The past two months have flown by. It is crazy that Paralympic Trials are a little over a month away and FPQR is only two and a half months away. To secure a spot for Paris I need to win the Paralympic trials in April and then continue on and win the Final Paralympic Qualifying Regatta in Lucerne in May. Hence the name, FPQR is the last chance for anyone to qualify so all the PR1 athletes who haven’t yet qualified will be there, gunning for that spot.
To be completely honest, I have been putting off writing this update for a bit because I haven’t felt like I have been making enough progress.
This is quite hard to admit and something that I have struggled with for a while. As a founder and engineer (and maybe as the fifth of six kids too :) ), it is my nature to approach problems scientifically. Viewing life through a pragmatic lens has allowed me to chart out each step toward reaching my goals — especially in moments of deep uncertainty. However, this is a double-edged sword. It often doesn’t allow room for me to sit with the possibility that my work might not pan out.
Truthfully, the gap I must close in the next two months to beat my projected competition in Lucerne is quite large. While there can be surprises with rowing races, generally there aren’t massive upsets, meaning that my speed in training leading up to the race will be relatively indicative of my race speed. However, looking back over the past two years and the last couple of months I often feel that even if I keep up the same rate of improvement that I have been I won’t be fast enough to make the Paralympics. This is a tough thought and over the past couple of months, I have been working to come to terms with how to best deal with it.
A bad habit that I have gotten into, last year especially and slightly less so this year, is to put a lot of weight onto small changes. Usually, these small changes are rigging changes or environmental changes. Thinking to myself, “I am slow now, but once I figure out the rigging I will be where I need to be.” While this is true to an extent (I don’t think I have optimized the rig to my strengths) the reality of the situation is that even if I lock in an efficient rig, I need to be stronger, and more technically sound to get faster. Essentially, there is no “quick fix.”
So how do I move forward? How do I motivate to train for 20+ hours every week when there’s a small voice asking, “What for,” or “Is this enough?” in the back of my head? I am not entirely certain, but I have spent a lot of time over the past couple of months reflecting on this and have some ideas.
The first of these is being more transparent and honest with myself. As I described above, if I don’t acknowledge where I am currently, it is much harder to improve. If I expect myself to be going 9:30 2k pace when, in reality, I am 15 or 20 seconds slower, I will be extremely frustrated when I can’t hit my target splits. This is aside from the fact that creating a training plan with a base metric that is that far off is detrimental to the training. This can be detrimental because all of my pieces are based on “race pace” and target percentages of that pace. While I am constantly trying to bring that down, a large jump ahead of where I am means I won’t be able to maintain pace across the entire piece or all of the intervals. So by being truthful about where I am now - acknowledging that rigging tweaks will help speed me up but treating that as extra speed, not expected speed - I can set a baseline to work from.
The second big thing is to trust the process. This seems a bit counterintuitive, in light of everything above where I seem to have laid out why my “trusting the process” led to me deceiving myself of my true speed. However, trusting the process is more so about believing in myself, while also putting in the work and being honest about speed. As with many facets of life, but especially with sports, there are so many factors that go into training, and who knows when it will all come together. Maybe in the next two months, maybe in the next two years. The trust in the process is knowing that I need to give my all to every workout, to recover, and train with a longer view.
This brings me to the third point which is the realization that I am still very new to this sport. Three years (plus the many years of rehab and rowing before my injury) seems like a long time, but in the picture of elite sports, it isn’t. Most of my competitors have been competing for 5,6,7 years and most of my teammates even longer. I am fortunate to have been competitive at such a high level so quickly, but that also skewed my view of the timeline. My sister, Tricia, for example, has been ski racing at an elite level for 9 years and is skiing the best she ever has. This ties into the trust-the-process aspect.
The final point that I appreciate more is to enjoy the journey. I had a friend ask me the other day, “Why do you row?” and I asked my teammates the same question because it isn’t a simple question. For me there are a couple of reasons, I want to prove to myself that I can achieve this physical goal following my injury, I really enjoy competing, but a very large part of it is the people and community that I am engaged with along the way. For the past six months, I have been training in Austin with four other rowers all training to make the Olympics this summer. This has been fantastic, and I feel similarly when I go to international races and see all of the national team members who all work so hard. I row because I like pushing myself to do more and be better than I thought possible and doing that with others makes it so much more enjoyable.
This is a fluid list, but I feel comfortable and confident in the path moving forward. I am sure I will continue to have doubts and bad practices, but if I can be deliberate and give my all at every practice, I can continue to improve little by little. Do I believe I can win in Lucerne? I am not sure, but I now do believe that if I continue to work hard, improving flexibility, core strength, spending more time on the water, working with a PT, etc., then I will keep getting faster. If that isn’t enough for Lucerne, that’s okay, but I will go into every practice from here until then believing it will be. Because at the end of the day, we are all able to push much further than we think capable.
All that being said, I am definitely training as well, as efficiently, and as effectively as ever before. I feel as strong as ever and am finally improving my flexibility, so a lot to be grateful for!
And now some pictures!