Trials Invitation and a fat cat

The 2012 season has gone well for me so far.  Incredibly I seem to have cocooned myself from the usual sniffly January colds that make the rounds and have gotten through this first month injury free with some good training under my belt.  We did a 5k ergo on Saturday as part of the trials process, and although it was a personal best it is still a way off the senior girls.

I also got an email through last week to say that my performances this season have exempted me from the GB February Trials and given me a direct invitation to the Invitation-Only GB Rowing Team Trials in March, more commonly known within the rowing circles as the Olympic Trials!  This is pretty exciting and I am looking forward to getting out and racing in my lovely new JW Rihoy sponsored single.

Almost two weeks ago now I came home for a couple days to attend the Guernsey Sports Commission's annual awards evening.  It was a brilliant evening, congratulations to all involved and of course the award winners!  As one of the Rising Stars athletes I was asked to take part in a question and answer section on stage, midway through the award presentations.  Despite being fairly used to being interviewed I was really nervous about it.  I usually don't have an audience of a few hundred people!  Luckily the crowd was friendly and Dave Warr who questioned me was very good at putting me at ease.  Still, I'm positive I will not take up a career in public speaking.  Video can be seen here www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tSmgv_I0fw Dan, Sky Cycling Physio, on first, then I come in half way through.

At home my cat Simba continues to be a terror around the house.  He had been stealing food from the neighbours cats by getting into their houses by any means possible; cat flaps, windows, doors.  A neighbour brought him back to us one day, very upset because he had gotten in and eaten 3/4 of her freshly baked victoria sponge cake! He is a big cat anyway but with all the food stealing he had grown very fat.

So, he has now been house bound for a month in an attempt to slim him down.  Yesterday morning I awoke to find this in the kitchen:

In case you can't quite tell, that IS his diet cat food scattered all over the kitchen, not just some funky decorative tiles we have recently laid. Nightmare!

Fullers Head of the River Fours

Last weekend I raced on the Tideway, Chiswick to Putney, for Fours Head.  I raced in elite quads, for Leander with (Stroke - Bow) Tina Stiller, Victoria Meyer-Laker, Polly Swann and myself.  I was steering, this was a first for me on the tideway and very nerveracking! The river is very wide and the stream is about 10m wide I've heard, and makes a big difference to your speed.  The instructions for getting the right 'line' are daunting to say the least, especially when you are taking 30+ strokes a minute and not facing the way you are heading!  All credit for my steering the fastest line goes to Rhiannon Jones, lovely housemate and fantastic cox, thank you for painstakingly teaching me the course.

Unfortunately we had to race for a time only, not a placing, because from the original entry I was the only consistent member of the crew due to illnesses and injuries in the original line up.  This meant a 75% crew change, when you are only allowed a 50% crew change.  However, this did not affect our starting position or the way we raced.  Despite a good racing line, it was not our best race and felt decidedly 'unracy' due in part to some injuries within the boat.  In addition, we had only had a few outings together, coming together on the Tuesday before racing on Saturday.  With this in mind we were very pleased with the results; our time put us second in the elite quads category behind another Leander boat stroked by Anna Watkins, the fastest female rower in the country and part of the gold medal winning GB double.  We beat on time a few other crews, including last years winner, Nottingham. 

We have a hard couple of weeks training now and then a 2k ergo test at the end of the month.  Outside of rowing I am looking forward to a visit from my parents and brother this weekend and am glad they will be able to watch me in concert with the Reading Symphony Orchestra!

Amsterdam - HollandBeker Regatta

Quick race update!...Last weekend was the HollandBeker Regatta in Amsterdam.  I raced with yet another combination of the European eight on both Saturday and Sunday.  On Saturday we had a straight final, and on Sunday we had a heat and a final. 

Despite our last minute crew changes, due to illness and injury, we worked together quickly and in the few outings we had before racing we really managed to create a positive boat.  Our final on saturday was good, we came third behind the Dutch and the Canadian senior squad eights and for the most part we were really pleased with our row.  On Sunday we had a mediocre race in the heat, and although we qualified straight to the final we posted a much slower time than the GB U23 boat, in the opposing heat, so the pressure was on for the final.  Later that day in the final we had a showdown with the U23's and our overall strength managed to shine through, as we beat them by 6 seconds.  Again, the Dutch and the Canadian boats beat us and we finished in third place.

The racing was of international quality and great experience, and we got to see some of the star performers on the world stage. Notably in the single sculls, both the men and the women were hotly contested and great races to watch, with Synek and Karsten emerging triumphant.

