Luanne Mills pulls an incredible 8:10.5 for 2000 meters and qualifies for CRASH-B, she logs her miles for Iron Oarsman on the World Ranking

She looks ROCK SOLID!
Indoor Rowing

World indoor record holder Luanne Mills of Seattle qualified for the CRASH-B World Indoor Rowing Championships at the Ergomania Northwest Indoor Rowing Championships in Seattle.

The 25th annual event featured nearly 200 competitors, ages 13-80, including five current or former U.S. national team members.

Mills, 68, won the women's lightweight veteran B division (ages 60-69) with a time of 8:10.5 over 2,000 meters. Mills, of Seattle's Pocock Rowing Center, will be making her fifth trip to the world indoor rowing championships.

Xeno Muller, Olympic gold and silver medalist, indoor rowing, rowing technique.

After this morning's indoor rowing workout at the Iron Oarsman I sat on the sofa...

...next to my dog YETI. He was washed yesterday and he is perfect to fall asleep with. This pictures shows how mellow he looks and acts. All YETI wants is to hang with you. He is perfect relaxation therapy for tired rowers.

Xeno Muller, Olympic gold and silver medalist, indoor rowing, rowing technique.

I was asked by a U.K. forum board member to talk about my plans:

Dear Michael

You will hear a lot more from me than you bargained for. :-)

I am slowly figuring out my "schedule" and my purpose next to being the best father and husband I can be to my family... The figuring out started in July 2002... A slow process it has been without question.

I am really happy that I found a passion for indoor rowing after competing. It is awesome for me to watch people discover rowing and become fitter through our workouts on DVD and at the Iron Oarsman. At the same time I get to workout on a daily basis.

It is amazing how ACTIVE the indoor rowing circuit is in the UK and how stimulating the UK Concept2 website is. It is exciting to follow the highschool indoor rowing program in Birmingham where indoor rowing is being incorporated into the PE curriculum, to make students fit and healthy. I like observing the U.K., because I want to help the United States discover indoor rowing the same way.

Concept2 USA has not found interest in what I am doing here on the West Coast, even though I am the ONLY full time indoor rowing studio in the USA. Over the last three years I figured out that "Vermont" does not involve itself directly into small operations like mine.

To their CREDIT, C2USA does a very good job in customer service and product support, which I enjoyed over the years.

However, I have been immensly frustrated because (arguably) NO BODY knows indoor rowing in the US! This is slowly changing because a couple of people (I am one of them) are making some ripples. My marketing skills are improving, yet it would have been amazing to get marketing help and dollars from Vermont.

It is too late now, because I am going to sell Rowperfect on the western half of the United States. I am as pumped to succeed in bringing indoor rowing to the less active US citizens, as I was when I trained for the Olympics. The market is huge and the possibility of improving people's lifes is in less fortunate areas is enormous. When I look towards the future, I see many neighborhood and city indoor rowing COOPs.

Within a couple of weeks I will be filming the first Indoor Rowing Workout on the newly redesigned Rowperfect. For peole rowing at home, it won't matter whether they use ROWPERFECT or the Concetp2 on slides, the result will be the same, a great workout! (Although, in my opinion, the feel is smoother and more responsive on the Rowperfect).

Both machines have the ability to measure distance the same way. What is not widely known is that the C2 is calibrated similarly to a men's 4- in which the rowers weigh 220 pounds. This is the information one has to dial into the Rowperfect in order to compare rowing results.

Alright that is it for now. Row on, I believe that I will be hitting in the middle 3 million for this season.

All the best and thank you for giving me the opportunity to stand on my little internet soap box!

XENO

Xeno Muller, Olympic gold and silver medalist, indoor rowing, rowing technique.

Val Stepanchuk at Iron Oarsmen

Hello team!

This is my first blog post ever! Not counting the ones I posted on myspace. First of all I would like to thank Xeno for kind introduction and this opportunity to share my thoughts and adventures with all of you on here.

My name is Val Stepanchuk, 25. I was born in Kam'yanets'-Podil'skiy, Khmel'nitskiy Region UKRAINE. My family moved to California in 1995 when I was 13. I have four younger sisters and three younger brothers.

I have always been interested in all kinds of different competitions. In High School I was on Track & Field and Cross Country teams. I started rowing in fall of 2003 at Orange Coast College. It was beginning of the fall semester and I was planning on joining a sailing team at Coast. I was looking for a sailing coach and ran into a rowing coach Pat Gleason, who invited me to come try out rowing. I didn't think much of it at first, but decided to give it a try. I was majorly hooked, even though I had to get up at the crack of dawn everyday. Rowing has changed my life around a bit.

I have been rowing for four years now and not planning on stopping anytime soon.

I started rowing at Iron Oarsmen in July of 2006 and it has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. I have met many incredible people that keep me going everyday I'm there. I am thankful for this opportunity. Iron Oarsmen rocks!

Apart from rowing I have been involved in many other sports like; Snowboarding, cycling, swimming, adventure racing, triathlons, marathons etc..

This year I am competing on USASA (United States of America Snowboard Association) in Southern California Conference. There are 3 disciplines that we compete in through the season. FREESTYLE - Slopestyle and Halfpipe

SNOWBOARD CROSS or Boardercross

ALPINE - Slalom and Giant Slalom.

You can find schedule and results of competitions by clicking on this link: http://www.usasa.org/series/series.lasso?-token=browse&SeriesCode=socal&-maxRecords=1&-database=regions.fp3&-layout=region_info&-search

That's all for now!

KEEP ROWING!

Val

"Rowing is a sport for dreamers. As long as you put in the work, you can own the dream. When the work stops, the dream disappears."-Jim Dietz, Rowing Coach, USCGA

Xeno Muller, Olympic gold and silver medalist, indoor rowing, rowing technique.

This is from my post to the U.K. Training Forum

Hello all.
Thank you for your hellos!

You can find the prices of the DVDs on my website and on EBAY. On Ebay the auctions start at $58 for the set of all 7 workouts. I greatly enjoy filming them and can't wait to do DVD 8.

"Negative splitting" to my knowledge is to row a 2K or any given distance or time in an increasing speed. For example: first 500 at 1:40, second 1:39, third 1:38, fourth 1:37...

My form of racing is more like the "bath tub"... If you plot speed on the Y axis and distance on the X axis, you would draw a graph that looks like a tub or a valley. Fast first five hundred, because of the twenty start strokes, then holding the average pace, and finally pushing hard in the last 350 meters.

One of the rowers at the Iron Oarsman told me that a beginner in the Bay Area (California), thought it would be exagerated to ask me to coach him. To this I say that I GREATLY enjoy introducing people to the rowing stroke that was taught to me by the late Harry Mahon (NZ) and Marty Aitken (AUS).

I would like to extend an invitation to those who would like to come visit us here in Costa Mesa. If you are interested you should organize a trip to come row here and do some sightseeing. Today we had a lovely day with mild temperatures. Our city is right next to Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, and Huntington Beach. LA is 45 minutes by car (no traffic), San Diego 70 minutes. And as I can see at the top of this page there is an AD for flights to LA. Universal Studios is a few minutes away and you can jump on the Backstage Tour and drive up Wisteria Lane from Desperate Housewifes. Yes, I watch that show. We also watch Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel with Mike Rowe, etc.

Over and out for now.

XENO

Xeno Muller, Olympic gold and silver medalist, indoor rowing, rowing technique.