The Torch

It's insane how fast time has passed since arriving. We have been here almost a week already and racing begins in less than three days. The first couple days were spent sleeping, rigging, and sometimes rowing. It has been ridiculously windy and rainy so far, thus rowing on the course has sometimes not been a great option. On Sunday and Monday, we erged with the women's 8+ in the afternoons. I think most of us are faster than them on the erg, but that is not confirmed. 

Our first day of hard rowing was on Tuesday when we lined up with the Men's 8+ for a rate step 2k. They rowed 1k @ 26, and 1k @ 30, meanwhile we rowed one of our tempo 30 spm pieces for 1500, then turned it up to base pace for the last 500m to try and match their speed. It was a very direct and strong tailwind for this piece. Splits were unlike anything either boat have seen. I think it is safe to say that if that tailwind continues on race week, world records will be shattered. We started with an 8 second margin on the eight and they finished a couple seconds ahead of us, so about a 10 second difference. I think both boats really enjoyed the energy of the piece. It was fun for us to try( but not succeed) to hold them off and they were getting pretty fired up as they caught us. It was awesome hearing coxwain Zach Vlahos call out that they were going 1.20 splits at around 30 spm. Yikes. 

Wednesday marked the opening of the course officially. This is when FISA arrives and begins to control practice times and when all the European countries arrive. For the last four days or so it was just us and the Chinese for the most part. There are over 1,000 athletes competing at World Champs and pretty much all of them showed up on Wednesday. The Bosbaan is only 2200 meters long and 7 lanes wide, so you might be able to imagine that things get laughably crowded. No longer does it matter how you row on flat water because flat water doesn't exist. You just have to relax and roll with the bounce. It's very easy to get worked up about how bad the water is, but its equally  easy to just be calm and walk away from a boat that is fighting the bounce. I like it because it adds another element to boat speed, another chance to go faster than crews that are stronger than us. 

Thursday morning we went down to the course and did 12 k of easy swing preparing for an afternoon 1k piece vs. the M4- and the LM8+. The boat feels smooth but sometimes its difficult to differentiate between the feel of our rowing and the feel of the wakes we are rowing through. Rowing well at World champs seems to be a balance of being hyper sensitive to the boat feel and also dull to it. You just can't allow yourself to get rattled by off strokes because they are going to happen. We came down to the course late in the afternnoon in hope of getting some decent water for our 1k piece. The tailwind was howling again. We did a 6k warm up then lined up at the 500m mark. The 4- started about 3/4 length up on us and we started about the same up on the light 8. We knew the conditions were going to be very challenging so we focused on keeping things slow motion and deliberate inside the boat, prying methodically and rhythmically amidst the chaos of the chop and yelling crews on either side. The light 8 has cox Steve Young yelling, but the men's four has Mike Gennaro yelling. He's not ashamed to let you know when their boat is flying and feeling good. He doesn't believe in masking their speed. Can't wait to watch those guys race this week. The undefeated British four is going to have a fight on their hands.   I must admit, I did not row internally and I take a lot of responsibility for how sloppy we rowed during the piece. I pulled like it was a 30 second piece, max on every stroke, trying to push my lungs, heart, and muscles to their limit over the course of 2 and a half minutes. Unfortunately, I have learned time and time again that this is not the best way to move the 4x. I caught my blade on waves a couple times and lost my oar once( but caught it in mid air). We crossed the line about 1/2 length ahead of the 4- and pretty even with the LM8+. I think all three crews were 100% of world record pace, so that says that conditions are ridiculously fast and each crew is moving alright respectively. We were about 2 seconds ahead of the four and 2 seconds slower than the 8. No matter how you slice it, it was the fastest starting 1k we have done as a crew.

We have the morning off today( Friday) and then just have one day of easy training before the show begins on Sunday afternoon. The quality and depth of our event is amazing and its important that we stay internal this week and focus on what we can control. All the boats are so close that we can't get caught looking around, we need to be in the moment, in our boat, and fighting for every tenth of second.