the water got awfull. Small bloody waves from the side making rowing a sort of line dance in windy conditions. I stopped several times to make sure I was going in the right direction. I did not want to row a meter to much in this crap, and by the way the mini breaks were welcome…not good.
By that time I was more focussing on getting it over with than my results. I did notice Pontus, Swedens big Junior, behind me meaning I made up the minute he started behind me. That felt ok, as he is a strong guy.
On the finish line I was pretty dissapointed. For the wrong reasons as it seemed later. Everybody had a rough trip and came second just over 10seconds behind Lassi.
This means I’m 50 seconds faster in comparisson to last year and knowing Lassi has developped so much the last year (pulling an amazing nearly world record on the erg 5km) and just coming home from winning the Czech longdistanse cup and beating one of the rowing icons Vaclav Chalupa by 5 seconds on his home waters.
Ruairi was less happy with his result unfortunately. He raced the coarse and ended up with one guy behind him in his group of light weights. I think the competition is more close in that group and most them were at the national training camp in Racice. So he was being tough on himself. Ok, derigg the boats, and lets get home!
The next test will be for real…a normal 2km regatta here in Stockholm, in two weeks. Exciting.
C ya!

Ruairi putting in the final strokes of the day…
Photo: www.arnstrom.org

Photo: www.arnstrom.org