Amsterdam Holland Beker

Earlier this month we took our double to the Holland Beker regatta in Amsterdam. We were really looking forward to racing some other doubles, finally! It was going to be a novel experience racing people in the same boat classification. We had some good comepetion entered with the Czech Olympic double racing both days and racing on the Sunday the Dutch Olympic double, who were newly qualified at the Lucerne Olympic Qualification Regatta.

We were welcomed on our first day of training to a lovely flat calm lake. Sadly this wasn't to last and our first day of racing was a tad breezy (luckily a tailwind).
It's always strange racing for the first time in a new combination. You get to see how your crew mates behave before racing, some people are completly silent, others won't shut up and you get the occasional nervously angry person that you have to tip toe around. Luckily we are both pretty similar...chilled, happy to chat, generally covering up any signs of nerves with a smile. Part of this was actual excitement to race, we both love racing and we have a VERY long season this year so are relishing any chance to go fast!

A very windy Bosbaan

We had a straight final both days, Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday we had a five boat final, with The Czech Olympic double, the Antosova sisters (they are a long established boat who got bronze at the first world cup this year), a Swedish club double, a Swiss club double, and a Japanese club double.  Unfortunately the Saturday race lacked any real side by side racing. We found ourselves in a bit of a void during the race, way behind the Antosova sisters but a way ahead of the club boats too. We finished 16 secs behind the Czech and almost 10 seconds ahead of the Swiss. However, it was good to brush away any first race jitters and good to find ourselves so far ahead of other club doubles. Results can be seen here.

Sunday turned out to be a beautiful sunny day and we got some great racing. Our start didn't exactly go to plan, after the first couple strokes Erica hit some water and completely lost her right blade! Some good skills from her and a couple of cool heads and we were back on track and managed to make our way back through the field. After the first 500m the CZE 2x took a good lead and ourselves and NED emerged ahead of the remainder of the field. 

We were four lanes away from the Dutch which made the battle a little more diluted than had we been in neighbouring lanes, but Tina kept an eye on their boat and we fought our way down the course, settling onto a good rhythm. At the 1km, half way mark, we were 0.9 seconds behind the Dutch and by 1500m (500m to go) we had reduced the gap to 0.65seconds. In our push for the line we drew them in to within half a length of us, but their sprint finish was much more impressive than ours, putting them 3.4 seconds ahead of us overall. We were happy to have such a solid first half and now need to go away and work on our sprint to the line. It was altogther a great experience to get a close race with the Dutch and come away with a new PB time. Results here

Happy double post racing!

Here is a video of our race, courtesy of Tina's parents. Great footage from the moving grandstand. We are the yellow boat closest to the camera. follow the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2i0My6u4i0

We were pleased to be able to use our 110% Play Harder compression leggings between races to help us recover from racing.

Thanks also to Headsweats, SunSense, Faith in Nautre, Hunter and Buff for their product support so we could survive the weekend!