City Regatta 1k - Edinburgh/Leeds/Bristol/London

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GuidonTheBee
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City Regatta 1k - Edinburgh/Leeds/Bristol/London

Post by GuidonTheBee »

Spotted this: https://www.cityregatta.co.uk/home.html#news
We’re shaking up the indoor rowing scene and literally putting it centre stage in the heart of 4 cities around the UK. The Invesco Perpetual City Regatta is a dynamic new, free to enter and open to all, indoor rowing championship series, primarily for teams but with a singles element as well.

At each of our spectacular outdoor venues, up to 32 all male or all female crews, made up of four people, will compete head to head in a series of fast and furious regatta style knock out races over 1000m on Concept 2 rowing machines - all set to a high tempo sound track of summer beats, dazzling lights and special effects on a purpose built outdoor stage.
I don't know anything about it other than a quick scan of the website but it seems to be:

Edinburgh 24th June
Leeds 15th July
Bristol 21st July
London 12th Aug

I'm presuming its a relay, total distance 1k. Its weekdays which may be tricky but I was wondering if there were any Free Spirits up for the Edinburgh date. (especially as we have a newly crowned British Record holder in our ranks 8) (though let's be fair, John could probably smash it on his own as a team of 1 !!)
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plummy
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Re: City Regatta 1k - Edinburgh/Leeds/Bristol/London

Post by plummy »

4 people, travelling potentially hundreds of collective miles to row 250m each - on a week day - good luck with that Invesco!!

I don't understand what they mean by a knockout - are there several rounds (in which case the metres rowed will increase a bit)?
Are there age/weight groups? Male/Female/Mixed? Anyone not male, HWT and 20~40 would be disadvantaged
The details seem a bit woolly to me.

I agree that John could do a great job on his own though.
60 yrs old, 76kg, 5' 10"
43Mm metres rowed. Re-setting the bar much lower now. Getting too old for this malarky
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CamiCrew
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Re: City Regatta 1k - Edinburgh/Leeds/Bristol/London

Post by CamiCrew »

It sounds fun. I like anyone who takes it as a mission to "shake up the indoor rowing scene."

Hope you get some takers.
-barbara

F Hwt 53 yrs 5'10"
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jhaveman
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Re: City Regatta 1k - Edinburgh/Leeds/Bristol/London

Post by jhaveman »

Since the Leeds event (July 15th) is on our doorstep, Sheena and me are certainly thinking of at least having a look - especially since we'll have retired by then :D

However the web site doesn't have an awful lot of useful information to help you decide whether to sign up (e.g. how far and how often are you supposed to row, will there be any opportunity to warm up, etc), and it sounds like we'd have to find 6 other rowers (3 male and 3 female) to both be able to take part.
GuidonTheBee wrote:- all set to a high tempo sound track of summer beats, dazzling lights and special effects on a purpose built outdoor stage.
They don't mention karaoke ... :shock:
Somehow I get the feeling that they're aiming this at a younger audience - but if anybody's up for making up a team then please let us know.
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jhaveman
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Re: City Regatta 1k - Edinburgh/Leeds/Bristol/London

Post by jhaveman »

So we had a look at the City Regatta event in Leeds yesterday evening, purely as spectators. There were 14 men's teams and 11 women's teams taking part. It looked like the event was mainly based around fitness clubs, with a lot of Crossfit teams taking part. There was one Sub 7 team, and I recognised a few of their names from the CTC leader board.

The racing was done on a stage which held 4 banks of 4 rowers (so up to 4 teams could race each other). At the back there was also a bank of 8 rowers for warm up / cool down.

The racing format had everyone (up to 4 teams) rowing at the same time, and the distance covered by all 4 members of a team was somehow combined to a team distance and projected on a big screen (showing each team as a single boat making progress in the usual way). No distinction in age group or weight category was made.

We watched the initial heats, which brought the field down to 8 men's teams and 6 women's teams to go to the semi-finals. Then we watched the men's semis and left after that, mainly because it got a bit repetitive unless you knew any of the participants (and because it got a bit loud sometimes with the music playing and the race commentary going on).

In general the times set were pretty quick, although fortunately there were a few teams where we would have been able to keep up (in particular Sheena was quite happy to see that one team did the 1k at a pace that she would have beaten with her 10k pace that morning :D).

Unfortunately we still haven't found out who won the event, because their website hasn't been updated with any information yet. Still, it was reasonably well organised, and it was interesting to go and see, but there weren't many spectators other than the people involved in the organisation or supporting the teams.

There are 2 more events (Bristol and London) and then a national final in London.
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