Believe it or not, I got back to Vermont wednesday afternoon. Nothing like a three day stint of travel to bring you back down to Earth after what was a pretty magical end to our regatta on Sunday afternoon. I wish that I could have been a little more on top of providing updates as the racing unfolded, but I blame it on being in the moment. So, four days removed from being on the podium in Lucerne, here are my thoughts.
There's no doubt about it, the racing this past weekend was special and marked the first time that we showed up to a world rowing event with the speed to make a splash. But like I have said before, I don't think any of us were surprised by the speed we were producing, we knew what we could do; my greatest fear was related to somehow not being able to show it. I think the four of us shared that sentiment. Instead of letting that anxiety bring us down, I think it fueled us to lift off our seat on every stroke we had the privilege of taking . The fact that we won bronze this weekend is not what excites me about our boat moving forward. What excites me is how we got faster every time we raced in Lucerne, how we could make big changes from race to race, how our perception of what is "good" continues to evolve, how I believe there is much more speed to be found. And we will need to find more speed, because World Champs will be uber competitive with the return of Russia and Ukraine into the mix. This weekend showed us that we are on the right trajectory but we are nowhere close to where we will need to be come late August in Amsterdam, next year at Olympic qualification, and then at the Olympics. The central elements are always learning and growth. I might come across to some as unappreciative of some of the praise we have gotten, but right now I think we need to fight against the tendency to treat a mid-season result as an end of season result. Believe me, I enjoyed every moment of Sunday. It very emotional for all of us, but when it was over, we reminded ourselves of our goals. We reminded ourselves that we are all in this to be extraordinary and to continually push our preconceived limits of what we think is possible. Again, we will recalibrate, set the bar higher, and see how close we can get. To me, thats the most fun part of all of this--setting impossibly lofty goals and pursuing them harder and smarter than anyone else is willing to.
I think we are all excited to have the chance to have a full training cycle over the next five weeks leading into World Champs. The ability to put in the miles and do specific strength work is something that we did not have the luxury of doing last year. After racing the single in Lucerne last year, I came back and had two weeks in the double with Ben before we raced in Princeton at Trials. We had no choice but to peak for that race and then continue peaking in Korea. This time, our selection is done, we got great race experience in Europe, and now we can do what we need to do to pick up inches per stroke before we see those quads again in Amsterdam. We will be focusing on building more power per stroke over the coming weeks. Low rate, long strokes, and tons of power. The idea being that if we can bring a little more run and effective length to each stroke, the implications over 2000m are substantial.
Tomorrow morning I will be racing in the Craftsbury Black River Beatdown! It's a 15k trail running race on the trails here and should be a pretty intense aerobic effort. I am pumped that Dan is letting me do this race and it makes me appreciate the type of flexibility that we have in our training compared to others in our sport. I don't say it enough, but we are so lucky. The only way I know how to say genuinely say thank you is by racing like a man on fire.
A side note about our result in Lucerne: getting top 4 in our event means that we get our entire trip reimbursed by USRowing and our trip funded to the World Championships. In other words, all of the sudden, we are a funded boat. Fortunately, we do not have to worry about to cost of things too much because of the generosity of Craftsbury, but that result in Lucerne was probably worth around 30,000 dollars.
There's no doubt about it, the racing this past weekend was special and marked the first time that we showed up to a world rowing event with the speed to make a splash. But like I have said before, I don't think any of us were surprised by the speed we were producing, we knew what we could do; my greatest fear was related to somehow not being able to show it. I think the four of us shared that sentiment. Instead of letting that anxiety bring us down, I think it fueled us to lift off our seat on every stroke we had the privilege of taking . The fact that we won bronze this weekend is not what excites me about our boat moving forward. What excites me is how we got faster every time we raced in Lucerne, how we could make big changes from race to race, how our perception of what is "good" continues to evolve, how I believe there is much more speed to be found. And we will need to find more speed, because World Champs will be uber competitive with the return of Russia and Ukraine into the mix. This weekend showed us that we are on the right trajectory but we are nowhere close to where we will need to be come late August in Amsterdam, next year at Olympic qualification, and then at the Olympics. The central elements are always learning and growth. I might come across to some as unappreciative of some of the praise we have gotten, but right now I think we need to fight against the tendency to treat a mid-season result as an end of season result. Believe me, I enjoyed every moment of Sunday. It very emotional for all of us, but when it was over, we reminded ourselves of our goals. We reminded ourselves that we are all in this to be extraordinary and to continually push our preconceived limits of what we think is possible. Again, we will recalibrate, set the bar higher, and see how close we can get. To me, thats the most fun part of all of this--setting impossibly lofty goals and pursuing them harder and smarter than anyone else is willing to.
I think we are all excited to have the chance to have a full training cycle over the next five weeks leading into World Champs. The ability to put in the miles and do specific strength work is something that we did not have the luxury of doing last year. After racing the single in Lucerne last year, I came back and had two weeks in the double with Ben before we raced in Princeton at Trials. We had no choice but to peak for that race and then continue peaking in Korea. This time, our selection is done, we got great race experience in Europe, and now we can do what we need to do to pick up inches per stroke before we see those quads again in Amsterdam. We will be focusing on building more power per stroke over the coming weeks. Low rate, long strokes, and tons of power. The idea being that if we can bring a little more run and effective length to each stroke, the implications over 2000m are substantial.
Tomorrow morning I will be racing in the Craftsbury Black River Beatdown! It's a 15k trail running race on the trails here and should be a pretty intense aerobic effort. I am pumped that Dan is letting me do this race and it makes me appreciate the type of flexibility that we have in our training compared to others in our sport. I don't say it enough, but we are so lucky. The only way I know how to say genuinely say thank you is by racing like a man on fire.
A side note about our result in Lucerne: getting top 4 in our event means that we get our entire trip reimbursed by USRowing and our trip funded to the World Championships. In other words, all of the sudden, we are a funded boat. Fortunately, we do not have to worry about to cost of things too much because of the generosity of Craftsbury, but that result in Lucerne was probably worth around 30,000 dollars.
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