Three wins for Clonmel Rowing Club at Shandon Head of River event

Clonmel Rowing Club (CRC) travelled to the Shandon Head of River (HOR) on Saturday last.
Conditions in Clonmel may have been blustery but on the Marina in Cork we were met with benign conditions over the 3k course.

CRC recorded three wins on the day and came second in another two categories.
The first win came in the J14 8x. It is great to see these guys chalking up a victory as they start out on their rowing careers. The crew was Edward Wall, Alan Fee, Jerome Quinlan, Dominykas Valuzis, Bobby Power, Chris Kane, Finn Murphy and Hugh Dineen, with Branwen Kelly in the driving seat.

We had a couple of other junior crews out including the WJ 16 4x+ who came fourth and the men’s J18 4x- who came third behind Lee and Shandon. Our W Masters 4x- came second to a slick St Michael’s crew.

Better fortune favoured our mixed masters when the crew of Ruth Hennessy, Michelle O’Halloran, Tom O’Donnell and Paul Nugent, with Denise Fleming steering, put their opponents Lee Valley and Tralee to the sword. After their endeavours Tom and Paul were looking forward to a nice cup of tea, but no such luck. At the slip they had to take out the bow pair and put in two J16s Odhran Williams and Noel Quinlan to row Int 4x, with Lucy Mulcahy coxing. With an age disparity of 45 years between the stern pair and the bow pair, the crew put in a gutsy performance to claim the Intermediate Pennant.

Our MJ16 4x+ just missed out on the win by a mere three seconds when Shandon just edged them out. This was nonetheless a fine performance by the crew of Darren Kane, Darragh Noonan, Keeling Hogan and Oisin Walsh. We look forward with eager anticipation to their performances over the coming months.

DAIRE LYNCH UPDATE
While Clonmel were racing on the Marina, Daire Lynch was out the road in Inniscarra undergoing a 2k erg test with all the other high performance rowers getting ready for the Olympics, which is now only six months away. At the moment his training regime is evolving from aerobic training to anaerobic threshold. When rowing at high intensity, the body’s demand for energy exceeds the supply of oxygen and the anaerobic metabolism kicks in to break down carbohydrates from stored sources like glycogen. This is the stage where the muscles produce lactate and the arms and legs are burning. The more training conducted in the anaerobic phase will help the body withstand the debilitating sensation experienced in the final sprint for the line.

In February, Daire will go to a training camp in Italy for a few weeks getting ready for World Cup racing in April.

O’BRIEN’S BRIDGE HOR
In the meantime us lesser mortals will have to content ourselves with going to O’Brien’s Bridge in county Clare for the St Michael’s HOR on February 10.