Row, Row, Row your ERG...

Rowing is very big here in NZ, and living near the river, as we do, you do see lots of boats out on the water at any given time or day. Meridian Energy, the electricity company I work for, sponsors Canterbury Rowing. Somehow, Meridian and Canterbury Rowing decided it was a fun idea to organise a rowing regatta, for some corporate Meridian customers. To make it more entertaining and to allow many people to participate the race is for Eights. Rather a large boat! Last year this event was held for the first time, and after having heard many fun comments I decided to give it a go this time round. I was quite anxious at first, considering I had never rowed before! Our strict training regime saw us starting training at the beginning of August, with morning ERG sessions (indoor rowing machines) on Monday and Friday morning, from 6.30am to 7.30am, before work. Yes, it was early, but I heard rowing gives you a full work-out, so I was game! The first test was held on the very first training session, we had to row 500m so that Brett (colleague and self-appointed coach/manager) could see what standard he had to work with. Thinking that I was very fit, I thought it would be a doddle. Not realising that you had to use you legs more than just pulling, it took me a whole 2min13. After having been shown the correct technique and many training sessions later I managed to row a respectable 1.58.7. Myra (work colleague) and I still wanted more training and now use the one ERG at work, during lunchtime, and egg each other on. The last two training sessions Myra kept on improving her time, I however went from bad to worse. Not a good sign considering an ERG competition was coming up. The ERG competition would be for all the teams entered into the regatta to show off their talent and check out the competition.
Thursday was competition day. All day we were thinking about it at work, making each other nervous. At 6pm the competition started. The Cambridge Meridian team did really well, and Myra again bettered her time!


A few teams later it was Oxford Meridian’s turn. That is the team I am in. We are not as strong as Cambridge, and the majority of us have never rowed before. However, the adrenalin on the night made us all row our personal bests, and I now have a new time to beat: 1.56.5. Very happy with that and I hope to improve it even further, for the next ERG competition at the beginning of November. The successful evening was finished off with a few beers and pizzas and pies! Yes, very healthy food for us competitive sports people!

Regatta day is also getting near, it is to be held on 2 December. The Oxford crew have had just one session out on the water, and that was a disaster! We had no idea what we needed to do, not helped by the fact that Brett was shouting technical terms from the river bank, which we had never heard before! Luckily the Cambridge crew are doing a bit better on the outdoor training front. Yesterday I had to help out, by being coxswain (ended up at the banks just twice, oops!). The boat really moved smoothly, if only the Oxford crew could row like that.

Spring Challenge

About 2 months ago, Caroline (a work colleague) flicked me an e-mail with a question – would I be able to help out?Apparently Myra (another work colleague) had managed to get Caroline and Helen (yet another work colleague) enthusiastic for an adventure race only to find out that on the race weekend Myra could not actually compete due to other arrangements. A quick look at the attachment and I said yes. Only then did I bother to read the details. I quickly became frightened. The adventure race would take a minimum of 6 hours and would consist of trail walking, mountain biking and white water rafting. I then realised I probably would need to get myself a decent bike. And I had to convince Pete to be my support crew. A new bike was easily found. Sponsorship was given by Meridian, they would pay our entry fee and we were handed branded clothing to wear (apparently very fashionable in Twizel). But then came the realisation, I better train for this event. Not knowing what to expect I started weight training at the gym, continued my runs and managed to fit in a couple of bike rides. Last weekend Caroline and I had a session at Bottle Lake Forest (a nice park not too far from our house). This was the one and only time we had trained together, and I still had no idea of how fit Helen would be. Yes, our preparation could have been better….

On Friday we left work in the afternoon and headed for Hamner Springs. We had booked a lovely house to be our base for the weekend. The race briefing was at 7.30pm and we would finally receive our race information. Up until that point we had no idea about distances, terrain and difficulty. Caroline was our navigator and soon worked out the map. We also found out the order of events; about a 10km bike ride, a 17km white water rafting trip followed by an 18km trail walk and finally a 26km mountain bike ride.

Back at the house we packed our bags for the following day and stressed quite a bit. The three of us did not sleep well; we were all so excited, anxious and nervous. Pete cooked us a good porridge, to set us up for the day and by 8am we were ready to start the race. We cycled down to the start point, and were amazed to see so many people already lined up behind the start line!
Not having any illusions of winning, we did not push ourselves up to the front. At 9am we were off. After about half an hour on the bike we came to the first transition point. Pete had laid out the stuff needed for the following leg of the race. Quickly we changed into our wetsuits and booties and jogged off to the rafts. There we were teamed up with another three ladies and we rafted along an extremely calm river for about 75minutes before we came to transition point two.
Again, Pete was there to help us change into our walking gear. A quick bite to eat, a quick energy drink and we were off again. Caroline navigated us, although the steady stream of pink bibs ahead of us gave us all a feeling that we must be following the correct route. Safety in numbers as we said! The trail walk started off quite nicely but then we started a climb. We ended up climbing about 700m, along a steady path. The sheer relief when we finally reached the top, at check point two, is indescribable. Still, we had a few more kilometres to go, albeit down hill. We did end up jogging a bit, if only to use some different muscles. And of course, to show off for supporters and cameras!
At transition point three we got changed once again, and put more and warm clothes on as the temperature was dropping a bit and the cold wind was up a bit more. We jumped onto our bikes and started the final leg of the race. It started of nicely, following forest tracks. That only lasted 7kms, and then we started to climb. There was no end to this climb; the road just seemed never ending. It was hard cycling up here, especially as we had to stay together as a team and we did have various levels of fitness amongst us. We also stopped to help a team change a tyre. This was actually quite hard, the tyre would not want to come off and we ended up spending 40 minutes trying to help. I think for some of us this rest was actually quite welcome. We then continued our climb and finally we reached check point 5. From here it was all down hill. Caroline, the dare devil, raced down whilst Helen and I took a more cautious approach and used our brakes quite a bit! Okay, we did not came down very fast, but at least we were not being overtaken! By now we could smell the finish, but still had another 10km to go. We did not see anyone else; the field had finally spread out. The final 2 km or so was following a mountain bike track, which was quite nice. A few bumps etc. just like I trained last weekend. We now could even hear the finish, with applause etc. I managed to race Helen to the finish, and was the first one of us three through the finish line. Final time: 8 and 43 or so minutes. Below the expected and wanted 9 hours, and we were certainly not the last team! Pete ran over with a deserved beer which went down ever so quickly!
That evening we all felt fantastic for achieving our goal. A few more beers went down and we all slept a hell of a lot better! We’ll be doing it again next year. We now know what to expect, and what to train for. If you are up for it, it is on the weekend of 27/28 September. If that is too far away, there will be an Autumn Challenge in Taupo in February! Support crew members are needed for both....