Paul Rosenquist

Early wake up. Louise has her race 09.06. Absolutely freezing…the sun was not up yet. Louise strolled to the beach half an hour before me. When I got there I was happy to notice that the boiling sea had more or less calmed down. Just a nice swell was left. Amazing what a difference in just a few hours.

Morning of the final…

Louise was jumping around and really nervous for her race. So was I. While Louise was out racing I was restlessly running around on the beach, half looking for ergometers, half checking out the other single rowers and making in good time in interval sprints to the mens room.
Louise came in an hour later and was furious. She totally trusted her GPS after the start and discovered after 2km’s of rowing that she was more than 200 meters of course. The poor thing was trailing way last from then on. Being used to stare at the GPS for more than 2200km’s last summer during her around Sweden trip she kept her trust in the little plastic box. But the difference was that on that trip the were no bouys laid by not so accurate french officials to round.
Louise came in, and I went out. I quickly warmed up and noticed it was nice rowable water. I saw that the start line was crowded at the high end and Peter was lying right there. After the qualification races Peter and I were favourites. But I had a feeling there were some French guys making a plot for a surprise. I had a great start, but after a few strokes one guy that I had overtaken cut across and pushed my stern around. A few hard bangs, my oar bending on his bow, my best french, and I was of again.
When I looked up I saw Peter was struggling to. A felt sorry for him cause he was taking more time to get on again. Focus on rowing was the mantra…many long hard strokes. Boat speed! Feeling. Yep,..I still have it. Soon I was overtaking guys and after 1000m I felt people were weakening. Apart from one bastard that mentioned to have gotten away at least 50 meters. Forget, him! Just make sure I keep following him, stay aligned with the boats behind me and focus. We rounded the second bouy with 3 boats together. WOW, this is racing. But even though the speed was high, I felt under controll. The next stretch was 2700mtrs and I needed to get to business here. So I pushed and got in front. But now I had to steer. I had to stop and look for that damn bouy a few times. Erik and I were steaming along! He tried to push past me and I answered. I noticed he was working. But so was I. And always the waves ans swell to work with as well… a sort of new third dimention. Bouy 3. I turned maybe 2 meters in front and directly managed to get a good surf! I pushed on! This was the plan! But as I was leading I had no clue where bouy 4 was. Must confess that my focus was on getting surf and max boat speed. I managed to get at least to big swells of lead. This was great! When I was comfortable about my lead I started focussing on where the bouy was… when I finally found out where it was I had to adjust a lot! Shit, Erik was right on track!We rounded the bouy together. To be honest here I thought we had 900mtrs to go. But it was only 400. So I start winding it up a bit and take a small lead on him. I still felt strong so I trusted my sprint. I hindsight, If I had known it only was 400mtrs left I would have gone crazy directly after the bouy. Anyway, we were rampaging along. Along side, were some ridicilously large spectator and photographer boats.

Taking the lead…but, allready here I was starting to understand what was going to happen…a big boat taking over…

These guys were putting down such huge swells in all directions that the rowing in rate 36 was rather scarry. Erik got ahead a bit. I went for my super sprint and directly felt I was passing him again, but than these 1,5 meter boat wave came diagonallu from behind and actually stopped me from rowing for a few strokes, my boat twisting at least 30 degrees of course. I adjusted and sprinted on, catching up again! The sames moment I thought I passed him, Erik stopped rowing…we crossed the line.

Scrambling back onto the beach still wondering if I made it or not..

One hour later and many french judges in confusing discussions it was decided that I won silver. The guy who sponsored us with the Eurodiffusion boats actually saw my name as winner on a list, but that appearantly had changed.

Anyy way, real good fun, lots of sun, sand and surf! TOTALLY MY CUP OF TEA…

Nope…did not make it…silver medal. (a nice one at least)

This weekend my job forced me to take our 60 best dealers to an island in the archipelago and tell them all about next years news and spoil them with some Swedish specialities (dont worry, it was only food and beverages…)
Anyway that weekend would otherwise have been great for final preparations for Cannes. So how could we combine this…. well by rowing the Coastal Racing boat out to the island and back again. No big deal really. Its only 20km or so, but the navigation is tricky. Thousands of islands. Louise rowed her out. 2 hours laters she actually made it in to Finnhamn. I was really impressed that she made it out there without help of her old GPS that she used when she rowed around the entire Swedsish coast last year www.kustrodderskans.se Anyway, Sunday afternoon was my turn. It crossed my mind to just head out without a map. I have paddled the stretch a few times in a kayak. I headed of way to late…in a hauling headwind and rain. On the open fjords it was white horses, and I thought it was great excerecise in for next weekend. So damn happy I was that I brought that map. After a few km’s all the islands look the same and it is frustrating to stop rowing and puzzle out where on earth you are. Meanwhile the wind pushes the boat back in such a speed that she fills up with water through the self bailing back. Not great.
Anyway just befor dark I made it back to the harbour where Louise was waiting for me. I feel weird infor this race….During all the races this year I have been prepping myself really hard. Doing the hard work in many hard sessions in insanely intensive intervals. But now for months I have only been doing easy 1 hours sessions max one a day and I dont really feel ready to go to war at all. Damn this sucks. Sure I have done some hard rows in this heavy rowing boat…lets see what will happen!

Start list have been made available. All info on www.worldrowing.com Results will be there live as well!

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

Louise and I spent 10 days in Stryn, Norway. A place made for burning calories.
900km’s over small winding roads (highways in Norway) brought us to a place that I would say should look like heaven. 1800mtr hight granite walls, green valleys, white glaciers, and best of all, mirror flat turqouise lakes and fjords…
Read the rest of this entry »