A great day out and it was wonderful meeting so many Free Spirits either again or for the first time. It was particularly good to see Mike Channin and Tanya who unexpectedly turned up to spectate.
I am now glad that I chose to enter 2 smaller races at Evesham and Cardiff this year. The experience gained at these events was invaluable and helped me control my nerves. I had the good fortune to meet Anna Bailey just before my race and we had a quick chat about Malvern and a moan about the race being 5 minutes late.
The start went well for a change and I am sure Roger Bangay would have been happy to see I hit my target pace (1:49) within a few strokes. I found it difficult to maintain a consistent speed. Occasionally I would be hitting 1:47 which panicked me so I would then slow down too much and the speed would drop to 1:51/1:52. After 500m I became more settled but the dry atmosphere was beginning to bother me and at 1000m I was beginning to doubt whether I could finish. There was no way I was going to handle down at BIRC though so I just carried on. By 1500m I was looking at about 7:20 and didnt know if I had a sprint finish. At 250m to go the doubts disappeared and I started to crank up the pace hitting 1:37/1:38, finishing in 7:13.7 a pb by 1.2 seconds.
Rowing at about 1:50 for 1500m and relying on my sprint finish is not going to get me much further now and I really need to speed up the first 1500 if I am going to progress towards sub 7. So its back to the Pete Plan this week with the horrible 4x2000 planned for Thursday. I will then take Friday off and have another go at my seasons best 10k (40:12) and maybe even push for a pb (sub40).

I was browsing Thomas' and Max's blogs this evening and thought it was time to restart my burblings again. My last blog was just before Evesham back in July. A fabulous day out, meeting Thomas, Roger, Wolfie, Spamuel, William, and Philip. The training paid off and I removed almost 10 seconds from my mile pb to finish in 5:46.2 The most pleasing aspect was my finish where I momentarily hit 1:33.
Evesham was followed by a rather mediocre fortnight and diabolical August where I seemed to suffering from hay fever or dust mite allergy. Whatever it was my breathing was badly affected and it was disturbing listening to a "death rattle" in my lungs.
Things began to improve steadily in September which rather handily had 10k as the ctc. From an appalling 44 minute effort at the beginning of the month, I finished with a more respectable sub 40:30. I must have another go soon as I think I may be approaching sub 40 form again.
The improvement continued throughout October with my return to the Pete plan and culminated in a new 2k pb set during the Welsh Indoor Rowing championships in Cardiff of 7:14.9, a 6.4 second improvement. It was great to see Roger there and meet Brian Critchley for the first time.
My form has continued to look good in the week following Cardiff and I have finally broken my longest standing pb in the 30 minutes as well setting a new pb for 30r20, which I continue to hate with a passion. Hopefully this run of form will continue to BIRC in a couple of weeks time. I have tentatively set myself a target of 7:10 but that may be a little ambitious. I will need to get my start right and try and hold a 1:49 split and then hope there is enough left in the tank for a sprint finish. I plan to do a few 1500m sessions to see how holding that split feels