The Torch

 I apologize for not being better about updating much in the last couple of weeks, but for a lot of reasons, it was important for me to focus on getting ourselves through Trials and to a certain extent, keeping our cards close to our chest. In hindsight, the last month and a half of 4x rowing has been a blast. The quality of rowing and the speed that we were producing in Princeton last week was just a continuation of what we had been doing since NSR 2. We are always striving for more speed and more repeatability, but its obvious to me that there is some real capability in this boat. Trials races are always nerve racking, probably more so than any race at the international level, just because it is one and done. We had one 2000m chance to show that we deserved to represent the US in the quad. I was encouraged by our ability to keep it light, be confident in our speed, and be in the moment on the start line at 7.30 am on Wednesday morning. We blasted off the line and began moving on the other crew from the first stroke. Quickly, we had a length, and that was not enough. I urged Ben to never stop moving. The 4x race more than any boat except the 8, is just a drag race.It's important to establish speed early because the boats don't change speed later in the race quite as much as singles or doubles. At the 1250, we had pushed out to a 3 length lead and from there I called for us keep our length and bring it to the line safely. Its funny how quickly my mindset can change! I went from yelling in Ben's ear to whispering to him to take the rate down and row conservatively. I didn't care what the margin or the time was, this race was all about getting across the line first, that's all.  We raced with the youthful vigor that characterizes our crew best in the first 1k, but we finished it out with businesslike professionalism, making sure we crossed without incident. There were no celebrations or flipping up water when we crossed the line; we definitely viewed the trials as a necessary step to reach our real goals, but that race itself was in no way a peak performance. We would not be honoring our hard work or the hard work and mission of those who feed and house us if we did not have our sights set on lofty and seemingly un-attainable goals . Our mission is to make this boat go faster than anyone else out there in the world. So, we are going to Europe to find out just how far or close we are to that goal. We will be in Henley for a week and Lucerne for a week to race World Cup 3. We will then return home for about 6 weeks before we leave for Amsterdam and the World Championships. 

This upcoming week we are in Henley racing in the Queen Mother Challenge Cup. We have drawn the GB M4x who recently won the M4x at World Cup 2 in Aiguebillete. So we will find out pretty quickly how we stack up. We are still feeling pretty jet lagged but I think we have enough time so that we will be feeling ready to go on Saturday. We are borrowing an Empacher that is a few years old, but it seems to fit us pretty well. It feels like a well broken in baseball glove. Even in the first couple days we seem to be producing decent speed. We did the full course at 90% speed today and will be doing a couple three minutes pieces tomorrow. The regatta begins tomorrow for most crews so things will begin to be very busy, especially when we are trying to train. We will have to be very diligent about getting solid training in over the next few days. All in all, we are pumped. The boat is feeling good and we are excited to be an unknown crew with nothing to lose. The GB 4x is without a doubt one of the fastest quads in the world and everyone knows it. We are expected to be a very average, typical American 4x. That could be true. But we didn't train as hard as we did all year to just be average or typical. We prepared to be extraordinary. 

Here is a clip of us before we left rowing an hour of firm steady state. 60'  USA M4x