Racing began today with the heats of the A group. I’m in the 4- and there are 24 boats in our event which means four heats of six. Our race is at 1:48pm. It’s the last race of the day. I woke up at 8:26am. I don’t really have a race day ritual. Today I got up and sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes then went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, drank a glass of water and splashed some on my face. I went back into the room and turned on some music (today it’s the Black Keys) and charged my iPod shuffle. I stretched for about ten minutes on the floor and then off to breakfast. Since our race is later I have a bigger breakfast than normal: eggs, sausage, toast, granola and yogurt, juice and coffee. I sat with my boat for a while, joking around trying to stay loose. Back in the room I took a shower and then tried to relax, but it’s hard to sit still. Besides I want to keep moving to stay loose. The Track and Field World Championships were on Eurosport. They are showing the women’s heptathlon.

In our heat we have New Zealand, Greece, Serbia, Argentina, and Germany. New Zealand won the last World Cup so they are the ones to beat. They are very fast. Everyone else is fast and has been racing all spring. This is our first race, which makes it a little more difficult. We are untested and anxious to get a race under our belt. Rowing is different from other team sports that I’ve played, in that you can’t really do anything to affect your opponent. There is no defense; so all strategy is internal and offensive. The only thing you can do is worry about the things you can change. We seen all the other crews race online, but you can only learn general things from that. We can only go to the line and race as hard as we can, then evaluate and adjust as necessary.

I’ll take the 11:35 bus to the course, warm up on the erg and then stretch. I’ll probably walk around a bit and watch some races. I still get nervous and anxious - I would be worried if I didn’t. So, I‘m glad we finally get to race and see where we stand against the rest of the field. We don’t really get to race enough. I’m sure we’ll learn something and have to make adjustments. I’m sure it won’t be perfect, but it will be interesting to see what happens.

The World Rowing Championship Finals start Aug. 30 LIVE on WCSN.com at 3:40 AM EST.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 11:04 am and is filed under bryanvolpenhein. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.