One Race Down, One Race To Go!

We are here at Lucerne, the place where rowers worship, apparently! Since arriving in Lucerne, I have been amazed by the pituresque surroundings. There are mountains surrounding the city all with snow, including Mount Pilatus. As you push off from the pontoon at the lake, the mountains create a breathe taking backdrop that is unbelievable!

Today we won the heat by over six seconds to Great Britain and China who came second at the last world cup. They were a good crew to have next to us, as they were an indicator for us to use to measure our progression from the last regatta. The reigning world champs are here, the USA, and they won the second heat. They did clock a faster time than us, however, they were in a three boat battle to the line with Germany and Canada. We were all racing for the top position as first place went straight to the final.

I have put a few photos of the last few days of the Varese Camp, where we were training with our men's double scull. They are a good training tool as they are the same speed, if not a little faster than us over 2000m. Enjoy!

Off to Lucerne - World Cup 2

The first of the training camps in Varese has come to an end and we are packing up all the boats and suitcases to drive to Lucerne tomorrow. Throughout the training camp, our previously injured members, Brooke and Pauline, have been able to train every session, stress free, which has enabled the crew to move on from our performance in Munich.
After Munich, we have all sat down and assessed the race - always looking for ways to go faster! It is hard as we look towards our races in Lucerne not to just think of winning the final, however, as always we must only think of the process. The heats will begin on Friday and we won't know the draw until Thursday night. We should be ranked in the top two from our performance in Munich. As last year's world champs, the USA, are competing a this world cup for their first international race for the season, it will be a great opportunity to size up the competition!
We will arrive tomorrow afternoon in Lucerne for a light paddle to stretch out the legs from travelling. On Wednesday morning, the program has a few race pieces of 1000m and 750m. This will allows us to get a feel for the course and its metre markers and have a good hit out two days before we race.
Most of the crew haven't raced at Lucerne, including myself, so we are very excited about racing in such a beautiful area of the world. I will have to get photos on here, to make all those at home jealous! Or just to show the place...
Until Then!

A Day of Rowing Tour

Training in Varese is coming along quite well. After Munich we have been able to get our two injured rowers, Brooke Pratley and Pauline Frasca, back into the boat successfully with no further problems. In this post, I thought that I would take the time to give readers an insight of a day in the life of a women's eight rower while on training camp.
Wake up is routinely at 6:00am, enough time to dress appropriately (after checking the weather) and put the kettle on to make the first of many plunger coffees for the day before the start of breakfast at 6:25am. After getting some good Italian nutrition into your body (usually force feeding because you know the next time to eat isn't for another six hours) we are in the 9-seater vehicles and off to training. On arrival, we have 30 minutes to warm up. I prefer to run three kilometres to loosen up and then some time stretching/sleeping on the mats in the gym. When ready, we all gather with our coach, Lyall McCarthy to hear what the session entails and the daily technical focus. The morning session will be between 22 kilometres to 26 kilometres of rowing and then finish it off with a seven kilometre run back to the hotel. The run is a struggle, although we have been doing this routine for four years now, so we all know that we just have to do it to get home. It is also an incentive that the faster you run, the quicker you get home to eat.
We arrive back at the hotel around midday, which is when I take the opportunity to get on to the internet while everyone is at lunch (it is always faster when only a few people are on the wireless connection), so I can call home on Skype and check what is happening in Australia.
After lunch, which is guaranteed to be pasta, omelette, some sort of meat in gravy and salad (it is not too bad, just the same every day!), I retreat to my room and study for about three hours prior to the afternoon session which begins at 4:00pm. The other girls who are older than me and who were fortunate to discover elite rowing after university get the opportunity to sleep, read or eat gelati. The price to pay for a degree!
At 4:00pm, we either have weights and a run, cross training (more running) or rowing. This session is usually less intensive as the morning, unless you have to row again, which is rare. For cross training, I run 15 kilometres or sit on the rowing machine for 70 minutes. Although on the first day of cross training, four of us did manage to go for a long walk (2hrs 50min) up Campo Dei Fiori in Varese. It is a massive hill, 14 kilometre uphill climb to be exact. The weather conditions were great, at least at the bottom. By the time we reached the top, a huge storm had come across the valley, dropping the temperature to below 10 degrees along with strong winds and rain. To make it worse, we lost mobile coverage, so our coach was unable to come and pick us up because he thought that we must have been still climbing. We did make to the top (I wouldn't let them turn around, we were too close not to reach it), but we then had to run down hill for 10 km before we were able to get shelter and mobile coverage to let the coach know we were just about ready to be picked up. It was an adventure, and we all managed to keep high spirits which made the situation better. We all thought, atleast we have a story to tell to the others...
So that is a day of training camp. We do have a day off coming up on Saturday. I am thinking I will use my very broken Italian to try and get myself into Milano for the day via train. Until then, Caio!

