Monthly Archives: March 2011

Finally, a row on the Connecticut River

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This morning marked the first row of the season on the Connecticut River. Freezing rain and six inches of snow are predicted to hit the Hartford area over the next couple of days. Brilliant. With the impending and inhibiting weather, I’m reminded to take every day on the water as a bonus right now. Hartford is proving to be a difficult place to be able to get some serious rowing time in. The Connecticut has a habit of flooding, on top of the snow and continuously turbulent weather that keeps training limited to dry land work well into the month of April. Regardless, this morning was a necessary break from the erg, and solid reminder of why I’m a helpless but happy prisoner to rowing.

A PR in the 2K test this past weekend has me more eager than ever to get to work on the water. Training has picked up in volume and more intense strength training on top of increased hours at the office, so fatigue has been rearing its ugly head recently. The full-time job situation makes it difficult to allot adequate time to recovery and rest. If anything, rowing has taught me the importance of true recovery: Eat, hydrate, and resting are the essential actions to support successful training. So simple, yet sometimes so difficult to execute.

Here’s to warmer weather and more mornings on the water.

Pride on the Shelf, Feet in the Water

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Just over seven days ago, I was returning from a full training week of rowing in South Carolina, exhausted from pushing myself physically, mentally, and emotionally on levels I hadn’t experienced in a long time or to an extent, ever. My first day out on the water (probably my 10th time ever in a single), and in the midst of trying to keep up with the other elite rowers during a speed workout, I swamped my boat and ended up going for a little dip. After the realization that the water wasn’t as cold as I had expected and the fear of hypothermia had subsided, I threw myself back into my boat as quickly as possible and hurried down the racecourse at a steadier, controllable pace. Surprisingly, I wasn’t embarrassed but rather angry. I wasn’t expected to be “winning” the speed workouts; I don’t really know if there were any expectations attached to my performance on the water that week. I still couldn’t help but be angry and frustrated. I quickly learned there wasn’t time to dwell on the mistakes, and I couldn’t expend the energy dwelling on how poor of a rower I was at that moment. The week was about gaining experience and repetitions. For lack of a better term, it really was about getting my feet wet. I was killing it on the erg, on the safety and comfort of dry land. Now it was time to see what I was really made of and how well I would be able to move a boat. I got more than I bargained for.

The training week was critical on several accounts. Progress of my rowing skills from day one to day seven was worth the quick dump in the water. Talk about being thrown in the lion’s den or fire or whatever metaphor comes to mind, I was forced to sink or swim (again, it seems impossible to get away from the water/boat puns). I grew more in those seven days as a rower and person than I have in any other setting. The emotional gamut ran from days when I wanted to break my oars across my knee (no, I did not attempt this…) to the afternoon when my coach said, “Meghan, you look like you are actually rowing…” to the last morning row when the fog was breaking across the smooth, glass water reflecting a southern sunrise and the only sounds were the light splash of your oar breaking the water and the slide of your seat as you eased into the catch.

Back from camp, back to reality-it’s been a full week of training mixed with a full week of being back in the office and juggling “life” and “rowing” -it seems the deeper I get into rowing, the more it becomes “life.” No complaints from me. Every morning, I wake up looking forward to the painful but fulfilling relationship I’ve entered. Torturing myself to pull a PR (Personal Record / Personal Best) in a 6K erg test this morning and knowing that the hard work I’m putting day in and day out is actually paying off is a rewarding, accomplishing feeling. Flipping my boat and having my butt kicked by (albeit, the top Juniors in the country) a week ago forces me to remember that it takes putting pride on the shelf and forgetting your ego, to truly embrace starting from the ground up and having the confidence to know you will reach the top.

erGOALS…

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I have always encouraged others to make sure they take a moment to enjoy the small successes achieved along the way in working toward the larger goal. The road to reaching any accomplishment-whether it’s publishing your thesis or dissertation, finishing a long-range project at work, to training to be an elite rower-is long, difficult and inevitably filled with setbacks. So the importance of taking time to recognize the smaller successes is vital to keeping your confidence up and the momentum going. We all know what it feels like to be “stuck” or in a rut. It comes in the form of writer’s block or maybe you just can’t seem to shave off that extra second on your 2K to set a new PR (personal record) no matter how diligent you are about your training and how hard you work. There are far too many days we are all hard on ourselves and too few that we give our own back a congratulatory pat.

Last week was a big week for my training record book. I pulled a new PR in both the 2K and 6K erg tests. Still on the steep side of the training curve, I am seeing significant results with almost every test so pulling new PRs isn’t anything new. The difference in these PRs was I succeeded in reaching two goals I had set for myself which felt pretty damn good.

A little over two months ago, I set out a list of my goals I knew I needed to reach this year. Buying my own boat = check. I’m madly in love with my Hudson single. Breaking the 7 minute mark in the 2K (pulled a 6:56 for my new PR) and breaking the 22 minute mark in the 6k (pulled a 21:59 for my new PR) = check and check.

You can kind of see the “21:59.9″ in the picture above. In my state of gasping for oxygen and forcing myself to take light strokes to properly cool-down, I managed to snap a picture…like a proud parent when their child does something for the first time, I was a little excited…just barely broke 22 minutes but hell, I still broke it. That was true pain and what a lesson in how important every single stroke can be.

Time to set some new goals.