Training at Dorney Lake

With Henley and Stourport heads being cancelled due to flooding a group of us headed to Dorney Lake to get some training in.

Dorney is Eton College’s rowing center and a 2012 Olympic venue. Despite the early start I happy to go somewhere new to train. Being surrounded by other rowers in a professional setup helped to focus me on getting something out of the session.

It was good to get back on the double with Sandy after a couple of months break. Our first outing consisted of us getting back into it. We did two trips, covering 8k, and were left with a mix bag of good and bad. Having a coach to assist would have really helped at this point. The second outing started out into a difficult headwind. A little frustrating but we made the most of it. Heading downwind we had a couple of side by sides with the ladies four. We pushed on both of these and I was amazed that, for the first time, we completed 2k in a straight line. We could hear the ladies pushing along side but we had enough to stay with them.

There were sloppy moment but overall I was impressed by our speed and technique at higher rating. Sandy did a good job in bow shouting reminders to me for fast hands and body lean. This made the biggest difference to our speed and is something to focus on in the future.

Picture: Eton College Rowing Center

Picture: Dorney Lake