Trials Preparation camp

Last month, February, my rowing club, Leander Club, took their select group of lightweight men and heavyweight women GB triallists to Banyoles, in Spain, for a 12 day training camp. 

My housemate Rhiannon had three days earlier returned from a training camp there, and coinciding with the cold snap in the UK, reported sub zero temperatures, gale like winds so strong that they were kept off the lake some days and general cold dreariness. In preparation for our camp there I packed lots of warm kit, woolly socks, winter coats and, in case of a swimming pool/hot tub/ice bath, a bikini! 

Lucky I did pack that bikini for as soon as we arrived we realised that the weather was on our side. 18 degrees Celsius the first afternoon, and it continued to be cloudless, bright blue skies with very little wind the entire time. Notwithstanding my rowing kit, my most worn item of clothing was certainly my bikini. Any time we had off was spent on the upstairs roof, reading and basking in the sun. We were intent on boosting our vitamin D stores!

Tina Stiller, Rachel Gamble-Flint, Me

This camp was in preparation for all of our upcoming Olympic Trials, 10-11th March. The training was tough, as expected, but the great weather made it so much more enjoyable!  We work on a three day cycle when we are on training camp.  This means we have two consecutive days of three sessions a day, and the following day is a two session day with the afternoon off.  That afternoon off is always a source of great excitement, and much looked forward to.  We usually plan the afternoon around food and sunbathing. Telling ourselves that, after two heavy training days and a half day, we really need some help to recover in the form of a coffee shop crawl to try out all the different hot chocolates and pastries that the area has to offer!

Despite being out of the boat for a few days due to a recurrent neck injury, I returned from the camp much fitter than when I had gone out and ready to do the last stretch of preparations for the trials on home water.

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!

Happy New Year 2012

Happy New Year all!

Rowing news is sparse at the moment and training continues to be gruelling, although I did have a lovely Christmas with a couple fewer sessions than normal.

Because normal people don't frequent the gym over the Christmas period the gyms typically shut for a few days. I am very fortunate to be able to use the Fitness Factory whilst I am at home, and they do wonderful things for me like allow me to take the ergo (rowing machine) outside where it is cooler. Therefore I did a couple good ergo sessions in the car park hoping that nobody would swing round the corner too quickly and take me out!  I was also able to borrow a weights bar from Christmas eve until the 27th, when the gym re opened. Here Suki is just checking out the space that I swept up on the pergola for my weights circuit!

Despite being unable to go out on the river whilst I am at home in Guernsey, I am able to go for some incredibly picturesque runs.  It's one of my favourite ways to see the island as you can see so much of it in a short space of time. Much more than if you were walking anyway.  On Boxing Day I did my usual run, a 10k loop taking 40mins along the cliffs and then back along the lanes.  City runners, you must be jealous of this!!...

Christmas was a lovely relaxed family affair this year.  We had the obligatory Christmas Day walk and when we arrived at the top of Petit Port I somehow managed to convince the family that it would be a good idea to walk down to the beach and back. For those who don't know, there are 294 steps (I counted) down to the beach from the cliff path :) shaky legs when we reached the bottom!

As usual I got lots of thoughtful Christmas presents, but probably most useful was the amazon kindle. I know, I know it is much nicer to hold a real book, sniff the pages and bend the cover but at the speed I read and the amount of clothes I pack when I go away I just don't have space for lots of books! The kindle will be most useful when away on training camps or holidays but I am enjoying getting through a few books on it already.

I spent my New Years and a couple days before and after in the Lake District.  I've never been to that part of England before and although it rained straight through for four days we had an amazing time. Lots of walking in the rain and board games by the fire. Perfect!

Since I have been back at training in Henley the wind has been abominable so we have been on the ergos quite a lot, which is actually good preparation for our 5km ergo trial at the end of the month.  I'd forgotten how mind numbingly boring long ergos are. 12km yesterday, 16km today and 18km tomorrow. Better update the music on my ipod!

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!

Europeans, rest, a new season and new boat!

Europeans

Racing in Bulgaria was tough.  International competition is always stiff, but as a GB development crew against some other countries' top senior boats we knew the gold standard was high!

The European Championships happened this year in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 16-18th of September.  We had six crews in our event, so we had a race for lanes on the Friday and the Final on the Sunday.  Our season as a crew had been very mixed, with the actual crew only coming together for the first time 10 days before we raced.  The race for lanes was therefore a great opportunity for us to race the full race distance together as a crew for the first time.  Crews all use the race for lanes for a different purpose.  Some go out to race as hard as they can, to try out their race plan.  Some race to a certain point and then settle onto a more relaxed pace.  Some hardly race it at all and want to save themselves for the final.  Some go out to win the race to ensure the best lane in the final.  The lake and conditions in Plovdiv were pretty fair so no advantage was found by having the 'better' lanes.  We used the race to cement the crew and run through our race plan.  It was a case of laying ourselves on the line and seeing what we could do, and then being able to make changes for the final.

The final was dictated by the Romanians who showed their dominance from the outset.  We fought hard to overturn the Russians who had beaten us in the race for lanes, but could do nothing to impact on the Ukranians and Belarussians.

It was a heartbreaking result, because we were aiming for the podium.  It had been a very long season with some dark times for the whole crew.  Large groups of women are never easy to manage, especially when they are physically and emotionally exhausted!  However, for me personally, it has been invaluable to get the opportunity to spend a whole season in a decent sweep boat, and this result gives us more drive and ambition to achieve greater things next year.


