WC 2 Day 1

Yes, we have been here for almost a week, but once again I woke up this morning feeling tired and groggy. On top of that, I felt unusually nervous for this morning's heat. I couldn't eat much at breakfast and didn't have my usual loose demeanor before we launched. Obviously, we are on a big stage and there are real implications to our racing, so there's no question why I felt the way I did, but it wasn't until Dan caught me walking past the boat that my attitude shifted. He said, " John, it's just play time out there!This is what you love to do!" When he said that, I smiled and realized that I had really let myself get worked up. No doubt, Dan, it's perfect out there, glassy water, Alps in the distance, 70 degrees, and a lineup full of world class doubles to hunt. But wow, I'm still feeling pretty lousy. We launched, rowed through our agreed upon 10 min segment of non-judgmental rowing, and then began to get up to the race pace portion of our warm-up. My nerves stayed with me all the way through the warm up and onto the start line. It wasn't until I caught a mini crab on the third stroke of the start that I thought to myself, " OK, plant the blade and lets ******* go." We had missed a stroke, but still were not down to the 2014 silver medalist and fast starting Italians, so we sat up and began to take big strokes. It was very light and after a minute we were looking at the field. We lengthened out and kept a great float into the front end. I was not paying any attention to speed or time, I was just thinking about keeping a light and efficient rhythm with a lot of time of at the top quarter. We were locked in with the Italians and could very intimately hear them breathing and making calls as I am sure they could for us. The water was beautifully flat and we were just out there cruising ahead of the field, stalking the Italians, it was wonderful. Ben did a great job of keeping us within our framework and adding horsepower whenever we needed it. We didn't really respond at all to them moving gradually through us in the third 500, perhaps subconsciously we expected that to happen, but looking back there was no reason they should have come through us. We need to be internal and push our speed regardless of who is around us. That cost us what would have been a more desirable Semi draw. As a result of getting second, tomorrow in our semi we will have  arguably 3 of the best boats in the world: Croatia, Germany, and Norway. The Sinkovic brothers are the best. They are the only double in history to break 6 min and are World Champs from last year. I feel very lucky to consider them good friends. They were the first ones to come up to us after our race. Martin said, " I am SO GLAD for you! You almost beat Italy! You guys are fast!" Haha, well, thank you Martin, nice of you to say but we have a strict policy against calling ourselves fast. The German boat consists of long time great in the 1x, Marcel Hacker and World champ in the 2x, Stephan Krueger. They have won every race so far this year and are looking to beat the Croatians. The Norwegians are World Champs from 2013 in Korea and are another set of great guys who have been incredibly gracious to Ben and I over the last few years. Kjetil/Nils and Martin/Valent have been hugely positive influences on both of us and it will be awesome to get to line up with them tomorrow. Obviously, tomorrow we can't be thinking about who is who and who is where, we just need to go. When we are on our own training we compare ourselves to gold medal pace, tomorrow, gold medal pace will be right next to us in lane 3. Can't wait. I talked to those guys this afternoon and they were saying how excited they are to race the Germans for the first time. They don't have any anxiety about it, they are just flat out excited. They are true competitors. To compete means to strive with someone, not necessarily against. These guys do not race against people, they race with them in a effort to push the level and quality of the sport to new levels. I love that. I am excited to strive with them and others tomorrow to bring out the best in all of us. OK, bed time, thanks for everyone who's following us out there, Ben and I really appreciate it.