Sadly I am not racing at Henley Regatta tomorrow, a few of the senior squad girls have dropped down into our European boat and without any solid testing results yet, I am one of the girls who has been moved out of the boat for this race.  I have been training in a four this week, preparing for our seat racing in fours which will be done the week after next.

x

Changes to the plan

So testing didn't happen this week for the four I was in, none of us have done much rowing so it was decided that we should just start training in some sweep rowing boats and not worry about doing any testing at the moment.  So, I spent a couple days in a four at Caversham lake, and then a day in a pair at Reading Uni Boat Club.  The plan going forward now is a bit vague, we are doing as much sweep as possible and there is talk of running a women's senior development eight for some speed order testing in mid May.  Who will be in that eight though is completely unconfirmed! 

In other news, the Royal Wedding! Sadly we don't get any special time off for bank holidays etc so I will be training through the wedding this morning and watching the highlights later.  I'm only really bothered about seeing Kate's dress though!

As always, I will update when I have any news. Otherwise, life is one big training, eating, sleeping cycle :)

x

Ergo and sunshine update

I realise I've not updated in awhile, everything has been hectic for me!  The week after our success at Eights Head we did our 2k ergo tests.  In my September and December 2k ergo tests I had just managed to dip under 7mins, with times of 6m59.6 and 6m59.4.  However, in January I made my ergo goal of the season to get a time of 6m56.0.  Ambitious, but I felt it was within me.  However, after missing a large chunk of training in Feb/Mar I was not feeling quite so confident. I did in the end have a very good test, going off relatively conservatively and then being able to really bring it down at the end in a new personal best time of 6m55.9!  I was very pleased with this, especially considering my disrupted preparation in the run up.

Since that ergo test we have been really getting ready for Final Trials, next weekend at Dorney Lake, the 2012 venue.  The weather has been amazing for the past week, wall to wall sunshine.  We have been on a home training camp at Caversham lake where they recently put blue dye in the water to kill/stunt the weeds, so the water looks gorgeous!

We've got three more days training at Caversham before we go to Dorney, a couple days before trials start.  I am excited to be invited to race my single at Final Trials, against some of the top scullers in the world, let alone this country!

RUBC smash it!

Huge congratulations to all the RUBC crews; A, B and C who raced at yesterday's Women's Head of the River Race on the tideway.  We raced from Chiswick to Putney (the reverse boat race course) which is about 7.5km. I was in the Reading University A crew:

L - R: Lottie Burgess, Rachel Willis, Nikki Bartlett, Georgie Hazell, Erica Bodman, Lucinda Gooderham, Helen Wood, Monica Relph, Rhiannon Jones

We started off as the second boat, of 300 crews.  The boat that went off first was Leander, a full current GB senior squad, so we knew they would pull away from us from the start.  The boats starting third and fourth we thought we would pull away from, and duly did so, leaving us in a bit of a vacuum.  With some incredible coxing from Rhiannon, we executed our race plan as intended, pushed hard throughout the race and had some great motivation within the boat the whole way down the course.

My personal favourite was a call for Nikki, to 'be the ironman'.  Nikki is an outstanding athlete and lightweight rower and she won't mind me saying that she is completely mad!  Alongside our intensive rowing training Nikki also finds the time to do ironman competitions, marathons and half marathons!  Yesterday we did the eights head, and today on our day off Nikki ran the Reading half marathon.  And not just jogged round the thirteen miles, she raced it to a finish time of 1hr24! This was Nikki's first official half marathon, and she finished 19th woman, 298th overall out of 18,000+,  YES eighteen thousand, entrants! Oh yes, and she runs about once a week! This girl is incredible and certainly one to watch out for.

So, back to the rowing race!  A little background information; the starting order is determined by last year's results.  We came third last year, with Anna Watkins, Helen Glover and Heather stanning in the boat.  These three girls would go on to win gold and two silver medals respectively at the World Rowing Championships in New Zealand in November 2010.  Composite boats typically start near the back of the list, in the 200's because they are classified as a new entry unless they have exactly the same clubs in the boat as the year before.  Therefore, the GB composite boat started 214th.  Then, boats enter a category depending on the number of 'points' they have in the boat.  If you win a regatta race, or represent your country internationally, you get a point/s on your rowing racing licence.  We entered the Intermediate 1 category (IM1), which is preceded by Elite and Senior, and followed by IM2, IM3 and Novice.  There are a few other categories for masters and juniors.

