Mille grazie Kirby, purtroppo parlo solo l'inglese e un po d'italiano. Ho imparato latino e greco a scuola, ma ho dimenticato il maggiore parte delle queste lingue.
Back from
Starnberg after an exciting day at the races. 271 competitors were there and the atmosphere was helped by loud and encouraging music being played all the time. I never went to an indoor race with music played in the background (well, it was so loud, I should say foreground) and I was afraid it might distract me from the rowing and the race plan. Actually it didn't do that too much as the ergs were behind the loudspeakers.
My own race went to plan most of the time. The plan was to start at around 1:55 pace for the first ten minutes, then 1:54 for the next ten minutes, 1:53 for the next five and then empty the tanks. The problem was the terribly dry air. I'd say way drier than at BIRC. After two minutes already my mouth was burning. Nevertheless I could stick to my race plan for the first 25 minutes. Unfortunately the final five minutes were really ugly and I couldn't push any harder, the question "why am I doing this?" came up too often. My result in the end were 7859m which at least was an SB by 3m and meant 6th place out of 12 competitors.
But there were other much more noticeable performances there. One was shown by a joung girl who is also member of my otw rowing club. She won her category with 7429m (460m ahead of 2nd place), not bad for a 16 year old girl!
And then of course there was the performance of Michele Marullo. This guy is really huge! I'd guess 1.95 or even 2m tall! And he is determined! He sat on the erg, started his race at 1:30 for the first ten strokes and then settled into 1:42 pace throughout the entire race! Some low 1:30s in the finish sprint meant a massive 8836m after 30 mins, which means he set a new world record for his age category of 50-59 MHWT (old one was 8771m). A massive performance indeed! And I can tell you, even super rowers suffer!
In the evening we had diner together with him (guess what super rowers like mostly after a race: it's not pasta, it's knuckle of pork!). I talked to him regarding Free Spirits and he repeated his wish to join our team. He explained that he had (and still has) problems changing his team affiliation on the C2 logbook. We exchanged emailadress and phone numbers so that hopefully I can help him to solve that problem
Edit: I'd like to upload some pics, but I get the message "Sorry, the board attachment quota has been reached."?
(in fact it's only 120k away from where I live).
He will be actually racing in the 19-29 MHWT category (poor little boys, they have no idea whom they are messing with 
=D>
=D> - may be, you should get a CD of that music! 
