Like the Head of the River Race, the Fours Head is a a head race over the 6.8-km Boat Race Course. Though Wolfson entered a four, I was a bit too uncertain of my lab schedule to commit to the race and so was training with Wolfson’s eight instead. Then, the day before the race, a plea was posted on the Oxford College Rowing website asking for a substitute rower for the KRSV Njord club of the University of Leiden, Netherlands. Needless to say, I offered my services and somehow was taken up on the offer.
Njord, founded in 1874, is the oldest Dutch national rowing association. My particular boat was made up of members who had been rowing for about two years, but as an “international crew”, we were entered in the Elite division alongside other top clubs and the likes of the Oxford and Cambridge Blues squads. Having start number 39 out of about 450 meant we were able to avoid the Tideway Head ritual of waiting for three hours on the water before the race started.
This race was the first and only time the crew rowed together, so the going was a bit scrappy, but there were some clean stretches and nice pushes, and we finished in a respectable 20:41.7.
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These pictures are courtesy Big Blade Photography and JET Photographic.
The final image is a heart rate graph. The vertical axis is heart rate (bpm) and the horizontal axis is minutes on the water, cropped to show the 20 minutes or so of the race. It was recorded with the Digifit iPhone app and a Bluetooth heart rate sensor. I’ve been playing around with this combination for a little while and it’s fun to track the details of your workout. I recommend it to anyone with a smartphone and an interest in this sort of thing.
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