Saturday 8 June 2013

Two weeks and one day until the team departs for Europe for the Holland Becker/World Cup 3 regattas. The team so far: "To be determined".
No boats have been named, and stress levels are starting to creep up here at the LTC. I am pretty excited about the progress in the 4x, and am focusing on each practice as it comes along. I think if I didn't do this, I wouldn't last a week. Today for example, we had an 18km workout in the morning with 3x2k at prescribed rates (with the final 500 of each piece at open rate). This was followed by a 12km row with 6x250m at race pace. If I was to sit at the start of the second 2k, with my legs feeling like lead from a week of intense training, thinking about the 6x250m, I would likely: a) jump out of the boat and swim to shore b) have a sub-optimal performance. It is amazing what a powerful tool the mind is. Having it work in your favor is definitely key to high performance sport. I think one of the most valuable lessons I learned in rowing was from Alison Dobb in my novice year at the University of Victoria. This specific example was about erging, and she said (and I paraphrase), "that you don't have to like erging, but you also shouldn't hate it". It is simply something that you do, meaning that instead of dreading the workout, you go about your day, and when the time comes, you sit your butt down on the erg, get the work done, cleanup after yourself, and leave. That is all there is to it. Thanks Alison Dobb.
One more quick note before I head to bed. Yesterday I broke the 100kg mark on the dead lift!!! I am one of the weakest in the weight room, but was pretty excited to reach this benchmark. As my teammates often remind me when I ogle at the impressive weights they are lifting, "It's all relative".  Monday is 1 rep max weight testing. My projected weight for the dead lift is 115kg.

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