Battlecat arrives

Huge apologies for the long delay between my last post and this one. 

It has been a busy month with training, injuries and new additions to the house.  I started the month training in Wallingford with the group of women they are trialling for the European championships.  We were doing long 20+km outings, paddling with the senior women's eight.  Hence some very competitive paddling!  We did a good 2km speed order test at Dorney two weeks ago, which both the athletes and coaches were pleased with.  I then came unstuck, and had some problems with my neck which kept me out of the boat for ten days.  I managed to see Mike Chisholm, a genius physio, who sorted me out very quickly.  Funnily enough the problem is never where it appears...my neck was merely highlighting some imbalances in my pelvis and spine which when sorted out, allowed my neck to support my head happily again!

I also have some very exciting news, in that we have got a kitten in the house!  Everybody, meet Simba...

He is almost eight weeks old, and the most affectionate, inquisitive and playful cat I have ever known!   He is called Simba, but has also been nicknamed Battlecat which I think he has taken to heart a bit too much.  He is under the assumption that he rules the house and loves to run up our jeans to say hello, a habit which we are trying to break him of!

Rowing wise, I've got the Metropolitan Regatta at Dorney Lake next weekend.  This is always a top class event, and I am looking forward to racing an eight on the Saturday and the Sunday, and a four on the Saturday.  Having been ill for final trials last month it feels like it is so long since I raced properly, so I am raring to go!

Rhiannon Jones, one of my housemates deserves a mention as she is racing in Munich at the World Cup this weekend, coxing the B crew of the adaptive four.  They have the final tomorrow night, subject to any changes, so huge GOOD LUCK wishes to them!

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

Final Trials

Bad timing struck this weekend as I came down with a nasty cold on Thursday.  Despite not training on Friday to try and accelerate my recovery, I was pulled out of racing on saturday morning by the GB team doctors.  It has been very frustrating, but I am looking towards next week when we have some crew boat testing for possible European Championship boats.  I'm currently working hard on the rest and recovery, in order to get me back to training as soon as possible.  I am sleeping 12 hours a night and seem to be doing my best to keep Strepsils in business!

Congratulations to everyone who got to race at GB Trials or the London Marathon this weekend.  Marathon wise there were notable performances from Lee Merrien - first Briton (14th), Paolo Natali - (24th), Nikki Bartlett 3h03 - her first marathon!!


Lots of love to all my family, close and extended, out in Oregon... sorry I can't be with you.

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 :)

Training and Racing

I got the all clear from the heart specialists in London on Friday and have started training properly again! It is so good to be back in my boat, and I am back just in time to race the women's eights head in London on the Thames on saturday :)

We have an awesome Reading University BC crew.  Monica Relph, my idol, will be stroking the boat, backed up by a whole host of talented athletes.  I will be making my debut on strokeside, and am very excited about that.  Soon I will be bisweptical! 

If there are any keen spectators,  we would love the support! We will be going off as the 2nd boat, of 303 entries.  Racing starts at 3.30pm at Chiswick bridge and finishes at Putney just before the bridge.  We will be boating from Vesta rowing club I believe, and will be around after the race for autographs etc ;)

New bike and other stories

Bike!


Just as the weather is turning a bit nicer, I have had the good fortune of being bought a second hand road bike by the Guernsey Sports Commission for training.  I didn't have a bike before, and it is my first road bike so I am totally in love with it!

We do 2 hour cardio sessions on sundays, in our own time, and I am very keen to get out on my bike for these sessions.  I need to get used to the toe cover pedals, or just get some clip in ones and shoes, because this morning I had a little incident...  

I arrived at the lake, and slowed down to stop, forgetting I probably needed to take my feet out of the toe covers before I actually came to a stop.  I then waved hello to a friend and said, 'look at my lovely new bike!' or something like that, then in proper slow-mo style my feet tried to wriggle out of the toe covers, failed, and with a bit of a girly yelp I saw the ground rushing up at me.  I was on thick gravel so luckily only my pride was wounded!

In other news...

Training wise, the past week hasn't been great for me.  We have to be very aware of our bodies with the amount of training we put them through, and to keep on top of our health we do a fair bit of 'morning monitoring'.  This can be noting down all sorts of things from urine colour (hydration) to coping level.  The main ones I regularly note are resting and standing heart rates, weight and body temp.  These are all taken first thing in the morning so ensure consistency.  The morning monitoring helps us to pick up problems before they stop you training. Often, before you get sick your resting heart rate will increase as it tackles the bug, so if you spot this in your monitoring you can reign in the training slightly and let your body fight the infection more successfully, before it becomes an issue in full blown sickness.

We take resting and standing heart rates; resting is taken lying down in bed as soon as you wake up, and standing is when you stand up out of bed, stand still for a minute and then take it.  Resting heart rate generally tells you whether you are well or not, if your body is fighting something it will raise your resting heart rate.  Standing heart rate tells you how your body is reacting to 'work', a simple task like standing up.  If you are under recovered your body will find it harder to adjust to this simple task and so your standing heart rate will be higher than normal.

About a week ago my standing heart rate suddenly shot up, and backing off training has not seemed to have any effect on bringing it back down to a normal level.  Also, I know what heart rates are normal for me when exercising at different intensities and my HR has been going up much too fast at much too light an intensity when trying to train.  So, I've been on one light session a day which has been driving me a bit mad as I feel absolutely fine until I start to do anything like a real session.

As backing off training has not had the desired effect I am having to see doctors and specialists.  I've seen the GP, have an appointment with a GB rowing doctor next week and have heart scans and blood tests booked for next week.  I'm sure it will be fairly easy to sort out but is just very frustrating at the moment!  Rowing is an exhausting sport and as we only get the odd day off training once every three weeks or so it can feel like a huge effort to motivate yourself fully for every session.  Sometimes it's the last thing you feel like doing! Especially when the winter is intent on doing it's best to discourage you by being dark, rainy and freezing cold when you're meant to be getting up and going on the water. 

However, when you are not allowed to train for whatever reason, be it injury or illness, it is the most frustrating thing in the world.  All I want to do is to be able to go and train properly.  Training is constantly tough, exhausting and demanding but it is also invigorating, rewarding and satisfying. I miss it!

Pray for my speedy recovery please!

x