The Irish PROVINCES Indoor Rowing Competition 2014 Report
The first ever Irish PROVINCES Indoor Rowing Competition went ahead on Saturday November 24th at the UL Arena. This event could well become another tough but fun feature of Irish Rowing as there was a great buzz on the day. Crowds began pouring in at 8am and pretty much hung about for great racing right up to the last team relay at 4:45pm. Over 1100 individual races took place with as many competitors and supporters cheering, recovering, preparing, warming-up, cooling down and hanging out all the day long.
Indoor races are of course indoors, so you get to see the pain and suffering upfront and personal while you sip your tea in the comfort of the stand without a drop of rain falling on your head and no boats and trailers to load afterwards. What’s not to love?
There were several very respectable records set, namely Siobhan McCrohan of Tribesmen RC in the Lightweight Women’s Open 2000m in 7:15.2, breaking Claire Lambe of UCDBC’s 7:16.8 set in 2010. The fastest man on the day was Kevin Coughlan of Carlow RC in a respectable 6:10.2.
At the halfway mark a selection of crews raced in paired erg sliders the first races of their kind at an IIRC. The average split/wattage/speed was calculated by the electronically linked ergs and the Provinces were pitted against each other. All eyes were on these eight ergs as they had to combine brawn with on-the-water technique to get the best out of their boat and take victory.
Of interest on the day was that exactly half of the brand new race ergs were black. Concept 2 have been selling these for some time but they hadn’t made their way onto the IIRC race floor before now. While no different to the ‘grey’ machines they certainly looked slick.
With only six weeks left to IIRC 2015 the competitors of the first Irish PROVINCES IRC will be setting their sights on faster times post the Yuletide break and festivities. Here’s to sub sixes and some serious racing on the 60 new machines that will be rolled out for the Irish Indoor Rowing Championships.
Registration for IIRC 2015 closes at 11pm on Wednesday 14th January 2015
[cro_button text=”Register for The IIRC 2015″ link=”http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=katrejlab&oeidk=a07ea83jm6q363564cb” color=”1″]
[cro_button text=”Download Group Entry Form” link=”https://www.iirc.ie/IIRC Group Entry form Rev 10.xlsx” color=”1″]