Erg races!
The GRP rowers are down south, in Princeton, NJ, for the fall “East Coast Speed Order.” Yesterday they raced 6 km on the rowing erg, and today a 4+ km race on the water. Look for results here. It looks to me like there are a lot of Craftsbury names at or near the top of the results, headlined by the Graves brothers in first (John) and second (Peter), Elizabeth Sonshine in third, Hugh McAdam in first, and Phil Grisdela in third in their respective on-the-water races from today! Nice work everyone! However I will have to leave a more detailed analysis and commentary to someone who was at the races and/or knows the sport…
Not to be left out of the racing and erging fun for the weekend, most of the GRP skiers had a classic rollerski time trial Saturday morning, preparing for the start of the ski season at the end of this month. There was even a dusting of snow on the sides of the road, and a bit of ice on the surface of the road, to heighten our feeling of fast-approaching winter! Then, since it just so happens to be the weekend of the SkiErg World Sprints, many of us raced 1000m on the Concept2 SkiErg on Saturday afternoon before our strength workout. 1000m is extremely hard, but actually I found it fun, because it’s over quickly too! A little over 3 minutes for the fastest guys, and slightly under 4 minutes for the fastest women – it’s not so bad, though the likelihood of gigantic blow-ups is also pretty high! It’s cool to have a standardized way to compare, for people from around the world to be able to race each other without being in the same physical location.
Everyone can enter the race, just find a SkiErg and race to your fastest time by the end of today, and post it on the Concept2 online logbook by tomorrow (www.concept2.com).
Current standings for the World Sprints can be found here, with more entries to be added throughout today and tomorrow.
Caitlin and Liz pulling their 1k Sprints in the new gym at Craftsbury
All levels of involvement: warming up, spectating, and testing
Andrew testing, supported by the cheering squad
Ethan pulling FAST splits, with the rest of the team and Pepa cheering him on
Concept2 co-founder Dick Dreissigacker checks out the splits, while Ethan tries to recover from his 3:00.6 1k! That’s within 1.5 seconds of the current world record!