The best race that never happened

This morning, the bus ride to the German training venue was sparked by a nervous energy: today was the day we were going to put everything together and see how we stacked up to the German women. We arrived at the race course in a drizzle, learning that the race would be delayed an hour due to nearby lightning storms. We waited impatiently, stretching and warming up inside, nervously counting the seconds between the ever-constant lightning and thunder.

When the hour was up, my four launched and began to warm up when we saw another bright flash, followed quickly by a boom of thunder. We weighed enough and turned anxiously back to the dock.

Well, the lightning storm never let up. We ended up de-rigging and heading back home. It was pretty disappointing to miss the chance to race the Germans. However, it wasn't like anything had been wasted! We had trained hard in that boat all week, learning each others' strokes and getting a feel for our power. We had improved vastly technically and were starting to show some serious speed. For me, rowing in that straight four was incredible because everyone in it was so strong, talented, and powerful. Feeling that thing pick up during high rates gave me an unbelievable feeling of speed that I had never experienced before. While it's too bad that we never got to see what we were capable of in a race, the hours and hours that we practiced together were certainly worthwhile.


Our straight four: Kitty Mahoney, Olivia Smith, Maggie Bowman-Jones, Abby Young.

Oh yeah, the coaches didn't forget to give us a workout. We did an erg relay. Sounds fun, right?! Haha...

It was 3 girls and 2 guys to a team, on four ergs. We each did 4 x 500 meters all out. By the end of it, more than one person was throwing up and several were not really seeing straight, but did we work hard! It made me realize how much I miss working out with guys. It's so much different! Women are constantly encouraging to each other, but the way that we compete is more subtle; we just glance over at the next erg monitor. With guys though, it's competitive, brass, and in-your-face: "COME ON DUDE, I JUST KICKED YOUR BUTT! THAT WAS TERRIBLE!" Hearing things like that while erging makes you pissed off...but it also makes you pull darn hard! Also, the fact that when I looked over and saw the guys splits in the 1:20's, while I was just trying to maintain 1:43...I think I should erg with my guy friends more often.

Final Days of Training

Check it out. This is the view from our boathouse dock. Stunning right.

As we near the scrimmages on Saturday, we are getting comfortable in our finalized boats and working on maximizing our coordinated strength and efficiency. I'm in the straight four, and it's the first time I'll be racing without a coxswain. At practice, we've been working on our catch timing to ensure that we are all in sync so that the steering can be used minimally, and we are learning how to respond to steering calls. Abby Young sits in bow and is doing a great job so far, though I'm glad I don't have to be in her place! I'm the 3 seat so I do absolutely nothing.. except pull as hard as I can.

Tomorrow we will head into the city again in the afternoon after a double practice in the morning, and on Friday we bus over to the race course to practice and rig the boats. We are kind of nervous to be racing against the German women, who come from some of the strongest and most elite programs in the world. But we're getting pretty hungry to win, all the same...

The work pays off!

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We'd been waiting for today since we got here: we got to go into the city!

First thing in the morning though, we had workout. We did 5 x 5' pieces with rates 26-30, and I was in the 4-. Though that practice was pretty tough, Cass thought we did pretty well and let us jump in the river, finally! It was awesome to run and cannonball after the dock, washing all that sweat off in the perfect water. Even better, she canceled the second practice we were supposed to have, so we headed back to the boathouse early, getting ready to hit the city.


And the city was incredible. We took the train in and split off into groups to explore downtown Berlin. My friends and I saw the Berlin wall memorial, went into some shops including a four-story football shaped department store, and a cool little vintage store in West Berlin. I'm stoked to go again on Thursday.

Good thing I packed bandaids!

Looks like we're finally getting into the swing of things in Germany with our training! I've got blisters on me fingers.

This morning, we had two practices with a 45-minute stretch break in between. First, we did steady state 20 minute pieces by 6s and 8s around the 16k island. We got off the water pretty sore from doing lower rates at high power per stroke for 2 hours, but after a quick snack and some stretching, we got back on. We did about 10k more for almost 2 more hours, picking it up with a bunch of 20 stroke pieces. Getting off the water, we were all in consensus..."My butt hurts!"

Oh yeah, that wasn't all! It was a heatwave today, so practicing during the afternoon would have been suicidal, but at 6pm we went out on a run with Cass. We thought it might be an easy jog...well, I guess the keyword is "with Cass". Chasing after her had us panting, sprinting, and by the end of it, we were pretty wiped out. But there were a bunch of German people coming back from the beach and they all were cheering us on, which was kind of funny. And afterwards, we dipped our feet into the crisp water at the dock, had another great dinner, and vegged out while watching the World Cup.

As you can see, we got in some quality work today. We're all pretty wiped out, but I think we're also starting to realize the utter power this HP team has. Putting in this sort of work will only make us more confident to race. And we're getting psyched to do just that: 6 more days til we face the germans!

Germany!

