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Sunday Aug 9, 2009 #
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Hello outside world :) Here is my little update without actually having time to log any time of training but I hope this will be good enough... I am just glad my time and effort here in Princeton has paid off :) After so many steps and hurdles to get to where I am right now I am amazed that I have lasted this long :) But I have loved every minute of it. Sorry for the serious lack in training entries but I don't get much online time, especially without a computer. These past few weeks I have been training in a quad with the double that got second at elite nationals, Abby and Lindsay. They are both from Seattle and I really enjoy rowing with them. It took some time for us to get used to each others rowing but after MANY adjustments and seat changes I found my seat in the bow of the boat. The sense of this is to put the taller girls in the middle so that the shorter will have to lengthen to match them. I have become more flexible over the past few weeks :)
Mostly we row in the morning doing either a long row or pieces and then in the afternoon/evening we would do a shorter technical row. It is usually pretty hot then so I have developed quite an interesting tan... I am getting to know Princeton on my few times to get there. I mostly only know that they have a good frozen yogurt store called "Twist" which is a rowers heaven... and that's actually about as far as I got :) But luckily we did not venture there too often and we were able to weigh in on race day without having to drop any weight. We were the only boat at the camp here in Princeton, NJ to be challenged, all of the other boats just had to "race" themselves and just row one 2k to become offically on the National Team... so we got to have all the fun :) The other Lightweight Women's Quad boat was composed of girls from Philly and Seattle. A couple of the girls in it have been on the National team for as much as 4 years, so they felt confident going into that they knew what they were doing.
My boat did our usual race warm-up and both boats got to the start. The first race started and we were able to get our stern on their bow ball by the 500m mark. We pretty much stayed in that position all the way and put a few more inches between us and then in our sprint in the end. We got a decent time but felt that maybe we could do better the next day now that people knew what to expect from the other boat. The second race the next day was a nice sunny cool day (unlike the day before where it was rainy) and we were ready to race :) During the race the other boat was most definetly fighting for their lives because even though we were going faster and more aggressive, the other boat was still pushing us. It was a great race but in the end we were able to hold them off and win by about the same margin as the day before, but with both boats at a faster time. Since we had won that race ( it is best 2 out of 3) we were declared the winners and would be the boat going to Poland.
It was an amazing moment to get off the water and have everyone congratulate us.
Now comes the harder part where there is much scrambling from organizers for information and having to get ready to go in about a week! I thought we were going to have some down time right now so that I could go back to Boston to work to get some more money but it seems like that is not going to happen, and top it all off they told me it is going to cost each athlete over $4000 to go!!! I think I need to get back into Orienteering which was a MUCH cheaper sport... Me and my crazy ideas always get me in trouble ;) I hate asking, but given the fact that there is now way I can actually pay for all of this it would REALLY be appreciated if anyone wanted to help support either my boat to go to Worlds in Poland or just me at the website http://www.firstgiving.com/2009lw4x . At this point I think anything would help :) Either way, I really appreciate all of the support everyone has given me and the encouragement to continue on. I will definetly be at some Orienteering meets this fall and I hope to see you there and I could probably tell you about this sport called rowing :)
Mostly we row in the morning doing either a long row or pieces and then in the afternoon/evening we would do a shorter technical row. It is usually pretty hot then so I have developed quite an interesting tan... I am getting to know Princeton on my few times to get there. I mostly only know that they have a good frozen yogurt store called "Twist" which is a rowers heaven... and that's actually about as far as I got :) But luckily we did not venture there too often and we were able to weigh in on race day without having to drop any weight. We were the only boat at the camp here in Princeton, NJ to be challenged, all of the other boats just had to "race" themselves and just row one 2k to become offically on the National Team... so we got to have all the fun :) The other Lightweight Women's Quad boat was composed of girls from Philly and Seattle. A couple of the girls in it have been on the National team for as much as 4 years, so they felt confident going into that they knew what they were doing.
My boat did our usual race warm-up and both boats got to the start. The first race started and we were able to get our stern on their bow ball by the 500m mark. We pretty much stayed in that position all the way and put a few more inches between us and then in our sprint in the end. We got a decent time but felt that maybe we could do better the next day now that people knew what to expect from the other boat. The second race the next day was a nice sunny cool day (unlike the day before where it was rainy) and we were ready to race :) During the race the other boat was most definetly fighting for their lives because even though we were going faster and more aggressive, the other boat was still pushing us. It was a great race but in the end we were able to hold them off and win by about the same margin as the day before, but with both boats at a faster time. Since we had won that race ( it is best 2 out of 3) we were declared the winners and would be the boat going to Poland.
It was an amazing moment to get off the water and have everyone congratulate us.
Now comes the harder part where there is much scrambling from organizers for information and having to get ready to go in about a week! I thought we were going to have some down time right now so that I could go back to Boston to work to get some more money but it seems like that is not going to happen, and top it all off they told me it is going to cost each athlete over $4000 to go!!! I think I need to get back into Orienteering which was a MUCH cheaper sport... Me and my crazy ideas always get me in trouble ;) I hate asking, but given the fact that there is now way I can actually pay for all of this it would REALLY be appreciated if anyone wanted to help support either my boat to go to Worlds in Poland or just me at the website http://www.firstgiving.com/2009lw4x . At this point I think anything would help :) Either way, I really appreciate all of the support everyone has given me and the encouragement to continue on. I will definetly be at some Orienteering meets this fall and I hope to see you there and I could probably tell you about this sport called rowing :)