Eat, sleep, row

Wow it's been a while since I have written anything simply because I have been pretty busy. When I am not rowing, I'm eating or sleeping.

Camp has been good. Hard, and tiring, but good. We finished our first full week and I am finally here to talk about it. We have 3 workouts a day Monday-Friday and on Saturday we practice in the morning, and Sunday in the afternoon which gives us a good amount of time off. The workouts have been intense; a lot harder than what I am used to and we just jumped right into the intensity. It has been a long and tiring week to say the least. I am backtracking right now, so I'll give a brief overview of what we have done. We have two morning workouts with a good 20-30 minute break in between for a snack. In the mornings we've been doing longer rows focusing on technical work in quads and eights, swapping boats after the break. We just had another coxswain arrive though so we will be doing more side by side eight workouts.

On Mondays and Wednesdays though we have a 5k warm-up followed by intense weights sessions. The weights were hard but I think as time goes on they will get easier as our fitness improves. On the other afternoons we have been having water or erg practices.

I'm not gonna lie, there have been times in the past week when I thought to myself, "why am I here?". A lot of the girls here are really good. But I just have to remind myself that I was hand selected to come here and participate in the camp because they see that I have the potential in rowing. It is so different coming from being on the top end in our program to just blending in with these other girls. On top of this, I am not the tall one any more. Yes, there are girls here who are 6'4".

But I think come the end of the summer this will be a great thing to have done. And through the camp, I hope to improve and have fun doing it. I want to be able to go back to Louisville a better rower and have more to give, which I think I am very capable of. I am going to set some other goals too for this summer I decided. More to come as we go.

And as promised, here are some pictures.

This is the Vesper Boathouse

And here is the view of the river from the balcony of the boathouse.

Philadelphia

I am now here in Philadelphia. We moved in our new apartments that they gave us last night and spent the first nights sleep in it. It was pretty good actually. I also have a room mate and I think we are supposed to get another. She is from Wisconsin and she rows for Notre Dame, our rivals who we compete against in Big East and at Regionals.  :O

But she seems really cool and I am excited to meet everyone else! We have our first meeting today at 4pm to talk about things I guess and to go for a run. Which should be interesting. The only reason I say that is because rowers are often very competitive and since all of us are probably going to be silently judging each other on the inside, we might try to be the best of the best right off the bat. I, on the other hand, will not be besting anybody at running - just throwing that out there. I'm going to save the competitiveness for the water :)

So I may possibly post something tonight if I have the chance. Also, I will try to get some pictures of everything to add.

June

It is now June and I can't believe that the pre-elite camp is right around the corner. I will be leaving in just three days for Philadelphia! It's going to be really interesting and fun to row with the people that I compete against, especially on a whole new level. I might have mentioned before, but I still have no idea how it is going to turn out the first day I get there. Who will I meet? How good are they? Where do I stand next to all these other great rowers? These are just some of the first questions that come to my mind.

I will be posting after the first day most likely about how it went. As far as I know, the first day (Sunday, June 6th) we are just having a meeting and then going for a run. The real rowing won't start until Monday. Yay! I am looking forward to getting on the water again every day and rowing in more small boats. I am doubly looking forward to racing!! At the end of the email we just received about camp, it said "plan to train and train to race". Some words of wisdom right there. I am excited to do just that.


On the non-rowing side of things, I have been working my butt of trying to make money in the short two weeks that I was home. It's been pretty good though because today I got a raise and that will definitely help a lot with buying food and other necessities at camp, and next year at school. A lot of the people I work with are getting excited about this whole rowing thing. I told my boss that some day I want to try out for the Olympic team and they all thought that was pretty neat. So now that people know, I just have to do it to prove that I can!