Head races must be the most frustrating things in the world.  We raced at 15.30, time trial style so we had no idea of how well, or badly, we had gotten on.  Finally at about 20.30 the provisional results are posted online.  We came third, out of 300 odd boats, and won our category, IM1, in a new course record time! We were beaten by the Leander crew, who won by a large margin, and in second place was the GB composite crew with current and ex GB senior squad members.  Both boats had brilliant coxes and athletes, including Olympians.  We were only 13 seconds behind the composite crew, a huge achievement for a club crew with three lightweight rowers and not a huge amount of sweep experience in the boat!  There were only three boats on the river that posted times under 19minutes, and we came through in 18m53.  To get a new record too was the icing on the cake.  A brilliant day's racing :)  Results HERE

I must also make mention of our coach, Eira Parry, as she gave our crew the most inspiring and electrifying pre race chat imagineable!  We are so glad to have done her proud!

The other Reading University crews were very successful too.  RUBC B were 24th, after finishing 48th last year and RUBC C were 66th as a new entry!

In other news: next Saturday is my 2k ergo test for April trials, and on the Sunday I am racing my single at Caversham lake over 2 x 1500m's.

That's all for now folks :)

Longer (more boring) Trials Report!

For some background information; Matt Lihou wrote a brilliant article, pre Trials, for the Guernsey Press which can be seen here if you are interested.  Very accurate, well written and researched!



Post Trials:  for all you boatie geeks out there, here is my version of my weekend at trials!

We arrived at the lake at 8am Saturday for our pre paddle, with briefing at 09.45.  At the briefing we were informed that due to bad weather forecasts for the Sunday, all racing would take place of the Saturday, instead of being spread over the two days. 
First thought: "do I have enough kit to race in!?"
Second thought: "Yes!! That means racing in a tail wind"  (it was forecast to be a pretty nasty cross head wind on Sunday)
Third thought: "so will the post trials dinner I've been invited to on Sunday night be moved to tonight?!" (food is never far from my mind!)

So, my aim in the 1900m time trial was to go out and hit it hard from the beginning.  I felt like I did this well, but consequently 'died' a bit and had no sort of a finish to my race.  However, I completely emptied the tank and I felt I executed my race plan exactly.  After seeing the results, it was clear that I did go out very hard! It shows rankings at each 500m mark, and at the first mark I was in 3rd place, after Anna Watkins and Katherine Grainger - the top two British women! Pleasing to know the speed is there anyway :) Looking at the rest of the times; I faded to 9th place by the 1k mark, 13th by 1500m and finally finished 16th (out of 63).  In doing so, I beat 4 of the GB senior women's heavyweight team, and a few more of their lightweights.

My time trial result put me into the C/D semi finals and I had a tough line up of Debbie Flood, Annie Vernon, Jo Cook, Laura Greenhalgh and Kathryn Twyman.  Annie and Debbie qualified for the C final comfortably.  I was not expecting to get through but after trailing Laura for the first km I started to move through her in the third 500m.  Despite a mad dash for the line, I managed to hold her off to secure third place and my spot in the C final. The conditions had worsened from the time trial, and rather than the tailwind we had enjoyed, this was more of a cross wind with slight tail.

Racing again hardly seemed viable in the state I was after two flat out races, but after my post race warm down I was able to sit down for literally five minutes before I had to go and get boated again for the C final.  I had Debbie and Annie again in my final, and also Heather Stanning, Lou Reeve and Liv Whitlam.  A full GB squad line up and me!  By this time in the day the sun was almost setting and the wind had completely died down so conditions on the lake were great.  I had a good race, but it was hardly side by side racing! I was in lane 6, Heather was in lane 1 and the other four girls were in the middle of us. I hardly got a glimpse of the four in the middle, but Heather and I were more closely matched yet as she was the other side of the lake it was hard to race her! However, we got a good sprint to the line and I finished a respectable half second behind.

It was an exhausting day, filled with exciting and cut throat races.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and relished the opportunity to race on the London 2012 course.  At April Trials, final assessment, we get the opportunity to race either our singles or in pairs, and I will be deciding in the next couple of weeks what I will do for that.

Also coming up soon in March is our 2k ergo test for April trials and women's Eights Head on the Thames in London.

I'll try and keep you updated!

x

February Trials done!!

