After yesterday’s racing we have found ourselves in the A final, and qualified for the Olympics in 2012. The race good but not our best. I’m looking forward to getting out there and putting it right. Since our meeting last night I have known exactly what I need to do, and it’s just a matter of time now. We are leaving the hotel at 11:20 to get ready for the last hour of rowing this year. One prerace warm up, and one 2k.
It’s going to line up like this.

Men's 8+ A final start list.

Can’t wait to get out there and light it up.

Well we are finally here in Slovenia, and this place is amazing. I have been to a lot of racecourses, but this one is unreal. It’s almost exactly 2

View from on high, from the hotel.

kilometres long, surround by mountains, and 500 meters in to the course, there is a huge castle on a ridge, high above the course. I could try to describe this place, but this picture taken by one of my teammates will do a much better job.

I’m getting a little ahead of myself though. Our training camp in Italy finished off strong. We did several longer pieces before leaving Erba, and laid down some fast times. Our coach along with all the guys are confident as we change to the mountain fed waters of Bled. The camp in Italy was great for our boat, and we have come a long way from Lucerne. In the early stage of the camp, when we had the lake to ourselves, we were able to get a lot done. It allowed us to have a really focused period of training while we were over there. Roughly halfway into the camp the rest of the team joined us, after some time trials of their own, to decided the final seats in the small boat group. It was awesome having them show up though. The large group gives you the feeling that we are showing up in full force ready to rumble.

A little after our arrival in Bled, we started doing some shorter pieces to get our bodies up for racing, and it is probably my favourite part of the taper. The shorter piece is great because you can get through it with no problem, and it allows you to put more intensity into the piece then you would a full 2k. It makes your body feel like you can handle anything. Kind of a bulletproof feeling, asthough nothing can touch you out there.

Today the Draw will come out and we will meet to discuss our competition, go over the race plan, and restate our approach to racing which we have practice all year long. The racing will commences on the 28th of at around 11:30 depending on what the draw says and which heat we are in. I will let you know.

Here are some great pictures of of our eight in Erba during the final days of the camp taken by Kevin Light who is racing the Cox Pair. Kev went school to study photography, and now takes some amazing photos. Check these out.

Mens 8+ Training. Practicing power strokes. Photo by Kevin Light.

Mens 8+ Training. The row home. Photo by Kevin Light.

Mens 8+ Training. "More Power " Mike Spracklen. Photo by Kevin Light.

Mens 8+ Training. Lens covered in spray. Photo by Kevin Light.

Mens 8+ Training. Me trying to stay horizontal. Photo by Kevin Light.

Mens 8+ Training. Back to the boathouse. Photo by Kevin Light.

Today really just came down to doing what we said we were going to do.

Cool shot of the boats near the docks.

After the heats on Friday, I was more pissed off then anything. We set out on the water and the warm up was great, but as the light turned green to start the race, it was dull. We got out to about 4 seats up on the Dutch and Great Britain, and we got comfortable. The rates slowly came down and we were never able to get it back.

Start of the heats. We are the second boat in.

After that we sat down for our post race meeting to discuss the race and how it was going to be different tomorrow. Thinking about things like, if you do a 5:55 2k on the erg you are going to feel miserable after, but if you do a 6:03 you don’t think you are going to feel bad? Of course you are. So why not just go for the 5:55. We set our goals talked it over and today we executed exactly what we wanted to do. We nailed every call Brian hailed to us and kept attacking never letting up. We ended up with our bow in front of the US, Australia, New Zealand, and Russia, earning our eight a bid into the A final.

Tomorrow we face the current world champions, Germany, for the first time since New Zealand, and I can’t wait. These guys have been on top since 2009. That being said everyone is going to raise their game tomorrow in the final and we have to as well, we can’t count anyone out.

I want to start something tomorrow because the Olympics is right around the corner. This race is the most important race leading up to the World Championships, which is the Olympic qualifier.

On that note, here are some songs that are getting me amped up for racing!

2:38 am – Wake up, toss and turn while muttering to myself about the jet lag. Fall back to sleep

7:08 am – Wake up quietly so I don’t disturb Rob, my roommate who is still sleeping. Jet lag has had me wide-awake by now. Head down to breakfast.

7:20 am – Mow down some bread rolls with egg, cheese and a variety of nice Italian meats. It’s kind of like a really nice McDonalds Egg McMuffin. Chocolate croissant… mmmm… Then a Cappuccino and fresh Oj to wash it all down.

