Welcome to London!

Ed

With five days to go until the start of races, our taper has begun. For those non-rowers, a taper is when we workout less and rest a lot more. It’s the final stage in our preparation for the London games. Rowers are usually divided over whether they like tapers or not. Some people love the extra energy and downtown, others get restless and don’t like the feeling of training less. Personally I’m a big fan of the taper. I enjoy the extra free time, and it’s a signal that racing is about to begin.

Since we’re starting to rest more for our upcoming race, we only had one row at the course, and then the afternoon was a cross training session on the bike. Cross training is always nice because you give your mind a little break from rowing. One of the more difficult aspects of training isn’t just the physical but the mental as well. It’s tough mentally to go through the monotony of training so a little break from rowing is always appreciated.

It’s starting to get a lot busier at the course and at the village. We were one of the first teams to show up to London but now many of the other countries are starting to arrive. When everyone is trying to share only seven lanes on a 2,000 meter course it can get pretty hectic. To make things even more difficult, not all the countries speak English. It’s easy to get a little nervous seeing an eight bearing down on you when you’re trying to turn, and knowing that they have no idea what you’re saying to them.

The four of us have gotten a great response from everyone reading this blog and visiting the site. The United States Lightweight Rowing Association was created with two main objectives in mind. The first is to create a network of people who want to support lightweight rowing and keep in touch with other lightweight rowing supporters. We hope that everyone who reads this blog will create a profile on our site and check out other members. The second main goal is to help raise money for those training on the US National Team, with a special emphasis on those going for the Olympics in 2016. There is very little funding in rowing, especially in lightweight rowing, but it only takes a little amount to make a big difference. Anyone interested in supporting should check out the donate page on the site linked below.

And be sure to check out the pictures we’ve been uploading to get a behind the scenes look at life at the Olympics!

-Nick

http://usalightweightrowing.ning.com/profiles/blog/list

Closing Ceremony gear

-- Grab breakfast (Literally grab in some cases as I have a tendency to take longer than I expect in the morning and the buses leave on the hour to the second. Fortunately, they allow food on the buses.)

--Bus ride (The rowing athlete village is about 40 minutes--bus leaving to walking into the boathouse, including going through bus security--without traffic. I've been lucky enough that I haven't experienced the traffic yet. The women's eight left practice around rush hour one day and had a 90' ride.)

--Row (As taper has started, I start with a shorter row in the morning. It's nice to have the short row first as it allows me time to wake-up and to warm-up. 

--Stretch/Core (The Olympics built a tent city behind/to the right of the boathouse.  Each country is provided with one or more (depending on the number of athletes) tent(s). In the case of small delegations, some countries share tents, and it's somewhat amusing to see how the UK decided to pair teams together. Example: One for IRL, RSA and ZIM (see the theme? former colonies). These tents put our make-shift tent from World Champs last year to shame. Carpeted hard floors (raised so as not to get soggy in rain), electric lights, stretching mats, camping cots for napping, etc. The USA has four tents: two for stretching, etc, one for ergs and stationary bikes and one for the PTs.)

--Another smaller breakfast (Sometime, I'm really going to miss rowing.)

--Relax in the athlete lounge (The second floor of the boathouse has been outfitted with comfy chairs and wireless connection. It's easy to waste time online for the hour or so before rowing again. I also bring my Kindle daily though I confess I haven't taken it out of my bag during the day yet.)

--Row again (The main workout of the day. Usually (aka every day thus far) something on the hard side. Pressure when it counts, but total volume (meters rowed) and number of pieces is down compared to a month ago thanks to taper. Today, my first row here working the cadence up high.)

--Eat again, lunch (The food at the course somewhat puts the athlete village to shame. The dishes they choose to serve are relatively fancy with good variety. Most importantly, it tastes good! An example: Yesterday's lunch included pasta w/ three sauce options (a permanent fixture though the sauces change), salmon, curried vegetables, peas, rice, banoffee pie. I think it would sound better if I described the food like the head chef does, "Rosemary balsamic oven roasted potatoes" in an English accent.)

Sidenote: I'd heard of banoffee pie before thanks to "Love Actually" (the scene when Natalie Portman goes to Andrew Lincoln (Mark)'s house to leave him the tape). And it sounds so good...like banana + toffee. YUM. Well, turns out it's banana + coffee. But still YUM. I recommend ordering it the next time you visit the UK.

--Bus again (Hopefully avoiding traffic. The weekend helps...not too many commuters.)

--Village time (By now it's approximately 2:45pm. I take my time freshening up, quick nap then play online--write these email essays, catch up on my internet browsing, etc. Unlike hotels whose internet tend to get bogged down when teams of rowers decide to hang out on their computers all day, this is a school campus so it's prepared for all our world wide web action.)

--Dinner! (While the dining hall here doesn't quite match the 4-star lunches at the course, it serves up very respectable dining hall food. I am eating plenty. And, most importantly, dinner is a great time to hang out with the US rowing team--all of us decked out in different selections from our gear package. Last night, I spent 2 hours at dinner just because I was having a great conversation with my teammates. Many interesting conversation topic choices, lots of laughing, and the BBC is always on TVs around the room, so we have an easy time reverting to Olympics talk too. (Our being athletes probably helps with that.))

Sidenote: The dining hall is open 24/7 so no one will ever kick us out and we can spend as long as we want at dinner--glorious. 

--Hallway time (I live across the hall from Susan Francia and Esther Lofgren, and they could successfully create a comedy team. The lightweight double and Ken (M1x) usually join in on our fun. Examples of conversation topics include Justin Bieber and Tim Tebow. Last night, we tried on our closing ceremony dresses, which had been tailored by the Ralph Lauren team and arrived right before dinner.)

--Sleep (I'm very good at that, especially after these full and exhausting days.)

-Gevvie