Training Camps and Birthday Cake

Post Camp update...

I am alive! And most importantly, live and kicking and well! :) I was the only athlete to complete every session of our 18 day training camp at Caversham lake and I am here to tell the tale.  It was a tough camp where we did lots of mileage and were given a lot of information. 

Highlights:

• learning how to do my 18k ergo's feet out of the straps and not feel or look like I'm going to fall off the back of the erg at the finish of each stroke
• the 100min bike where my wattage was high and my blood lactates levels low
• the Australian Institute of Sport cook book that Miles gave, and signed for, us! Good nutritional information and recipes
• The pair with Vicki Mayer-Laker. In particular, those 20 strokes within a 12k outing where we connected at the same time, really felt how the boat could move and I didn't want to call 'down' on the burst
• completing every session; 47 sessions in 18 days

Lowlights:

• the four.  Inexplicably bad.  I think everyone cried at some point in the few outings we had!
• feeling glycogen depleted in the last 40 mins of a two hour bike, which was at the end of a 5+hr day also including 100mins on the water and an 18k ergo

I was unbelievably tired throughout the camp, but mostly it was a good tiredness.  Pleasantly exhausted, I told myself.  Knowing it is from working hard and pushing yourself to your limits rather than from being ill or under recovered makes it manageable.  I still have a little moan when I reach the top of the stairs though, it really hits your legs about two steps after the top of the stairs!  The camp finished two days before my 23rd birthday and one week before our 5k ergo test, so I decided to have a quiet, food related, calorific party.





Lemon, plum polenta cupcakes and jam meringue cupcakes

 

How overboard do you think you can go when providing cake and pizza for 25 people? Even if you invite a whole house full of rowers it seems that you can always over do it!  I had a pizza and cake party for my birthday and subsequently my freezer is full of pizza, which I never eat, four litres of ice cream which I shouldn't eat and seven boxes of cake which had to be taken down to the (Reading Uni rowing) club to stop me eating all at once.  The photo below shows about a quarter of the food that we had!

I had the nicest evening with lots of my close friends, rowers and non rowers, with friends travelling in to Reading to spend the evening with me.  I opened some gifts from my housemates and friends and completely surprised myself by being totally overwhelmed.  I am usually a pretty level and even person, in temperament and nature.  I don't have massive highs and lows and don't react too emotionally to things.  However, I got a gorgeous photo calendar filled with photos of me, my friends and family.  Then a lovely hand-made card (I am a sucker for homemade things...) and the most thoughtful, gorgeous, 'me' present ever; it was a big wooden picture frame inlaid with cream card, and stuck on it was scrabble pieces that fit together like a scrabble game in words that all have a special meaning to me.  It was such a surprise and everything just got the better of me and I burst into tears in front of everyone!  That was definitely a first!

I had a lovely lovely birthday and was touched by all the thoughtful presents I received, all the people that took the effort and time to see me, and all the birthday messages I got.



I'm now stuck back into normal training at Reading Uni Boat Club and getting my diet back in order.  I think I have had enough cake for a long while. It's a blessing that my birthday is only once a year!  Rowing wise, I am doing a 5k ergo test for February Trials this Saturday 29th and the water side of February Trials is the second weekend of February, regatta style 2km racing on the lake at Dorney, Windsor.

Till next time!

Erica x