Training In Varese

The training camp has begun! Lago di Varese is serving up great water for us to train on, with still conditions and mid twenties in temperature. Our schedules at the moment are 2-3 hour water training sessions, then a 40 minute run home just in time for lunch. We have a few hours in the afternoon for studying or eating gelati then another 2-3 hours in the afternoon either at weights or on the water again. It is very full on, although we have done this for four years now, so we are all used to the training.
The weather has been beautiful, we are all starting to get rid of our Canberra glow and bronzing up a treat!
I will try and get some video footage or photos up of the lake and the rest of Varese. It is beautiful here!
Until then!

The Final Wrap Up - Munich

The first world cup was defnitely a very exciting one! Traditionally, the Australian eight has had mixed results although this regatta was different. Entering the final as the fastest qualifiers we were confident that we were on good form for the final.
The race didn't start to plan as we were a little behind by the first 500m, two seconds off the Chinese. Through the second 500m, Lizzy Patrick our cox, stayed calm and controlled the crew to start the wind to the finish line. Going through the 1000m mark, we were slowly gaining on the Chinese although, through the 1000m they pushed again to hold off our surge. With 750m to go, Lizzy demanded an effort which was timed perfectly with the Chinese's fade. Within 20 strokes we were ahead and moving away with every stroke. Leading into the 500m to go, we pushed away again to gain clear water and then the Chinese were never going to come back from there as they had used a lot of energy to hold us through the middle thousand. It was basically a two boat race between us and the other heat winners, the Chinese crew. The other crews including the dominating Romanians, Netherlands, Great Britain and Germany were at least one boat length at all time behind us. By the end of the race, we had won by 6.8sec over China, then back to Romania in third. We were very pleased with this race as it was a step from our heats race, which was a very important goal for us.
We are now in Varese, Italy preparing for a two and a half week training camp on Lake Varese. It is camp which involves many kilometres of rowing and running each day to ensure that we are the fittest we can be leading into the next regatta; Lucerne World Cup at the end of May.
I will try and get some photos up on the blog, to keep you all envious of the weather that we are getting here in Italy.
Until then, Ciao!

The Night Before the Final

The preparation into the World Cup hasn't been ideal, although, all problems aside we managed to win the heat yesterday by two seconds to the Netherlands to go into the final as the fastest qualifiers for tomorrow's final.
As it was first through to the final all the other crews, other than China who won heat two, will be racing in the repecharge to gain a place in the final. Our form is looking good, however, in the eights event you can never underestimate the countries such as Germany, Netherlands and Romania. Nevertheless, we will try and improve on our heats performance and try to out perform the other crews to win.
We were quite happy with our racing, although we felt that our technique could have been improved. So today we are working on some of the final touches in order to make the final the best race that we can put together at this stage.
Also, keep a look out for updates on our crew, as Mark Beretta from Seven's Sunrise is closely following our progression to the Olympic Games.

Arrived in Munich

Yesterday we arrived in Munich after a long 36 hours of travelling. The girls and the boys are staying in different hotels at the moment, because we booked the accomodation so late. However, the girls difinitely got the better end of the deal. We are staying in this quaint little hotle which is famous for its restaurant, so we are eating quite well.

At the moment, the eight is falling apart a little. Last night one of our reserves who is already needed because of the injuries in the boat, fell sick and was vomiting all night. So we aren't able to train in the eight at the moment which is a little annoying, but we have to deal with these things. Hopefully, she will improve in a day or so for racing on Friday.

Fortunately, I am in good health. Touch wood. I went walking with on the girls yesterday into the town of Dachau and discovered the old town (altstadt). It was a beautiful little alleyway with cobblestoned roads and markets set up for Sunday. However, they were very unusual markets. There were two vacuum cleaning stores selling parts for your vacuum cleaner, a g-string store, a store selling dentistry equipment, a bracers and belts store and an army disposal store. Not exactly your arts and crafts markets!

I will keep you all updated on our progress through the regatta. Hopefully by Friday we will be right to go!