A very quick note to say that the GB trials this weekend were condensed all into one day because of tomorrow's weather forecast.  So, I'm all done!  It was an incredibly hectic and physically ruinous day, with my time trial at midday, semi final at about 3pm and final at 5pm. It was a brilliant day of racing and I am pleased with my performances.  It does hurt to breathe right now though, I'm sticking to small short breaths!

I finished 18th overall, and got the opportunity to race Annie Vernon and Debbie Flood - World Champions in the quadruple scull last November- in my semi and final!

Longer analysis to follow :)

Erica

Ergo and upcoming trials

Just a very quick note to say my ergo (rowing machine) test went well at the end of last month.  We don't do many 5k ergo tests and the two I have done previously didn't go as well as hoped, so I was just concerned about making the cut off time for this February Trials ergo test.  I had a bit of a radical race plan, rating 24 for the first 2km - very low for a free rate ergo test - but was almost 15 seconds inside the cut off time so it paid off :)

February Trials are at Dorney Lake, Windsor, this weekend. We will have a 1900m time trial on Saturday morning, semi finals on saturday afternoon and finals on Sunday afternoon.  This is where is gets a bit serious, with the Senior GB squad in attendance too.

Bring it on!

2k Ergo test

So, today was the day of reckoning...2km ergo tests all round. Lucky us!  We must submit a 2km ergo test to GB Rowing for the December trials so Reading University Boat Club hosted a BUCS ergo event at the University Sports Park.

Cut to the chase, my time came around and I got on the ergo and completed the 2km.  I didn't really feel settled, probably because I was a bit high on the rate (strokes per minute) but I suitably destroyed my legs and lungs to pull a personal best by 0.2 seconds, a time of 6m59.4s.  All going in the right direction!

Aside from ergo tests, it has been getting colder and colder recently.  It has been -3 degrees C some mornings, which makes it pretty chilly on the river. Lots of layers, hats, neck warmers, pogies make it slightly more bearable but I'm certainly not a fan of the cold. Does make for some pretty stunning scenes first thing in the morning though.  Looking forward to a solid three weeks of training now before the December trials in Boston, Lincs the week before Christmas.

Racing updates

So, Sunday 14th November was the annual Fuller's Head of the River Fours race, held between Chiswick bridge and Putney in London.  This was my first experience racing at Fours Head and I raced over the 7.5km course with a Reading University crew in a quad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_scull).  We had a good race but the results didn't reflect as good a result as we were hoping.  We were the fourth fastest women's crew, out of 500+ total crews, including mens boats, and different classes of boats, including coxless and coxed fours.   It is notoriously difficult to steer the Thames and stay in the fastest section of the stream and during the race we did get warned by a marshall for being out of the stream, so this will have had some effect on our time.

On a more positive note, I raced at Caversham lake today at the GB Rowing Trials Sculling Assessment.  It is held like a regatta, with a 1900m time trial, semi finals and then finals over the course of one day.  This is all done in singles, and is invitation only depending on results from October Trials.

I came third in the time trial, (four seconds off Emily Taylor in first place, 0.35 seconds off Vicky Meyer-Laker in second and 7 seconds ahead of Lindsay Marshall in fourth) but I didn't race it particularly well, so tried to learn lessons from that to take into the semi-final. Always helpful! 

There were only 18 women racing and six lanes, so they would usually hold two A/B semi-finals, two C/D semi finals etc and that would have meant that there would be two A/B semis and a straight C final.  However, GB Rowing wanted to give everyone three races so they ran three semi finals where the top two went into the A final, middle two into the B final and bottom two into the C final.

The top three women were split over the three semi-finals and I won my semi easily.  The final was looking to turn out to be a three horse race, but after the time trial and semi final Emily Taylor, winner of October Trials and the time trial this morning, withdrew from racing.  I was pretty frustrated as I was really looking forward to some side by side 2km lake racing against her.  Still, I had narrowly been beaten by Vicky Meyer-Laker in the time trial and it was time to fight back.  I flew out of the blocks and found a really strong rhythm which I had lacked in the time trial.  By 500m gone I had a solid lead on Vicky and by 750m gone I had clear water.  My lead was maintained throughout the final 1250m of the race, increasing to about two boat lengths at one stage and dipping back to about a length and a half at the finish. 

Thrilled to win, and was very pleased with the way I raced it but wish we could have had the full competitive line-up of athletes.  Half a day off tomorrow, only 90mins to do so I will go for a run for 45 mins and then on the bike for 45mins.  Looking ahead, my next event is our 2k ergo's on sat the 27th of Nov. The FEAR has already set in!