Rund um Wannsee

Last weekend I had the great pleasure of participating in my first head race with my rowing club, Lotto Bydgostia. The race was held in Berlin, Germany on Saturday, October 3rd and hosted by the Berliner Ruder Club (Berlin Rowing Club). It was a 15 kilometer head race around the island of Wannsee with some 50 or so eights participating, both women's and men's as well as juniors, seniors, and masters. The Berliner Ruder Club even put together an "All-Star-Achter" which included most notably Marcel Hacker, one of Germany's greatest oarsmen who has represented Germany at the 2000, 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games. Besides this 8+, my very own 8+ received a special international invitation to compete at the regatta.

The regatta weekend started on Friday when my club drove the 6 or so hours from Bydgoszcz to Berlin. After unloading and rigging the boats, my team mates and I very quickly changed into dress shirts and sport coats and attended a special athlete's banquet, which was complete with full bar (our coach let us each have one beer, which we strictly obeyed...), food served from a buffet, and even hired models standing at certain doorways to greet the guests and look pretty! The evening was very nice and although I did not understand much of the speeches made during the dinner (all spoken in German) I enjoyed the good food and the fact that all of these atheltes from different countries could sit down and share such a nice meal before the race the next day.

The race started at 9 a.m. the next morning. We awoke to a cloudy and cold morning. After putting on several layers of long spandex, we checked our boat one last time and launched. The entire race was a party from the moment we started our warm-up. We rowed away from the club which was located at the end of a sheltered channel and onto a large open lake, complete with waves and a good amount of wind. The start of the race would take place on this lake, and for 2k we would have to battle the waves and the wind, as well as the other crews. There were a good 50 or so 8+ out on the water.

The race start was very simple. Unlike other head races in which crews are set off every 30 seconds or so, here, all the boats would line up in a starting area behind bow numbers 1-12 which had the advantage of lining up side by side on the starting line (we were bow number 4 so we had the advantage of starting near the front and being able to see the pandimonium as it unfolded behind us). This proved somewhat difficult as the starting line was marked by two buoys about 300 meters apart and everyone was jockeying for position. It was complete chaos, with boats running into each other, oars clashing and the wind pushing everyone out and past the starting line (something which we took care not to do as the officials simply disqualified anyone starting beyond the line rather than giving them a warning). My boat, as well as other boats, were literally laughing aloud during all of this chaos. We managed to line up 2 or 3 times but never for long enough before someone was pushed out of line and everyone had to re-align. Finally, after sitting in the cold and in the middle of all of this confusion, a German voice sounded off in the distance on a megaphone, followed by a pause and then a starter's gun. All 8+ started charging for the line, and it was one of the loudest and most fun experiences I have ever had in a boat.

My boat took the start somewhat conservatively, as there were lots of waves and we didn't want to burn ourselves out as we had an entire 15k ahead of us. 4 boats got out ahead of us by the time we came to first turn, and during the first turn, another boat managed to sneak on the inside and thus passed us. However, as soon as we came out of the turn, we had a straight and some better water, and our coxswain put us to work. We quickly reeled in that boat that caught us on the turn and started chasing the boats ahead of us. We rowed on for a while before making contact with another boat, when with about 3k to go, our coxswain tells us as a boat to look over our left shoulders and look at the boat that we are coming upon. With that, he had us put our strength behind the oars and reel that boat in. With about 1500m left in the race, we finally caught them and as soon as we had an inch advantage over them, they broke and we just flew past them. We rowed to the finish line finishing fourth with a time of 49:18, only 20 seconds behind third place (48:58) and 44 seconds behind the first place boat (48:36). We based the race at 34 spm, dropping to 30/31 during two short stretches of bad waves and up to 38 when we were passing crews. It felt great to finish such a long race and to have finished so strongly.

Following the race, we were greeted by another banquet, this time more casual and an awards ceremony. Even though we finished fourth, we were given medals by the Berliner Ruder Club as tokens of good competition, since we were their special international guests. We got to go on stage and our names were read aloud to the crowd.

For a list of boats, their rosters and their finishing times, please click here (My finishing time is on page 21).
For pictures from the race, please click here.
(There are more pictures, including a regatta map, in the post below)

Coming up this next weekend I have another head race, this time at home in Bydgoszcz. However, it also carries its own international acclaim as we have invited a boat from the Berliner Ruder Club, as well as from Cambridge, Oxford and Nottingham Universities from England.