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The Team is Named!!

Well, selection is complete and the US National Team is almost fully named.  I am lucky enough to be in the Men’s 8, which is the same boat I rowed at the Beijing Olympics.  We have a good mix of veterans and new blood, everybody is hungry to train for a spot at the top of the Podium.  If you would like to see the other team members,  please check out this website http://bit.ly/9w6Auh. As far as training goes, we are going back to high-aerobic volume, anaerobic threshold, and heavy weights.  For example, we did 27k this morning—it was lots of fun.  We leave for NZ on October 21st and will start racing on Halloween.

We still have a few boats that need to be selected, the men's pair and the men's coxed pair.  The difference between the two boats is that one has a Coxswain (the little 120lb guy in the front) and the other doesn't.  Those two boats are selected by a trials race.  The big team boats like the 8 are selected from results while at the camp.  I am looking forward to our training camp in San Diego in a couple of weeks, it will be good to be home for a bit before we leave.  I look forward to seeing all of my Engine Room family along with some good 2min Challenge times!

Week Three and Knee Deep in Selection

It has been a fun week of selection here in Princeton NJ, we are doing some good werrrk (best Australian accent).  As I said before we are trying to create a fast combination of four guys, for the 4- entry at the World Championships. We started out with 4 boats and have worked our way down to 3.   Each guy has been in a boat that has won as well as lost and the margins are about 3 seconds separating the boats (in most cases).  This is a good sign for our team, it shows we have a decent amount of depth.  The bad news is we are so close that it makes selection take longer than anyone wants.  Tim, our coach is waiting for one line up to "Click" and pull a fast time down the course.  Once that happens I think we will put a nice bow on it and be done.  For any of the guys who do not make the 4- (I could be one of them), we go into selection for the 8+.  We will have 16 guys going for the 8 spots in the boat, the 8 who do not make it will go to 2- or 2+ trials.  We do have a date this must be done by and that is September, 20th, only two weeks to go.

It has been a decent gut check this past 14 days.  Since the NSR started 2 weeks ago we have done 10 all out 2ks in 14 days.

NSR 3 Is Complete

 So we finished off NSR III last weekend and is was a slight disappointment for my partner Charlie and I.  We were looking great at the beginning, winning our Heat and Semi Final, but fell short in the Final on Saturday morning.  We had the lead coming across the half way mark when the other crews started to push back into us.  We were rowing well but if felt like we had no "gas" to make that final sprint, in the last quarter of the race.  Our final result was fourth, which was unfortunate, only because winning always feels the best.  

It still keeps me on track for the goal this year, which is to make the World Championship team.  The way the process works now is the top 24 guys from this race (12 on port 12 on starboard) go into "Selection Camp".  This process involves racing in 4 and 8 person boats, switching guys around, and doing time trials to find the fastest possible line up.  Our coach told us that the 4 is the teams priority boat, which means that is the one I am gunning for.  

We start racing these fours on Wednesday of this week so I will post results and gossip as things start to heat up.  

In Jersey Ready To Race!

Hello Engine Room Fitness Family!  I have arrived safe in Princeton, NJ and ready to get some racing done starting tomorrow morning.  Travel was easy and I am staying with a friend in town in a very sweet house.  The humidity here is beautiful, nothing like getting out of the shower and not being able to tell the difference between sweat and water.  Enough complaining no whiners right?  So our racing starts tomorrow at 8:00 AM EST and it is a time trial race.  We do a time trial for the first race to seed the lanes and heats, apparently doing a TT is the fairest method.  Heats will be raced tomorrow afternoon starting at 6:40 PM EST.  You can track the progress of the racing at this website here.  www.powerhousetiming.com

Click on Rowing, the race is titled Usrowing National Selection Regatta III, and the event I am racing is the men’s pair (-2 is the icon).  

My pair partner is Charlie Cole, who happens to come from the same hometown of Norwalk, CT.  He is one of the best partners I can have and we are excited to make our high school Coach Yan proud.