The Torch

All packed up and ready to make the small move over to Lucerne this afternoon. Ben and I had our last row on the Sarnensee this morning and will be on the Rotsee for the rest of the week. We are moving from the Swiss Rowing Center to an apartment right on the banks of the course. Our boats are on the Swiss trailer and we will rig up on Monday morning. Conceptually I knew it would be like this but it is a joke how different it is for us now compared to flying over from the US, rigging a boat we've never rowed before, and adjusting to the time zone. This go around, we are adjusted, comfortable in our boat, and dealing with very few extra stresses. It is like leaving Craftsbury to go to a regatta in Morrisville, VT. This is the reason we stayed over.

This week has flown by. I think we both started to feel racing approaching and we have both been very focused. To put it mildly, Ben and I spend a lot of time together. We have slept in the same room just feet from each other for probably more days out of the year than not, including the last four weeks. When we aren't hanging out in the same room, we are hanging out in the same boat! There have been plenty of times for us to get on each others nerves, but I think we both have a good understanding of why we are here, and that nothing will work unless we do, that being a collective "we". Our friendship is the most important thing we have and without it this boat is not going to go very fast. We have to be able to communicate and have a free flow of information back and forth in order to convey what we are thinking technically and tactically. This week I felt like we were discovering something new every time we went out and we were able to communicate it and engrain it effectively. We have been focusing on pivoting from the hips before we do anything and generally preparing our bodies earlier. It has felt like a big change to me and has added a new level of uniformity and rhythm to the boat. We had a particularly good 2k piece at 30 spm earlier in the week. This is a staple piece to work on rhythm and length. We did the same piece two days before racing in Varese and this time around we went 3 seconds faster. It was encouraging because the piece we did in Varese was with a fairly strong tailwind while this was in no wind. The piece in Varese was 6:30.9, this week we went 6:28.0.  You can't take too much stock in times but it was nice to see an indication that some of the changes in the feel of the boat were actually showing up in increased boat speed. This morning we finished out the camp with some max speed pieces, a 750, 500, and 250. On the 750, we rehearsed our finishing sequence, beginning at 36 for 250, then going to 38 for 250, then 40 for 250.

We will take tomorrow out of the boat and then start fresh on Monday. I am really excited to walk down to the Rotsee again. Lucerne is an incredibly special place to so many people but it feels particularly special to be going back a year after winning our first international medal here last year. It was a huge step for me and all of us, there's not doubt about it. I will always look back at Lucerne 2014 with prodigious nostalgia. But Lucerne 2015 is will be all its own, full of opportunity, and I can't wait celebrate our preparation on the Rotsee this weekend.