8:45 am – Relax in the room till go time. I like to watch something on the computer. Right now It is Rob and Big. Those guys crack me up.

10:00 am – Andrew Byrnes pulls the van around and everyone hops in.  Euro techno music from M Dou O radio is usually blasting as we take off for the course.

Shot of the lake from up high.

10:10 am – 11:50 am – Practice. I’ll try to paint a picture on this one. This place is a pretty amazing place to train. Aside from the one day where there was a huge storm with high winds and lightning, the lake we train on is unreal. Glassy water surrounded by the alps? Doesn’t get much better then that. There are many houses peppered along the sides of these smaller mountains that lead north into the alps, the direction we will be heading tomorrow in order to get to Lucerne.

Delish.

12:30 pm – Lunchtime. Gotta be really careful here not to eat too much food, don’t want to end up with a spare tire, as our coach Mike Spracklen has told us. This food is ridiculous though. There are so many good meats and cheeses. All you can eat.

1:30 – 3:50 pm – Relax around the hotel. Maybe catch some more rob and big or a movie. Just watched Adjustment Bureau and the movie Unknown. Both pretty solid. It’s no Forrest Gump or anything though.

4:00 – 6:00 pm -Practice. There is usually a harder practice in the afternoon consisting of some work at race pace. It’s a pretty hot time of day and I’m usually sweating buckets by the end of this one. Good thing we are all drinking about 2.5 – 3 litres while we are at practice.

7:00 pm – Dinner. This is the easiest and hardest part of the day. Not having to prepare a meal for yourself is great, but not being able to eat as much of it as you want is killer. I know I keep on saying it, but the food is just sooooo good. I would love to just sit there and eat until I wasn’t able to anymore, but we are in the midst of the taper, meaning the training volume isn’t as high, so I just don’t need a lot of calories. It’s a bit of a gift and a curse. I wish that we could have a couple meals like this mid winter; there would be no stopping me!

8:30 pm – Bed – Relax for the evening with some reading or a movie. Occasionally we’ll get some poker going, and after some of the luck I had last year at the World Champs, could be a good financial decision… we will see.

So that is a pretty standard day in the life at the training camp in Italy, it’s very relaxing, and I don’t think there is any better place to prepare for a big race. That’s just what we have on our hands.

As we ride the bus through the Alps north, thoughts of the racing slip into my head and I’ll start to feel a combination of excitement and nervousness. It’s time to see who has been working the hardest all winter long. This world cup is the last of three and most countries will be in attendance so you can really get a feel for your competition. Can’t wait to show them what we have been up to.

I’m sitting here having just pounded a coffee to try and work up enough energy to write something, but for the past 45 minutes

White out conditions in the morning. Photo by Kevin light

I’ve got nothing. Most of the time has gone towards staring at my watch trying to figure out a way to put into words what this winters training has been like.
I just end up thinking about every kilometer we’ve rowed up and down Elk lake with a blank stare on my face. I’m sure I would be better at writing if I hadn’t been deep in the hurt locker only hours ago.

Hurt locker or not though it’s a pretty tough thing to put into words, but pretty amazing at the same time. In whatever weather the winter would throw at us, every day we were racing up and down the course in a pair or single, going toe to toe with the guys I’m hoping to win the World Championships with in the summer. Every run we everyone is trying to get their bow ahead so that come summer time we can do the same thing to the world.

Me and my blades. Blades by Duey. Photo by Kevin Light.

It’s all money in the bank though, and it’s really starting to pay off for me. On Monday we had a 6k test on the erg and I got a new personal best of 18:59.0, just barely cracking 19 minutes. I can remember six weeks ago sitting on the erg exhausted having just gone 19:04 thinking, “In six

weeks I’m going to break 19 minutes.” It was a very hard test though and the way I went after it I really had to earn sub 19 min. It went a little something like this…

(For all the non-rowers a 19-minute 6k is an average 500 meter split of 1:35.0)

Working out at the gym. Chains are for show.... Photo by Kevin Light

I had a pretty good sweat going and my body was feeling warm as Brian Price came around to tell me, “15 minutes till start”. For me that meant last trip to the bathroom, a couple sips of water to ward off dry mouth and time to get into some race pace pieces. I usually do about 30 seconds light paddle, 30 seconds at pace, 30 seconds light paddle, and repeat. At around 6 minutes to go I’ll do an over rate piece around 50 strokes per minute to make the 34 SPM I planned to my piece at seem easier. It did just that as I blasted one last piece off before the start. “2 minutes to go!”. Just enough time to set the monitor and get a last sip of water.

