Sunday 30 June 2013

Whew! What a weekend! I am not sure where the time went, but the Holland Beker is already over. We had straight finals both days and also came third both days. We definitely made some improvements on the second race, and were able to hold a steadier race profile for the first 1500m. Unfortunately we got a little caught up in the tricky tailwind conditions and weren't able to come together for a strong finish, but this is all a part of the "learning how to race" experience. We now have a week in Corgeno, Italy, at a training camp where we will work on that last 500m. I am excited to see how much we can improve in the next two weeks before racing at the World Cup 3 in Lucerne. I really enjoy being in a boat with such strong and dedicated athletes!
One last thing, I have heard that the internet at the hotel where we are staying in Corgeno is not very good so this might be the last update until we arrive in Lucerne.
Until then....
Today's race is at 4:37 Amsterdam time, which is 7:37am BC time! Links for results/live feed are in the previous two posts.

Saturday 29 June 2013

day 1: 3rd

Whew! What a sprint finish. To be honest, I had no idea which beep was for our boat until about 20minutes after the race was over. We ended up coming third to the Netherlands and New Zealand. I think we can definitely get a couple more seconds, and it felt really good to get those race jitters out. Tomorrow we race all the same boats.
At first, we were a little disappointed with our placing, but we found some areas of the race where we can gain some more speed and this race was definitely a solid first race for our crew.
Bring on tomorrow! Time to get some stretching and active recovery in.
Results from our race can be found at http://www.hollandbeker.nl/page/37/ .
Don't forget to check out the live feed. The link can be found in the previous post!

and the racing begins

Today is the first day of racing at the Holland Beker regatta. Our event goes off at 4:20 Amsterdam time, or 7:20 am BC time. Results will be posted here: http://www.hollandbeker.nl/page/37//// . There is also a live tracker at: http://www.hollandbeker.nl/page/64//// . The Canadian boats that raced this morning all made it through to the finals (M4-, LW1x, and LM1x). Should be an exciting two days of racing!

Tuesday 25 June 2013

Amsterdam

We arrived in Amsterdam yesterday afternoon. After a long sweaty flight overseas, a short bus ride to our hotel, and a quick snack we were riding our rental bikes to the rowing course on Amsterdam's lovely bike paths (see the picture below). The course is a man made 2km course that is precisely 2km long, meaning the only cool-down after a race is the 100 odd meters into the docks. Not to worry, Rowing Canada is prepared and has a tent of spin bikes that we can cool down and warm up on. There is not too much to report as of today: We race twice this weekend, once on Saturday and once on Sunday. We are rowing a bow mounted Hudson 4x for the first time and despite the extra time it took us to set it up, I think it will be a pretty speedy boat.... In reality, I guess it is up to us to make it fast. I am very excited to race other 4x's and see how we match up.



Saturday 22 June 2013

finally

I finally have the five minutes it takes to let you guys know that I am indeed going to be attending my first international race as part of the senior squad. It is very exciting to be a part of this!! We found out 8 days ago and leave tomorrow. We start with a prepratory race in Amsterdam, followed by a training camp in Italy, and finally World Cup 3 in Lucerne (Switzerland). I will look up some more info and possibly post some links when I have some downtime in Amsterdam.
Life has been crazy busy this past week, and downtime between practices was mostly spent running errands and attending extra meetings to prepare us for heading overseas. Technically I don't have the time to write this as I have yet to start packing, just started a load of laundry, and still have 60min of C6 x-training to finish off before I can successfully log my 18h of C6/C5 hours for the week and board my flight to Amsterdam.
Other news, we got our results from our second round of lactate testing, and I managed to improve my 2mmol, 4mmol, and 6mmol by 10-20 watts. My power-per-stroke also increased, and the exciting part is that (on paper) this is the fittest I have ever been. Perhaps when I have more time I will explain what all this mumbo jumbo means. Basically, we do a test on an ergometer where the intensity increases in a stepwise fashion and after every step we get the lactate levels in our blood measured via a finger prick.
This will be a short post, but I also wanted to thank Sue and Dick ( I hope it's ok  that I used your names) for the financial support! It is so heartwarming (and encouraging) to know that there are people out there who are interested in what I am doing, and following this blog or following results etc. To receive financial support on top of that is so powerful. Know that I appreciate it and thank you with all my heart!
On that note, thanks to all those who do support me :) The list is long, and that is all I will say for now.
Back to packing I go..... can I even say that if I haven't started.....

Saturday 8 June 2013

Two weeks and one day until the team departs for Europe for the Holland Becker/World Cup 3 regattas. The team so far: "To be determined".
No boats have been named, and stress levels are starting to creep up here at the LTC. I am pretty excited about the progress in the 4x, and am focusing on each practice as it comes along. I think if I didn't do this, I wouldn't last a week. Today for example, we had an 18km workout in the morning with 3x2k at prescribed rates (with the final 500 of each piece at open rate). This was followed by a 12km row with 6x250m at race pace. If I was to sit at the start of the second 2k, with my legs feeling like lead from a week of intense training, thinking about the 6x250m, I would likely: a) jump out of the boat and swim to shore b) have a sub-optimal performance. It is amazing what a powerful tool the mind is. Having it work in your favor is definitely key to high performance sport. I think one of the most valuable lessons I learned in rowing was from Alison Dobb in my novice year at the University of Victoria. This specific example was about erging, and she said (and I paraphrase), "that you don't have to like erging, but you also shouldn't hate it". It is simply something that you do, meaning that instead of dreading the workout, you go about your day, and when the time comes, you sit your butt down on the erg, get the work done, cleanup after yourself, and leave. That is all there is to it. Thanks Alison Dobb.
One more quick note before I head to bed. Yesterday I broke the 100kg mark on the dead lift!!! I am one of the weakest in the weight room, but was pretty excited to reach this benchmark. As my teammates often remind me when I ogle at the impressive weights they are lifting, "It's all relative".  Monday is 1 rep max weight testing. My projected weight for the dead lift is 115kg.