I finally have access to the internet after a couple crazy days of travel, so here's what's new! We drove to Newark and met up with the HP boys team at the airport. Then we got on a 7-hour red eye flight, arriving in Berlin at 8am. We drove right over to the boat house we are staying at. It's a beautiful old red building, facing out over the flat water. We're staying 8 girls to a room on bunk beds and sharing locker rooms; it's pretty close quarters! But it's also really fun, and wow...is the food good or what. Oh, man, it's delicious: toast and cheese and fresh fruit and baked casserole.

We did an easy 30 minute erg piece yesterday to shake out the plane ride. This morning, we headed over to the other boathouse that we launch from, which is a 20 minute walk away. We took out the 8+ and a 4- and rowed by fours, sixes, and eight around the entire island on a scenic river, which took about 2 hours. Scenic is an understatement! While I got to sit out, I checked out the mansions, grassy fields, pleasure boats, beaches, and ancient church steeples rising out from the forest. It is so beautiful here.

A day in the life at Conn College

This was a typical day for the HP team. My alarm went off at 5:10 am and I rolled out of my cot, got dressed and grabbed a banana, and headed down to the boathouse. We trudged down the hill, yawning and squinting at the sun rising over the water.

Though practice doesn't start until 6am, it has become the norm on this team to be an overachiever: everyone completes the warm up of a 1.5 mile run and dynamic lunges and stretching even before practice begins. We all want extra time to stretch, do yoga, hit the tanks for technique, and prepare for the practice ahead. Training here is different: the level of focus, dedication, and desire to achieve is so high among this group of girls. I find this team to be so energizing because of that.

We took out an 8+ and a 4+ and practiced some drills, focusing on gathering at the finish and leveraging ourselves in unison. Then, we did some 12 minute pieces at low rates, trying to get the most power per stroke. After practice, we had to walk up the hill again (ugh...though, my calves have gotten really strong!) but breakfast was, as always delicious. The cafeteria here actually has ridiculously good food: we get everything from pancakes and barbeque ribs to lasanga and a different dessert every day. Good thing we're training so much!

We chilled out during the day, watching TV and taking naps, and then went down to practice again at 6pm. It has been insanely hot, and everyone was pretty drained. By the end of practice though, we were a lot more focused on our pieces, and Cas was happy about them so she let us jump in the water! It was really fun and felt so good. We got back to the dorms to get some rest so we could get ready to do it again the next morning.

In the weeks I've stayed at Connecticut College, I am improving faster than I ever did during the season. I think it's because we are given the chance to completely immerse ourselves in the sport, either training or preparing ourselves for the next time we train. Centering my life around rowing this way has allowed me to focus in a way that I usually can't when I'm at home, where distractions like school sometimes take precedence over my training. Here though, my level of focus can be intense, driven, and unobstructed. It's just all about rowing. Every time I eat something I think about how it will affect me at an upcoming practice; every time I go to bed I am dreaming about what I'm going to accomplish the next morning. We train, we eat, we rest, and we mentally prepare to do it all over again even better than before. It's almost overwhelming, but ultimately, I am grasping the sport better than ever before. I feel a lot more confident about coming into the fall season.

Independence Day Regatta

I had been anticipating this race for a while: it was the first time outside of practice that we got to race with our newly selected HP teammates! I rowed the B boat with cox Olivia Sayvetz, Nora Hannum, Maddy Dinse, and Nina Demmerle. We put down a clean win in the heat at 9am, moving very well on the flat, (questionably) green water of the Schuyklkill River. In the next heat, the HP Ladies' A boat made the final with a second place. Our C boat was faced with an unfortunate surprise before the race: one of our rowers suddenly became sick, and a member of the sculling selection team took her place for the heat. Though they narrowly missed making the final, the boat rowed considerably well considering that a fourth of it hadn't been practicing in sweep boats! In fact, all of the boats were able to find great rhythms and work well together for the first race. In my boat, we started out third, but by the 1000m mark, we were walking it down on the other boats every time that Olivia told us to take a power 20. It was great to see that this team we have to work with is already fit, technically clean, and ready to race. In the next few weeks, we'll be able to focus on power, since we already know that our boats row pretty fluidly.

A little after noon, we went out again for the final. We were just getting into our warmup when Maddy randomly smacked a goose with her oar, which was hilarious. But by the time the got to the start, we were focused again and ready to put the smack down. We took 5th place, coming in a few boat lengths behind our A four, which got 3rd. Though we didn't win the intermediate division, we were still pretty psyched to do so well against college teams, who are of course much older than us!


It was the fourth of July, and we were all sweaty and hungry. So we were all pretty stoked when Coach Cas suggested that we celebrate by getting some real Philidelphia cheese steaks! It sounded like a simple enough plan, but finding the place was a bit of a challenge. It was a good thing that we stuck it out in the hot back seat of the van for the next hour trying to find it (though we were so sweaty that we were also uncomfortably stuck to each other), because Cas finally found the place: Tony Luke's. We chowed down on the best darn cheesesteaks and hot fries I've ever had! It was an awesome way to end the day.

Tomorrow, we will drive back to Connecticut College from Philadelphia. For the next two days, we'll continue to put in some good solid work on the water, on the track, and on the ergs before we head out on Thursday after morning practice to the airport. We are all super pumped for Berlin!