USRowing National Championship Heat wrap-up

We raced the heat in the 8+ today. We won it easily, which was good. Tomorrow will be tougher. For some reason, the other heat was a lot harder than ours. Ours was cut from four boats to three when one crew scratched, while the other heat had five boats. Our winning time would have placed us 4th in the other heat. We have to find ten seconds (at least) by tomorrow. Let’s hope it’s there.

As I mentioned, our boat is comprised of all Princeton Training Center athletes. We’ve all been training here all year. The other 8+, which is close to the one that will represent the US this summer, has guys from all over: kids coming out of college, people training on their own, and guys from CRC. (They also have Guise, who is acting as our spy.) This division gives us a healthy “Us vs. Them” mentality. It’s not just about winning and losing as individuals; we can actually feel like a team. (Nice!) Now we have a reason to race beyond the sheer joy of it. We need to defend our turf, and show the other boat that our training here works. We’ve trained separately all year, and we need to prove that
• our training was more physiologically sound
• our technical preparation was rigorous
• our morale is higher
• our warm-up routine is better
• our lake is more conducive to effective training
• the shower heads in our locker room have more flow
• our weight room has better ventilation
• our weekends are more fun
• our community is more pedestrian-friendly
• …

This is a bit rare for a race on US soil, and it’s awesome. Normally, it is either (a)every-man-for-himself, like in the NSRs, or (b) another day at practice, mixed boats with no real difference between the “good guys” and the “bad.” In the end, we’re all on the same team, and having divisions between the boats makes things more fun and it makes us all faster. One of the reasons we’re heading toward more a dispersed system of training is so that we have this type of competition within the US. And thus, as it always has been, the differences between us make us all stronger. Which is great, as long as we win tomorrow.