Paul Rosenquist

Got a piece of vid of our eight race against Falkenberg during the nationals.

What a race! Happy to be at the good side of the Beep beep finish.. Enjoy!

The Kiwi’s seem to be getting a firm grip on the sculling boats…Rob Waddell beat the greatest rower of the last few years Mahe in a ’small’ regatta… Mahe raced a pretty good race I guess as his time was excellent! But Rob managed to get his super power translated into boatspeed and beat Mahe by a margin…and was only 3sec of Mahe’s world best time. Awesome.

Years of grinding the winches seem to have left its traces….

While we here in cold Europe consider our season over and done with the guys from the Southern Hemisphere are right inte the next one.
Most of the elite guys here either put on some skis or head for sunnier places and easily clock the miles and lift weights in comfy gymes. Some might give the erg a bash every now and than.

Not so in New Zealand. Here 3 times world champ Mahe got an unexpected (assumingly) surprise of his once example Rob Waddell. If everybody in A final of Single races are super human, than Rob might be classed as hyper human. In 2000 the 200cm long kiwi weighing 97kgs won the Olympic final in Oz. He had by than won the world champs two years in a row before that. Mahe has now won all three and has his bow ball fixed on the Beijing gold. Rob turned to grinding winches on the Kiwi America’s cup boat. Having not been able to return the prestigeous cup bask to New Zealand probably made him think of his successes as a rower. He has obviously worked really hard during a couple of months losing 30 kg’s of upperbody grinding muscle and retaining his extreme fitnes levels. Rumours go that he has crushed the 15 min barrier on the 5 k erg! Lassi last year was awesome with 15:11,2. Not completely confirmed but I read a 14.58 (1.26 last 500mtr) somewhere…that together with a 2k test that left him 1 second short of the world record 6.38…. Inspiring stuff to see how, with some talent, you can just open the bag again and come back to this extraordinary level!

THIS weekend on sunday he will race Mahe for the first time…a friendly match but you can bet there are lot of eyes on this regatta. Mahe, the coolest rower I know probably doesnt get to stressed about it all…the trails wont be until march or so.

I will be thinking of that while cruising up and down on our nearly frozen lake here in Stockholm.

Some links:
http://nz.sports.yahoo.com/071212/3/39un.html

Some Video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=d0JOq0HCBAs

Rowing with Henke in the double has a double side to it…A bit like a controlled drug addiction. The more you do it the more you want it…but unfortunately we cant get our hands on it more than say twice a week…at best. So I dragged myself back into the single as I noticed that to many sessions on the erg are not to beneficial to our rowing rythm in the double. The last weeks have been blessed with nearly windstill conditions making the cold weather just a joy to row in. When all warmed up, slicing through the black cold, mirror flat water, blades digging in , accelarating away the boat and setting her free when they explode out the water…total silence…just the water swooshing under the hull. A duck paddling out of the way…just in time.
13.000meters rowed…7000 to go. When the strokes are coming smoothly and the connection between the boat, feet, and hands is all solid you can easily sink into a semi contious state where just the body is working on getting everythin perfect, all the time. Don’t need a lot of head for that.
But the 2° warm water, the odd tree trunk, the 10 bouys, perhaps some other rowers or floating fisherman are all very good reasons to stay awake! A few weekends ago I screwed up…I was struggling with getting a smooth stroke going. After 1700mter things started falling into place and I was just working with that…I threw a quick look over my left shoulder and quickly looked back and braced for the un evitable impact that was going to come… the 4 old guys were meters away of my bow rowing in their East German BBG called Kiwi. These boats are built to survive WWIII. Not my Hudson… Seconds later a loud bang. All went pretty smooth, but I found myself sitting with only one oar left, the other went straight of…Trying to relax and balance on one oar the guys backed up and towed me all the way over the lake back to the dock. There I noticed the underside of the bow got a good wack as well. One of their oars pulled a 15 cm piece of the outer carbon skin away. LolaII now cripled I quickly rigged her of and brought her to work where I can patch her up… FUCK…
Back to LolaI. Lucky me. Repairs are going well and I guess it will be all invisible after I’m done painting.

Training seems to go pretty good. I am not putting in as many sessions as last year, but I am and feel stronger than same time last year. Perhaps because I am more rested in to each session now? The one hours on the erg are going pretty good and I have started to add some threshold level stuff on wednsdays now. 4 x 10 min, 10 x 4 min etc. Ruairi and I meet up to help eachother on these. Yesterday eavening was no different. 4 pieces in 24(25), 4 in 26(27) and 2 in 28+. The last one was serious work…Finishing that one on a 1.35 gave me some selfconfidence and it gave Louise a very tired husband that eavening…

Ok, lets hope for more windstill days and not to many minus degrees.

Paul