Tuesday 15th August 2023: PNPGC Mixed crew training row

Evening gig row around the harbour. Started the row at a fast pace and did a lot of race starts and Bouy turns. Cox: Wendy, 6: Tina, 5: Julie, 4: Trevor, 3: Me, 2: Steve, 1: Kevin. Lovely sunny 😎 evening and nice water making it a pleasant row for technique. See photo and stats below.

Sunday 13th August 2023: PNPGC GRR Training night

Quick training row for GRR around the Penzance harbour. Cox:Wendy, 6: Jemima, 5: Julie, 4: Tina, 3; Trevor, 2: Alison, 1: Me. Good training session in very choppy snd messy seas and heavy rain, Not a great evening to row but did a good steady row with a number of starts and power strokes. Afterwards went to the Longboat for a few drinks with the crew. Busy in the pub as a Liverpool match was on where they drew with Chelsea. Lots of laughs with the crew in the back room with a few 🍻. Reached the 20Km second week rowing target on the Concept 2 Dogs Day Challenge following reaching the 10km target the previous week. Feeling cold and wet 🥶 But having fun 🤩

Thursday 10th August 2023: Training C2 RowErg pyramid session

A good pyramid session as follows: 100m,200m,300m,400m,500m,400m,300m,200m,100m each with a minute rest. Started off well but slowed down in the mid section as ran out of puff 💨. Need to do a few more of these to build up anaerobic endurance. This was followed by strength training. 20 Barbell chest press, 15 Barbell Curls, 10 single Dumbell single arm rows (both arms), 10 Dumbell tricep extensions (both arms), 10 Dumbell bicep curls, 20 Barbell squats.

Sunday 6th August 2023: PNPGC at The Five Islands – Gig Race in Poole Harbour

PNPGC took a men’s and Ladies team to Poole for the 5 Islands – Gig Race organized by Poole Gig Club. The race was canceled on Saturday due to storms, so our amazing Captain Julie had to rearrange scratch teams as some people could not make Saturday due to other arrangements including work. Some of the crews all met up Kings Charles pub in Poole and went for a curry

I went out with Jacqueline and our friend Viv who we were staying with over the weekend to the Rockfish restaurant to say thank you. Next day we all met up in Hamworthy Park in Poole. The day schedule was as follows:

The layout of Poole Harbour was outline in the picture below

Our lovely boat 🚣‍♀️ Morladron Varthy (Cornish for Amazing Pirates) was ready and waiting for our men’s and women’s pirate 🏴‍☠️ crews

We prepared the boat for launching from the harbour beach before going for breakfast at the cafe – mine was a bacon bap.

We were the first with others followingThe first men’s race was the 9km round two islands. The crew was Cox :Andy 6: Bill 5: Stuart, 4: Steve, 3: Trevor, 2: Phil, 1: me. Great stroke rate and good race in our heat against 8 boats. We came 4th and pleased with that as the youngest was 52 and the rest in late 60s around 30 to 40 years older than most other crews. See route below with my strava of the whole journey including 1.5 km rowing out to start.

Here is the crew and pictures of us rowing 🚣‍♀️ which is also included later

The Women’s long 7km race was next with Cox: Andy, 6: Jemima, 5: Julie, 4: Judy , 3: Shirley , 2: Alison 1: Kerry. The route 7km women’s route was as follows:

The Women’s Team below

The next race was our 2km Sprint race which was from the Island 2 km away. The route was as follows:

This was more of a Sprint race and again we beat 3 other boats with good stroke rate and again pleased with this. My Strava is below that just before we actually started racing. The row out was 2.5 km and slower but gave us time to home in on our technique

Some fantastic photos of our crews racing were taken by G+B Gig Photography and as a photographer myself were excellent

We came away with some good results and a lot of knowledge about racing in other regattas. The full results are on the board below

We did not do the mixed race as it was a Sunday and we had to get the boat ready on the trailer to go back to Penzance with Rich and Julie. Thank you to Poole Gig Club did a great job in organising this unique regatta in difficult circumstances in view of the Saturday having been canceled due to storms

Wednesday 2nd August: Virtual Training Row on RowErg.

Started a virtual training row on ErgRow before being interrupted by a phone call. Glad as pretty boring rowing 🚣‍♀️ for long distances on RowErg but a nice session but need to get the pace down to closer to 2 min/500m with initial catch also keeping stroke rate to 22-24. See different stats below