2009 High School Erg Sprnts

Saturday my rowing club hosted our annual erg sprint competition (6th year!) for the local high schools. What are erg sprints you ask? Basically an erg is an indoor rowing machine. Its primary purpose is to keep rowers (and others) in shape. It mimics what you experience out on the water or close anyway. While some erg all year round, most of us tend to use it most during the colder months when going out on the water is no longer possible. The thing about erging though - it's boring. Concept2, the maker of the erg, is always running various challenges on their web site to give us something to shoot for, to relive the boredom. Our erg sprints, we like to think, gives the high school kids something to train and shoot for as their winter training starts to wind down. Something to break up the monotony. To see how they match up with their counterparts from the other local high schools. They will begin on the water training the end of this month. My job for the sprints was the set-up and take down. A roadie of sorts. We hold the sprints at our local Golds Gym where we (my rowing club) and Golds have about 20 or so ergs available. We use only 10 for the sprints so we have to move the others out of the way and reconfigure how the ergs are lined up. We set them up facing each other to make the cabling to the computer easier. As the kids race, you can watch their progress up on a TV brought in for this purpose. Each erg shows up as a small boat that travels across the screen at a speed based on how hard and fast the rower ergs. Various information during the race is also compiled, stored and provided to their coaches. Here the ergs are set up and we're testing the connection.

In this picture, which as I remember is for the freshman girls, sit ready for the start. The girl on the far right, in the green shirt, ended up having some sort of what I perceived as a diabetic episode, almost fainted as they tried to push sugar into her via a candy bar. She didn't finish this race, but came back later and erged in the relays so good for her for hanging in there.

Here lightweight girls sit ready for their race. Lightweight girls weigh 130 or less. When Daughter#1 did high school crew the weight limit was 120 lbs. Lightweight boys weigh 165 lbs or less. When The Son did Crew, the weight limit for boys was 145 lbs or less.

Next up the senior girls open weight category. The two girls closest the camera broke the record for their category. Congrats to them.

Another picture of the lightweight girls during their race. It gets quite loud as the crowd gets into urging their racer on.

One of the final races before the relays, was the coxswain race. They race for only 500 meters as opposed to 1,000 meters for the freshmen and 1,500 meters for everyone else. These three girls (left to right) Molly, Devon and Katie also coxed for the men's side of my rowing club. They were a delight to work with and did a heck of a job for us. Molly finished first, Katie second and Devon fourth. Nice work ladies.

Finally I've included a video for your enjoyment of the start and first minute of the senior women's race. Just remember that after the video stops, they still have another four minutes of hard rowing to go. On Saturday we had no fainting, although two close calls and only one puker. Enjoy and congratulations to all that participated.