Chula Vista/Craftsbury

Just got off the plane after taking the red eye back to the east coast. San Diego to San Fran to Boston. I was in Chula Vista for five days rowing with Derek Johnson, Willy Cowles, and Hans Struznya. This camp was put together by Bernhard Stomporowski as a way to promote collaboration between the clubs. While I am very confident in what we have going on in Craftsbury, confident in how good Peter, Ben, and Steve are, and confident in the trajectory of our quad, I am also cognizant of the fact that some think we are cutting ourselves off completely from other scullers in the country and the possibility of mixing lineups. Many find it hard to believe that the four best scullers in the country are all training in the same place, so they think it makes sense to collaborate. It is in my personality to try and make everyone happy and it often gets me in to trouble-- I truly hope this was not the case for this trip.  My view on collaboration between clubs  is that I am open to it because if our  Craftsbury combination is, in fact, the best, then that will show through. I just don't want to be seen as protecting my seat with any other device other than my own SPEED. But, I also respect the great benefit to sticking together and not letting anything detour us in our task. So, when Bernhard asked me to come out and row, I was torn. I told him if he had me a plane ticket for me, I would be happy to come out and train for a week. He bought me a ticket, and very quickly it seemed I was rowing again. Willy, Hans, and Derek are great guys and I was happy to get to know all of them better by hanging out and training together for a week. That being said, I couldn't help but feel somewhat adulterous rowing with three other guys that were not Ben, Steve, and Peter. I wrote them an email after every row and let them know how things were going. I really tried to stay neutral and un-opinionated during these rows. I was curious what type of things these guys focused on technically and what their expectations of speed were. It was obviously a slightly awkward situation to be in, but I think I did a decent job of keeping an open mind to new things while also remaining confident in the things I know make the boat go fast. The majority of our rowing was low intensity, but we did a couple of 3k pieces with some of the other boats at the TC; most notably the women's 2x and light women's 2x who have showed medalist speed over the past couple of years.  We put up some decent %'s against them( given only a few rows together) but really nothing to get too excited about. There are plenty who think I am unrealistic about this, but I am not OK with having worse %'s than the girls. I know how good they are and how special it would be to have a men's sculling boat at that high of a standard. I completely understand that and that's exactly why I want to pursue it. Last year at NSR 2, Ben and I had a higher percentage than the winning M2- and W2x, and slightly behind the lw2x. This is a number that we only intend on improving. So to lose by that much on percentage to those crews, regardless of the circumstances,  was something I was not happy about. As any reader of this blog probably has picked up by now, there is not much that upsets me more than not improving. So much in athletics or in anything is based upon what you think or what you perceive to be good or what you perceive to be a success. You will gravitate towards whatever that is. Unfortunately, I think the men who train at CRC are accustomed to being a few % points off of the lightweight women's double. I am not accustomed to losing on percentage and refuse to be. When I am OK with that I will stop competing. The day those guys decide that a success is having a higher world record percentage than those girls, they will likely do it.

Overall, being out there was a positive experience for me and provided me with a fresh perspective leading into the new year. It was awesome getting to spend some time with Willy Cowles, who I have always raced and been cordial with, mainly because he is good friends with Steve, but it was cool to get to know him better. My favorite fact about Willy is that he stopped growing in 7th grade when he was already 6'5''. He once scored 41 points in a middle school basketball game. I think that is hilarious. It was also great getting to know Derek Johnson a little bit better. After we faced off in beach soccer, I began to understand that Derek has an abundance of talent along with his boyish charm, good looks, and smarts that he puts on display daily at his job at Tesla Motors. I think this week's camp showed that collaboration is good and possible, but also reaffirmed to me that we have a very special quartet training in VT.  When I look at the some of the best quads,  the Croatians, the British, the Germans, etc, the best thing they have done over the years is stay together. There is certainly another level of speed that comes with familiarity and continuity that I look forward to benefitting from this summer and the next.

The idea of going out and rowing in California in December definitely glittered like gold, but it became clear to me over the course of the week that I just didn't belong out there. Peter was sending me pictures throughout the week of him, Ben, and others clearing fallen trees off of the trails amidst the massive snow storm in Vermont. Those guys were getting it done! Maybe not on the water, but that is honest work, and it only fuels them for when we finally do get on the water in March. When you finally touch the water after a Vermont winter, you know you have earned it. I don't think I forgot that conceptually, but spending a few days on the other side of things, made it crystal clear. Not to say its not nice to get out every now and then to touch the oars, but now that I am back in the woods, I take solace in the daily challenges and realities of the winter months.

Our training right now is pretty basic, but a little bit swayed towards weight lifting compared to other times of the year. Since we got off the water in late November, I have been spending a decent amount of time on the dynamic erg trying to first see where I am compared to this time last year, and next get to work on bringing those numbers down. We did a lactate test in the first week of Dec. to give us a sense of what HR and split we should be spending the majority of our time at while rowing. My numbers were fairly close to what they were in Feburary of last year, maybe slightly faster. But looking back at my journal from that test, that was a particularly good test for me, and I was coming off of a full winter of improvement and bringing my numbers down quite a bit. So, to be the same or slightly faster going into the winter is a good place to start. The idea of the lactate test is to make sure you are training completely aerobically and not crossing pushing too hard during low intensity stuff. We spend most of our time training at 1.6-1.8 mmol of lactate or below. For me, that pace is about 1.50/500m on the dynamic erg and 1:48 on the stationary erg. That number as steadily improved over the past couple of years. In the winter of 2012, my first year in Craftsbury, my 1.8 mmol split was about 1.51 on the stationary erg. It's cool to see the progress.

This morning, I skied to practice,  we did 4 x 20 min on the erg, and lifted afterwards. I felt pretty sluggish on the erg probably because of traveling yesterday, but it was the right workout to do to get the trip out of my system. It felt really good to be training and doing work this morning with Ben, Steve, and Peter. The feeling I had during that entire workout was that we were doing it: making progress, making gains, moving forward, hunting for more speed. I love it.

  I'm hoping this afternoon to get out for a longer ski before dinner. Afternoon workouts are tough these days because of the sunset and early dinner. Not only does the sun set at 4 pm, but we Craftsburians eat dinner at 5.30 these days. Yes, you read it right, 5.30! I think we still eat dinner later than the Craftsbury Care Center for Senior Folks, but not much later.