After this last race of the season we had a two week break.  As the only break in the year that we get from training, I tried to make the most of it!  I spent a few days after racing travelling in Bulgaria with my parents, then 5 days in Morocco with some rowing friends from the european team, a couple days at home in Guernsey and then a day or so back in Caversham before training started!

In Morocco we felt a million miles away from the pressure of training, it was an amazing holiday.  So relaxing and with such good company!

So at the beginning of October we started training for the new 2011-2012 season.  I have moved to Leander Club which is a really exciting new direction for me this season.  I am also completely over the moon about my new boat!!  I am extremely lucky to have been bought a brand new top of the range boat by J W Rihoy.  My old boat was 8 years old and really starting to show its age.  This new boat will take me through the next Olympiad and will give me the best possible chance in pursuing my Olympic dreams.

My start to the season has been disrupted by a cold, brought on by the sudden change in temperature I think.  It was the height of summer on the first day of training and mid winter by the third day!  I am still on a recovery programme and am trying to kick it so that I can put in a performance at GB October Trials next weekend.  Wish me luck!

European selection

I hope you managed to see some of the World Rowing Championships and World Athletics Championships on the BBC recently.  The quality of racing was, as always, incredibly high and both championships were completely and utterly enthralling.  I love the emotion that makes sport what it is.  When the stakes are high, when people have devoted their lives to the perfection of technique and attainment of ultimate physical fitness, you can see plainly the utter exhilaration or devastation on the faces of the athletes.  The emotion that is invested through years of training and personal sacrifices makes the winning and losing mean that much more.  I found myself caught in a whirlwind of emotions as I felt for every single athlete out there.  I was at times laughing, whooping and cheering, then in an instant I was gripping the arm of the chair I was sat in and, next, on the edge of tears, either in elation or feeling their crushing disappointment.

Watching a major championships helps to remind me why I’m doing this.  I feel it’s often easy to lose sight of the bigger picture; we get bogged down in individual sessions, training like an elite athlete, to become an elite athlete but forgetting why exactly we’re doing it. For me specifically, it’s not to get a personal best on my 2k, it’s not to be admired by slower people, it’s not for the piece of metal they give you on the podium.  This game is all about winning and the feeling of winning, and seeing the culmination of countless hours, days, months and years of training in one performance which overshadows all others.  Simply we do this for the emotion.

I’ve spent the summer pouring all my emotion into a new venture…making myself a sweep rower for the European women’s eight.  It has eventually paid off and I am feeling confident and powerful in the boat.  Yesterday we were entered into the European Rowing Championships and I was selected for the three seat in the boat.  The championships will be held in Plovdiv, Bulgaria on the 16-18^th September.  We leave on Wednesday, race for lanes on the Friday and the final is on Sunday.  There are six boats entered in our event and it is a very strong field, including the unchanged Romanian senior women’s eight who competed at the World Championships in Bled, Slovenia, last weekend and in coming fourth narrowly missed out on the bronze medal as our GB senior women’s eight surged to an incredible finish.  (senior GB women's eight pictured in Bled below)

The European Championships can be followed on the world rowing website, and is usually covered by a local television station although I am not sure where/whether you will be able to see this.  I am very excited to have been selected for the European Rowing Championships and cannot wait to get out and race.

It has been a long season for us, as most athletes finished their season between two and six weeks ago and are now well into their winter season.  I have now been training for 53 consecutive weeks, and am looking forward to the break after racing.  A bit of travelling and a few much needed days at home should revive me for starting on a fresh season.  It really will be a fresh start too because I am changing clubs this year and will be starting at Leander club.  This is an exciting prospect and one which will bring new challenges, opportunities and complications I am sure!

Training continues

Hi all!! It has been a very long time since my last post.  I've gotten a really solid bit of training done since then, and have also had a semi week off, at home in Guernsey.  The usual rowing season finishes in August, but I am hoping to do the European Championships, in mid September, so as our season is longer than most we get a week out of the boat, and it gives us the opportunity to go and train at home.  Out of the eight days I had at home I had three days off, and the other days training I spent all around the place; at the Fitness Factory, running the south coast cliffs, running along the east coast, kayaking and swimming in the sea.

It was so nice to be at home, spend time with friends and family and soak up the beauty of Guernsey. I must say, Reading does not in any way compare!

We spent a lovely day in Herm, with my parents and boyfriend; swimming, picnicing, kayaking and getting some embarrassingly patchy sunburn.  Later in the week one of my housemates came stay and I had great fun showing her the island.

We were around on the weekend of Rocquaine regatta, so we went down there to soak up the atmosphere a bit and judge the sandcastles for ourselves.  I should have known that we would be encouraged to participate in some way or another, and sure enough we soon find ourselves in with the Guernsey rower girls (fitting!) for a very sandy tug of war!!  A brilliant day, creating the sorts of memories that never get forgotten.





Before and after my week at home I have still been training in the European eight group.  We have been training at Caversham lake, the heart of GB rowing.  The seniors are all now away on training camps in preparation for the World Championships in Bled later this month.  Many friends are racing, so I'll be eagerly watching the championships.  Good luck to everyone!

I'll try not to leave it so long to my next post.  I hope to have some very exciting news to report in the next two or three weeks, so watch this space!