The past two weeks have been hard as I ramp volume back up, but rewarding. I am excited to race at the Head of The Charles in Boston this weekend with my older sister, Tricia, as my double partner. I raced last year with my younger sister, but she is now racing for Harvard, so Tricia kindly volunteered! We will be racing on Saturday afternoon at 4 p.m. in the inclusion double! Row 2k wrote a nice article about us here. I will be signing autographs at the USRowing tent near the finish and launch zone on Saturday at 11 a.m. If you are around stop by!
Following worlds, I took a week off of training and then spent the following week packing up all my college belongings and moving them from San Francisco to Austin, where I will be living and training for the next couple of months. After almost two weeks away from the training routine, however, I was ready to get back to work.
Amazingly, there are only 30 weeks until my race in May. While that seems like a lot, after taking out rest days and travel days it is really closer to 20 or 25 weeks, which is only 4 months. In an effort to maximize that time, I am working hard to complete 10 - 12 training sessions each week. This is about a 20% increase from my volume last year, but if I am consistent and smart about recovery and planning out my workouts, I can make the change without hurting myself. Even so, I am definitely feeling the increase in volume, but setting routines and sticking to them makes this easier to maintain. I am not as fast as I need to be to win in Lucerne in May, yet, but I am hoping with these changes I will continue to get stronger and faster.
One routine change I made was to move my second workout earlier in the day. Historically, I would always work out in the morning and then get my second workout in before dinner (around 6 or 7 p.m). What often happened with the flexible second workout time is I would keep pushing it off and then have to cut down on the workout time or not complete it. These past two weeks I have an imposed second workout time of 2 pm (because this is the open gym time at the gym I lift at). This semi-rigid training time is great because it forces me to get the second workout done and then have 4 to 5 hours to work after I finish it. It definitely helps that I have a flexible work schedule as well, so I can work before and after practice as well as on the weekends when I have my rest day.
My boat won’t be in Austin until after the head of the Charles so I have been erging every morning instead. My apartment overlooks the river (also referred to as Lady Bird Lake) and the water looks very beckoning. It is always quite calm in the morning (and cool at around 50 degrees) before warming up to sunny 80s. I can’t wait to get out. In the meantime, I have been spending a lot of time at a nearby CrossFit gym. They let me erg in the mornings and then I come back in the afternoons to lift. Having worked out almost entirely alone for the majority of last year, it is nice to be a part of a community (even if I am just rowing away in the background of the classes :) ). There are also a couple of elite national team athletes who live and train in Austin who lift at the gym as well.
As I look to the year ahead, my short-term goal is of course to win Lucerne and qualify for Paris, but I am also better understanding that I am still early on the path of para-rowing and competing at an international level. I do think I am capable of getting fast enough to win at Lucerne in May, yet I also am working to set a rhythm that is sustainable to allow me to keep improving past Lucerne, and past Paris. I love competing and being competitive in international races. I want to train in a manner that nurtures this love of the sport because I believe that without that love, I would quickly come to resent the training and racing.
This weekend is a great exhibition of the power of the rowing community and I am thrilled to be able to race with Tricia, who has always exemplified consistent, disciplined work in her studies and training. Work that has paid off for her as she continues to climb the ranks, almost a decade into her professional skiing career. We are racing in High Fives Foundation Unis to raise awareness for the awesome work that the organization does to help injured athletes get back to the sports they love.
Good luck to everyone racing this weekend!