Burlington--Frankfurt--Milan--Varese

After a quiet row this morning, we threw our bags in the sprinter and began our journey from the northeast kingdom to northern Italy. We have already dealt with some changes in plans as our first flight has been delayed and we face possibly missing our connection in Newark. We are scheduled to get into Milan around 1 pm on Saturday at which point we will hopefully be able to go down to the course, find our boat/oars, and rig up. Things rarely go to plan, so its important that we prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and understand that travel is unequivocally an adventure.

Today is the first of 32 days that Ben and I will be away in Europe, rowing the 2x. We are off on a journey to explore our speed and our potential. We feel like the next step in our speed is to find the best doubles and race them. All of those doubles will be in Europe, so that's where we are going. We have had as good of a stretch of training as I could have hoped for in the last few weeks. There is certainly a higher level or awareness and focus that comes after a bad loss like the one we experienced at NSR 2. It has injected a new sense or purpose and urgency into our rowing and highlighted the importance and value of our preparation. We have tried to disassociate ourselves with anything that we had deemed "good" and instead have relentlessly tried to make it cleaner, more efficient, more repeatable, and faster. We understand the event and understand that there could easily be twelve boats capable of making the final, but that will not help us go any faster. Our process, our internal awareness of our rowing is the only thing that can make our boat run smoother, longer between strokes. Our connected and unified focus is the only thing that can get us down the course as fast as possible. While we have worked hard to establish our internal focus, it has been really helpful having the LM4x consisting of Austin Meyer, Colin Ethridge, Matt O'Learly, and Hugh McAdam around to do pieces with. Just the aspect of having a boat moving through you in the last 500m instills the competitive fire that you might miss when you are just rowing internally. It has been crucial to Ben and I to keep the racing edge sharp even when we are tired and don't feel like engaging--those are the most important times. Very rarely in the last 250m is your body craving to go from max heart rate to whatever is above max heart rate. Our good friend Lynn Jennings has reminded us that we need to train our strength of will like a muscle. 

23 entries in the M2x in Varese and the last thing the event needs, especially in the Olympic qualification year is another boat( like us) trying to fit into the mix. Well, get ready, because our heads are in our boat, and we're not slowing down. Much more to come as we get settled in Varese.