Our European expedition was definitely a great trip, though the first regatta at Lucerne didn’t go very well for us at all. It was actually a bit of a shock, as Juliette and I had been training really well before we left New Zealand and wondered what had gone wrong.
Then we realised. We had made a slight adjustment to the set up in our boats before the racing in Switzerland. As soon as the Lucerne regatta was over we changed it straight back and at training the next day it was perfect and we were flying.
Some people would think – and it even crossed my mind – that a little thing like that shouldn’t make such a big difference. But we train four hours a day in the boat, six days a week and the timing gets so fine tuned.
I get a lot of my timing from watching the water going past the boat and as we had positioned ourselves in a different place it seemed to throw our timing off just a shade.
Juliette and I are not a big, strong pair – we are a crew that go fast because we are technicians. So in that way it affected us even more – we didn’t have the muscle to be able to push it along once we got slightly out of rhythm.
In the last regatta in Poland we really wanted to put a race together that reflected the training we had been doing. We did much better than at Lucerne but I still think we have a lot more up our sleeves.
We expected that the German crew would not be as good as last year - it turns out they are better! They are huge girls and rowing really well. Along with China, it will be the German crew that I will be thinking about on every stroke.
Parts of our trip were so exciting – it was awesome to be with a group of people that were so focussed and achieving at such a high level. When Storm (Uru) and Peter (Taylor) qualified for the Olympics midway through the trip we were so happy for them – we knew they were of a good enough standard but it was whether they could make it in such a high pressure regatta.
At other times though it is like being at boarding school. Everything has to be so regimented – breakfast time, training time, dinner time, sleeping time and there is really nothing else you can do. You don’t really go shopping, you never go sightseeing and there is not a lot of time for socialising.
But that is the only way you can function with the training load. I would imagine that most of the New Zealand team haven’t been out partying in the last six months – you just cannot cope with the training load that is required.
We still had a good time though and on the last Sunday night in Europe we went out with the Slovenian, French and Canadian teams – for a few drinks and a bit of friendly banter.
Thank goodness that most of the European teams speak English! I studied German the whole of the last year but still wasn’t able to use any of it – I found it really hard.
In Rowing it is generally quite friendly off the water. Some of the teams were saying – “Okay you got me this regatta but we’ll get you next time!”
And we all know where that next time will be. |
