Rowing and Rugby

In which I yet again abuse science blogs to discuss matters of little import to general readers. But it's my blog, so there.

The rowing was the Head to Head, which involves rowing the 2 km form the Railway bridge to the Motorway bridge, spinning, and then rowing back. You get a rest of ~20 mins while the division comes through, or maybe more, I wasn't timing it. Our time turns out to be a bit rubbish but we weren't that bad. The first leg, which is downstream, was OK; the second, against the stream and therefore slower, we stuffed up somewhat with poor technique and a few mini-crabs; the times show that, in that we lost more on the second legs than other crews. Moral: more ergs, more coached outings. Indeed more outings in general. Savelie did well, mind you, at 103. Irritatingly, the Hornets beat us by 1 second - grrr. If you're friends with the right people, there is some facebook video of the end of the second leg. The ladies look prettier but they are slower :-).

Meanwhile, back at the rugby, I have had my first taste of one of the fabled joys of parenthood: standing on the sidelines on a cold winter's day watching your son play. Miriam had it harder though: she was unwise enough to wear her thin elegant work trousers. This was Daniel's first rugby match, and he appears to have enjoyed it - the Perse won 40-10 or somesuch over Ipswich, which helped of course, and he scored a try and did some decent tackling, so that is all to the good. True it was but the C team - the nearby A team clearly had a better idea of tactics and play - but these are early days. Since it was a friendly match and Ipswich appeared to be a little short of players, D got to play on their team for a bit, before being "invalided" out with a cut to the leg - though by the speed with which he ran to the medic, and then ran back, it wasn't very serious. Next time I'll bring my camera and subject you to tedious pictures as well. Afterwards, tea and coffee and sandwiches in the hall, and a chance to chat to other parents, which of course we didn't, being unsociable folk.

Incidentally - please be sure never to eat adulterated Ham Nuts. Always use the pure sort.

More like this

Sunday was the Champs Head. It is a slightly odd head race: a short course (1200m, from the Plough to the Pike and Eel) from a standing start, but the start is just for fun, since you get timed from a few strokes in. It was a blazing day, it felt like the heights of midsummer not late spring,…
Chesterton RC ran the Head of the Cam race today (we really must improve our website some time). I got to help marshalling a couple of divisions, on First Post Corner and Grassy Corner, which was a good post as nothing tricky happens at those points. So I took an absurd number of photos (only div 1…
It is the first night of the bumps (and see? I haven't bored you with the boaties for ages). This isn't us - this is Cantabs II in M1 just about to catch what must be 99's III, I'd guess. Congratulations to all of them and in particular Petr Arnold at bow. He certainly looked very happy…
The long-awaited follow-up to Brighton man and about as exciting for non-runners. If you lack patience, the answer is 3:57. Long introduction - you can skip this bit Just like last time, there is a backstory: after Brighton, I'd decided I was going to do more of this nonsense, and so inscribed…

Don't give a prop forward a broken rugby link.

Fix it, quickly.

[Oops, missing r in href inserted. Don't get too excited though - tis only a link to the Perse rugby page where they say how wonderful they are -W]

So, a technology/sport/ecology question.

Have you come up with some clever little radio/accelerometer device that could be pinned to each rugby player (or each rowing boat, or each aardvark, or each ice floe) that would let one reconstruct the entire sequence of play by tracking the movement of all the players (motion in space over time)?

I was reminded of the idea by this: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/31unboxed.html?hpw

[For rugby the tech isn't there yet (but maybe Ble will get you later). For rowing we wanted to get strain gauges on everyone's oars so we could tell who was wimping out :-) -W]