that would be 4th place!

july 29, originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

later times are kind of luxurious - I got to sleep late, make breakfast, eat breakfast and have a (minor) freak out at home before going on a a short shopping spree to find a new shirt, located a new helmet as well (so I wasn't riding with my beloved but battered blingy practice helmet), remembered a hairnet, and still got to the horse early for polishing her and tack.

We got to the farm at 1:30 and were greeted with a request to go as soon as possible. So 5 minutes of tacking up and 15 minutes of warm-up and we were in the ring.

The test felt pretty comfortable. It flowed well, the transitions were good, she had a forward feeling for almost all of it. We had no canter lengthening to speak of, but it felt different to me. We didn't get dinged for a step bak at the first halt, but also didn't get the extra credit for a really good halt at the end - probably evened out, but still. I want credit where credit is due!

We were parked next to friends, stayed to watch friends, it was all very low key. Also I beat my last score. Which was good.

wretched excess of geekiness

Last night in the middle of the swimming Alice asks "what is hull speed for a human?"

Hull speed is the speed a boat or ship can go before the length of the wake is longer than the boat, and the boat is essentially pushing uphill, and using several times more energy. Vessels can plane well above hull speed, and with enough engine power they can run above hull speed, but for the vessels I generally mess about with, hull speed is very definite limitation.

So tonight, because I'm the one in front of a computer (in a very rare appearance of standard US masculinity Al was watching sports on the couch with a (root)beer this afternoon) I was tasked with calculating hull speed on a human.

There is a hull speed calculator making some of this easier - otherwise you have to calculate the square root of the LWL (length at waterline) on your own and multiply it by 1.34 to get knots:

For a basic 6 ft human, hull speed = 3 knots.
3 knots = 1.5 m/sec

the 200 m world record is 1:42:00 which is 200m/102sec = 1.9 m/sec

so the Olympic level swimmers are working well above hull speed, powering up their own bow wave, which is what it looks like watching them. Awesome.