“Sitting up. Ready. GO!”

4x1000 under watchful eyes. Photo by Kevin Light

This is where the switch flips from any nervous feeling you might have had to nothing but pure focus on the task at hand, no more time for nerves. I was flying out of the gates and made the mistake of not getting on to my rhythm right away. Instead of taking about 12 – 15 stokes hard and settling down onto pace around 34 SPM I took those 12 – 15 strokes and came down to 35-36 SPM causing my split to go just a little bit faster for the first 2,500 meters. It was nice for a while looking at my monitor telling me that my projected finish was 18:45 but in the back of my head I think I knew that was too fast. I was a little afraid that if I tried to do another shift down to 34 SPM it would throw off my rhythm so I stuck with it thinking I could eventually settle, but before I knew it 3 kilometers was gone and I was into the third quarter of the piece.

I remember sweat starting to pour down my face because I could taste it just a bit. My legs were starting to

burn badly, and my rhythm fell off because my weight was starting to fall forwards at the catch. I could feel my head bobbing down because my core wasn’t quite as engaged when my legs wanted to kick. This was without a doubt because I had made the classic mistake of going out to hard. My 500 meter splits started to vary wildly in this part of the race as I struggled to keep up the pace and rhythm. I think at one point I saw a 1:38 flash on my screen, and that’s when I knew I was really in trouble. My projected time was now flashing 19:06, which was slower then I was six weeks ago! Things were really getting tough for me and the excuses started to flood into my head. All the things I could say to the guys if I didn’t do as well as I should have, anything to stop the pain I was feeling in the second half of the test.

“uhh yeah I just wasn’t feeling very good today”
“I totally blew up”
“My elbow started to bother me”
“I went out to hard so I couldn’t do it”
I hadn’t stopped on a workout yet this year so surly they wouldn’t think anything of it…. right?

Well I quickly had to silence those voices in my head telling me to stop and instead I channeled whatever I had left into damage control. I thought

Kevin taking advantage of a painful workout. Photo By Kevin Light

about all the workouts I did to get ready for this. A particular favorite was 4×1000 meters at 6k pace, and here I only had about 2,000 meters left. “I can do this,” I thought. I had recovered slightly after hitting that wall, and my projected time had come back down to 19:02. That projected time would stay there for 1,600 meters of the last 2k, but the light at the end of the tunnel started to get a bit brighter. Without fail on every other erg I have done, the last 250 meters has been a sprint no matter what I was doing. Pain or no pain those last 250 meters was my bread and butter. This 6k was no different, after all it was only 25 strokes from there, and anyone can do anything for 25 strokes. Even at 260 meters to go my projected split was still 19:02, which is a 1:35.2 and that wasn’t going to cut it. Those last strokes I would hit it as hard as I could. On the drive I would close my eyes as if to escape and then open them on the recovery to recheck that I was doing what I needed to do. After 5 of 25 the monitor was reading 19:00 flat projected. I told myself I wasn’t going out like that, not 1 second off, so I had to find more in the next 20 strokes. The legs went down harder and the rate went up. If thought my legs were hurting in the third quarter, I was wrong, now they hurt. All that lactic acid I had accumulated was now in full force making my legs feel heavy, sluggish and on fire. I was so close now though there was no way I couldn’t get my split. My stroke rate was up in the high forties now, eyes opening and closing up and down the slide, legs and lungs burning, head pounding, but it was only 20 seconds to go, I knew I had it as long as I didn’t pass out or something. 5 strokes 4, 3, 2, 1 over. Breathing out of control I looked up at the screen and I saw that I had it. Amidst my wild breathing there was a sigh of relief in there somewhere. People watching slapped me on the back and congratulated me on a hard fight to break 19 minutes.

It was a pretty big milestone for me and I feel like I can attack out on the water without consequence. Every stroke is harder then the last to move that bow ball ahead. The winter training is coming to a close, and that means the fun racing begins.

“Medals are awarded in the summer, but earned in the winter” – Probably a lot of medalists say that.
I wonder what everyone else has been doing all winter.

Some winter training moments. Photo by Kevin Light.