Paul Rosenquist

The weekend is over, the trailer and all the boats are home again in the boathouse. A good weekend for Stockholms Rowing club. 4 National titels have been claimed. I rowed in 3 of the boats. Two of the races we absolute thrillers…the eight…We were expecting a race here. Falkenberg have a big group of very properly schooled rowers and even a few national team guys. Mixing young and strong with old and experienced we knew they would be a force to be reckoned with. We also knew however that we outgun them on the rowing ergometer and that we actually rowing very fast on our practises. So with big confidence we stepped into this race. They tension in our boat was however tangible. Extremely good fun to feel how ex world class rowers suddenly become like as if they are rowing the first race again… We shot of from the startline…however not as light and quick as we normally do. A sign of the tension…

Ruairi, Dave, Paul, Robert, Janne, Walle, Tobbe, Tobbe and Henke

We rather quickly found a smooth rate of 36 and were rolling on. I, and the others to, felt that we were doing nicely and expected Falkenberg to drop of at either the 500mtr mark or at most the 1000mtr mark. They right on us. Perhaps even a metre ahead. Every time we did a push or a move…they were one small step ahead of us.

The eight is tricky…its not like a single…you cant say ‘ok, now I’ve got to move’ no, everything has to collectively and you can disturb the rythm by pulling to hard or whatever. 500m to go, and those bastards were still there!! I felt our engine was coughing a bit… a small panik perhaps… thank god we had discussed what we would do in the last 300 meters…so it was just a matter of waiting…meanwhile still striking 36. Falkenberg took an other meter. They were now ahead with maybe 100cm. Finally little Tobbe, our cox, came with the call. We would do bursts of ten strokes from 300mtr to the finsish. After the 3rd burst, finally things clicked and we pushed by them winning the race with nearly nothing. Falkenberg had raced the race of their lives and we happy with that. We were mostly releaved that we won and not specifically happy with our row. It was great fun though!
An hour later, Henke, David, Walle and me were due again on the startline this time in the quad. For me perhaps the biggest race as it is a whole new thing to stroke that boat. Steering in those damn narrow lanes with the stiff side wind was also making things more of a challange than necesary.


We were not expecting a whole lot of competition, but rowing is not about that. It is about putting down the best you can perform. Peter my old double mate got a crew toghether. That was cool.
The start went, Henrik was nervous as hell again. And I just pretended I was rowing my single…just do the same. We quickly came to our start rate of about 42 and kept it for at least 250mtrs. By than we were clear ahead and I felt how smoothly the guys behind me were getting into the rythm. It was light rowing, based on speed and not strenght. Without any trouble I kept it up at 36 to the 1200mtr mark. By than we were miles ahead, but this did not matter. I wanted to row a great race. We slowed it down a bit at 1250 an came down to 34,5 but quickly picked it up again with technique calls at 1500. Just for show we finished with the 250mtr sprint rating 38. Awesome race.
The double Henrik and I won on the saturday. Unfortunately our biggest competitor was not there. Pliggen, Lassi’s coach decided to stay home for personal reasons. A pitty, cause it would be have been fun to go hard against them.
We tried to row as light and smooth from the start as possible. Conditions we pretty bad I thought…waves and huge wind from the side. Henrik crabbed the third stroke…ok, we blew the start…but we were ahead anyway. Quickly coming back to 39 or so we pulled away. From than on we sort of struggled with th e conditions, and I lost my oar at least twice. But everytime we got the momentum going we pulled away. With a nice quick last 300mtrs we finished 25 seconds ahead of the rest. Good race.

The girls had lots of racing to…Louise and Britte ended up 5th and that was actually a good start for them. Louise’s arm was still hurting a lot. Their eight came 2nd.

Ok, thats about it for now…pics will come soon!

cheers

I do not function properly if I do not have a clear goal to work towards.

So here we go:

The nearest goal (coming weekend) is the Swedish National Championship in rowing.
I have for the time being said farewell to the single and I will be rowing different crew boats.
The biggest challange will be in the double scull. Henrik and me. Henke putt me in the stroke seat wich makes it really exciting. Having rowed the good part of 4000km in the single this season I can assure you that it is not so easy to adjust to the faster moving crew boats. Also to set a rythm that is easy to follow and enhance for the guys behind you is a challange. We have only perhaps been out 5 times or so and it really did not feel naturally good from the start. Henke had a hard time finding my rythm, and I had a hard time putting down a good accelerating stroke. Two days ago we went out in the pitch dark….autumn is coming and steeling our daylight here…
Taking away the sense of vision, we were totally dependant on feeling. WAUW! And what a feeling. We finally got the boat to move a sweet as can be, and even the quick bursts were working great! Probably our fastest competitor will be Lassi and his coach Pliggen. They have won this event now for many years in a row. Walle and I tried to stop their winning streak two years ago, but fel a few seconds short. Lassi is stronger and faster now…som am I, I am definately rowing a lot better now. Pliggen, I have spotted on the erg during our world cups etc, so I guess he is in pretty good shape. Henke, ..well he is Henke..it does not matter in which shape he is…winning is the only existing thing in his mind.
Than there is the quad. Me again in stroke seat. This is eaven more difficult. Add to this also the fact that I’m steering the 12meter long boat with my right foot, trying to put down a solid stroking rythm that the three guys (Henke, Walle and David) can build on. We were out last night again in the dark and it seems to work. It is far from good yet,…but come race day it will be fine. The cool thing is, that even though these races are pretty much the opposite in lets say the world cups were I really feel the pressure anyway. Knowing that the performance of the entire crew is more or less dependant on me is a cool feeling. Its obviously the same in the singe…I do bad, the boat wont move. But than the consequences are only for me,..now its for the entire crew. Be it 2, 4 or 8! Yepp.. I’m in the 8 as well. Here am, thank god, in the no.4 seat, meaning my mission is easy. Just haul as hard as I can. Unfortunately for the other competing crews, I have to say after our last few sessions doing speedwork in up to 1000m pieces and rating 38 that we are an extremely fine moving machine! Good fun!

Next goal:
Coastal Rowing World Championships in Cannes.
This sounds pretentious, but it is only for club teams. It is how ever the biggest coastal rowing race in the world and it is the official Worlds. I will row the 16km coarse outside the harbour of Cannes in the Single. REALLY looking forward to that! Louise will also row the single as it seems and the girls will also have a crew boat!

After that:
A further away goal, lets say summer 2009, will be to paddle the Molokai crossing in Hawai. A 70km Surfski race between two islands. I guess, this is the ultimate macho thing right up there with the Iron Man competition it must be the coolest thing in the world. 5meter swell, hard winds (mostly from behind) and a 40cm wide open kayak…running down the slopes of water doing 35km/h is something that I guess is more than addictive…
A long way to go though. I have competed in such a race one in Cape Town, and I have to say, I really got a lot of respect for the dudes doing this on a daily basis…during the countless unvoluntary swimms I really was not to comfy with the shark rumours etc. The 9° warm waters werent really making things easy as my shorts and tanktop were not giving that much warmth.

Ok, so that is a little update of what is happening now. Further I am working hard at Point65 again and we will be heading for our anuall most important fair in Nurnburg next week…yeehaa,..1700km with the trailer. But it will be worth it as we usually do great business there.

C ya!

Paul