Canadian Indoor Rowing Championships 2014

Along with a bundle of nerves and a major case of the pre-race jitters, last Sunday brought along with it the annual Canadian Indoor Rowing Championships. I was very excited to come third with a time of 6:48.0. For more results please see www.cdnindoorrowing.org/results2014.html. Now it's time to finish up another week of high intensity training before going back to volume. We have a second "opportunity" to do a 2k this Saturday as some of the girls missed the test on Sunday. Maybe I will give it a go and see if I can shave another second off my time and check that long term goal of breaking 6:48 off my list.

Photo courtesy of Austin J. Cameron

Fall 2013

I realize it’s been a long time since my last post, so I will do my best to start where I left off.  To begin, post Korea involved a glamorous two weeks holed away on my parent’s farm.  The days that were not spent on my parents 180 odd acres were spent hiking, paddle boarding, and catching up with friends and family. My visit ended with a trip back to London, Ontario and a great start to the training season. October brought my first ever head of the Charles with teammate and friend Carling Zeeman. We placed second. For some fun pics check out: http://scullingfool.smugmug.com/Rowing/Head-of-the-Charles-2013/Championship-Doubles-Women/i-Jq5VjkL.  Navigating the course was like navigating rush hour in Toronto. Thank goodness I was in stroke seat! 

After Head of the Charles came the 2013 Canadian National Rowing Championships, where I placed third in the women’s heavyweight single event. Gale force winds resulted in many cancelled races and a time trial style final. A short wrap-up article can be found here http://rowingcanada.org/news/2013-national-rowing-championships-come-close-welland.

The fall training season was also marked by a number of erg tests and my first ever V02 max test. The erg tests consisted of two team 6k’s and a spur of the moment “on my own” 2k. All three were best times and my new “times to beat” are 6:48.9 on the 2k and 21:50.0 on the 6k. All in all a very exciting fall season for me. It is always so rewarding (and a huge confidence booster) to see those training hours pay off.

Christmas break consisted of a wonderful two weeks at home spent mostly on the x-country ski trails and on the computer, desperately finishing off the third of my four online courses. The weather was unusually warm for a Northern BC winter, and alternating rain and snow led to terrible road conditions. One day the roads were so terrible that I couldn’t make it into town (aka the gym and x-country ski trails) so I got creative and did my interval workouts on a pair of my dad’s snowshoes. Success! Feel free to check out my twitter page (@Antje_vs) for updates and winter break farm training photos! 

And suddenly 2013 was brought to a close. I spent new year’s eve on an airplane traveling back to the training center, and two short days after arriving, hopped on another plane to Florida for our first training camp of the season. It was great to be back on the water and we spent most of the rows trying out some different combinations with the quad. We had the luxury of working with two fantastic biomechanists and learned a lot! It was a grueling two weeks of hundreds of kilometers on the water and numerous core and strength workouts in the weight room…. obviously accompanied by copious amounts of food consumed in the Stetson University Cafeteria.

Ahhhh, and we’ve finally made it to the present time. Yesterday we arrived back in London and today and tomorrow are mostly off (aside from a short 90’ on your own cardio session today). Tomorrow I am hoping to check out the x-country ski trails at Circle-R Ranch (http://www.circlerranch.ca/) with a friend from the lightweight men’s team. Fingers crossed that they will have enough snow! If they do I will do my best to post some pictures on twitter!

A New Season

The 2013/2014 season has officially begun-with much enthusiasm and excitement on my part. I was a little nervous that I would be miles behind everyone as I only did the bare minimum amount of training during my break. This was a much needed break for me! Nevertheless, I was itching to get back on the water and couldn't sit still during our pre-launch meeting! The 15 minutes felt like an eternity.
Right.....World Champs. We ended up having a great race and coming a satisfying 2nd place  behind the Germans. It was extremely exciting to be a part of putting a Canadian heavyweight women's sculling boat on the podium for the first time in many years; a very proud moment. This year's goal is to slowly move my way up the ranks here at the LTC. This will require both fitness/strength and technique. I've learned a lot from watching our final race on the world rowing website and have a couple technique points I'd like to improve sooner rather than later.
Time to get back to work!

Heat recap

For results check out the results page on the world rowing website. We had a pretty exciting race, finishing first in our heat and moving straight through to the A-final on Saturday. Time to get some solid recovery in!

Heat tomorrow at 1:09pm Korea time (9:09pm BC time). We are in a five boat heat with Belarus, Australia, United States, and Poland. Check out worldrowing.com for results etc.

It's hard to believe that racing begins in two days! I can definitely feel the racing bug starting to set in; that little bit of nervous excitement every time we pull up to the race course. It feels like just last week that I was pushing out very lonely 2-3h bikes on the stationary bike up in the Spracklen room at 5:30am. As much as I miss Victoria, it is nice to finally belong to a team again. Pushing yourself on a day where you are mentally struggling is so much easier when you have team mates to push you! I believe that training alone for a year was both the toughest and most rewarding training period I have experienced. My decision to stop training with the varsity team at the University of Victoria mostly stemmed from the fact that I had national team aspirations and felt I had gotten as much out of the program as I could. I realize it sounds a little selfish..... but then again, name a successful athlete who has not been selfish at some point in his or her career. I was simply trying to find a way to squeeze the most speed and technical gains out of the little time I had outside of class at Uvic. This is why I approached Scott Feddery and asked if he would coach me a couple times a week. Scott was the lightweight women's coach at Uvic and had a very unique coaching style (because he didn't follow the typical Canadian coaching style of most other coaches). It was in this time working with Scott that I learned about rhythm and boat feel... and perhaps most importantly, to think for myself and always ask "why".  This is both a blessing and a curse because I have learned so much from asking these questions, but have also gotten myself in a bit of trouble with coaches who think I am questioning their authority or over complicating things.  Regardless, I am so thankful for the lessons I learned that year because they enable me take a little more control of my own development.
I originally meant to write about Korea and world Champs, but as you can see.... I got a little side tracked. Things here are going well. The four of us are settling into our brand new bow mounted Hudson 4x, and are still making small technical gains to improve our efficiency. Taper feels so good on the body! I have forgotten what it feels like to have extra energy.
Time to get some lunch!

Korea

Where to start? I am currently in South Korea, preparing for the 2013 World Rowing Championships. The crew now consists of (from bow to stern) Emily Cameron, Kate Goodfellow, Carling Zeeman, and myself. I believe the last post mentioned the race-off in singles- the results were exciting for me because I finished first out of the quad and moved up the ranks from the beginning of the summer (it was no secret that I was the last person to make the boat and the lowest ranked from the spring trials regatta). I still have a way to go, but it felt good to see some progress.

There are so many great things to say about Korea: It all started with the warm welcome from the hotel staff and a number of people who I believe were surrounding villagers. We were greeted by a small crowd of cheering people wearing Canada colours and waving the Canadian flag. Once we got off the bus we were shuttled into the lobby where we were given grapes ( a Korean tradition) and lined up for a photo shoot.

 The course and venue are also top notch ( in my opinion) and I will try to get some photos before going back to Canada. 

It is almost time for second practice so I will have to continue the update another day. The heat is taking its toll, but our bodies are slowly adapting. Rowing Canada brought a slushie machine to help with body temperature regulation, and I am counting down the hours until we get to use it. We have to wait three days in order to force our bodies to adapt to the climate better.

Let's hope this theory works!

Until next time...