In a year in which the World Championships are not over until October, an April Speed Order feels normal – there is always a race of some sort right around this weekend – and an anomaly, as it comes over five months before the opening of the World Championships in September. We asked five of the six winners more or less the same three questions to see how their approach to the regatta might compare (or not); here is what they had to say, in each case in order of racing this morning.
row2k: Technically there are no official stakes for this Speed Order; it doesn't guarantee a spot on the team, or a trip to a World Cup, or really offer anything other than a chance to race. How did you approach the regatta as a result?
Felice Mueller, Women's Single
For me this race was an opportunity to race and have fun, see where I am, and see if I still like racing. It was just an opportunity to line up against some people and have them push you down the 2k course.
John Graves, Men's Single
Interestingly enough for me, I would say I made it have stakes. I think for one, there's health insurance on the line (due to USRowing athlete support issues). That was important. Second, I really want to get international race experience in the singles. Having a good showing here makes that option more open, and I think that's my plan now, to go race at a World Cup in a single.
Also, it is good for setting short term goals for myself in the single. When you train on your own, having a competition helps you see where you at this time in the season. I wanted to create some stakes for myself early in the year, and see what I have under the hood.
Yohanne Rigogne, Men's Pair
I think we wanted to prove a point right away at the beginning of the season that we are fast, and we are going to try to gun for it again this year. We want to be fast to show them we are around. If we are not at the training center, we are around, and they have to count us.
Tom Peszek, Men's Pair
We still exist. Also, it's just fun to race. We've been training our @#$%s off all winter, dueling remotely in singles for the most part this year, which has been fun. Then it's fun to go race. What's the point of training, if you're not going to come and race. It doesn't need to be high stakes, your still want to beat the other guy.
Beyond that, for us this is a lot of rehearsal. Because then NSR2 has bigger implications, so it's like a test run, so we know how we want to approach the next one, and keep building up.
Mary Jones, Lightweight Women's Single
I think that any time you have the chance to line up, it's not zero stakes. Maybe there's not a trip on the line, but you always show up because you're going to get something out of it. It's race experience, it's seeing how your winter training has paid off. It's a matter of identifying what your goals are going in. For me, this weekend, I've been training on my own over the winter, did my own training plan, and made several changes, so it's a measuring stick to see how these new approaches are working out on the race course.
Hugh McAdam, Lightweight Men's Single
For me this is just a good way to test how my winter went, and how my spring trip went. There's no stakes involved, but it's still the beginning of the quadrennial and we're all thinking about the double for Tokyo in 2020. I came at it from just a very relaxed perspective, just wanted to see what would happen, to see if what I have been doing over the last six weeks has been effective, and if it hasn't been what can I change.
row2k: With Worlds several months away, and most of the folks here coming off a somewhat unpredictable winter with respect to getting water time, how did you approach getting ready for a 2k, getting up to cadence, doing starts and sprints, and then doing a full four-day regatta?
Felice Mueller, Women's Single
The way I've been trying to think about it is that I still don't know what I want to do, but as long as I'm unsure I've got to be putting in some good work. Otherwise, there's going to be no option left. This was great, because it gave me something to look towards in the short term. It is true that Worlds are a long way away, and you don't have to be doing that much race preparation, but this helped me wake up in the morning and go work out.
John Graves, Men's Single
This go around, I spent a lot more time working on my weaknesses. The last quadrennial I was really focused on just being ready to race, being in 2k race mode. That's awesome, you gotta be able to do that, but I think towards the end of the quadrennial we saw that it's really important to have the base, and almost let go a little bit of the top end speed early on in your training.
I have really tried to let go of that a little bit, and work on things like two-by-6k, longer distance stuff and work on being able to repeat, and being able to recover better. Right now I'm not super tuned up, but I think it's been a leap of faith to just come here, and almost to use this racing to get up to speed a little bit, but not to be at peak for it. I think can be a really good thing to keep in mind, of building throughout the year, and not being so caught up in the performance aspect of this early season race. You want to go fast, but like you said, late September is really when you need to go fast, and that's in four or five months.
Tom Peszek, Men's Pair
We are pretty much training through it. We're not doing some big taper coming up for this; a little race prep and that's about it. We spent most of the week just trying to keep the volume up, keep it moving. Because like you said, nobody really cares if you're fast in April if you're not fast later on. It's a long process, and we don't lose sight of that; it's another good week of training.
Yohanne Rigogne, Men's Pair
We're really trying to stay focused on training plan, like we had been doing the year before, we know what to do this year, and just trying to stay focused. Putting both pieces in is part of the plan, and we want to get faster and faster through the year.
Mary Jones, Lightweight Women's Single
This is my first winter in Boston, and when I was in Philly it doesn't really freeze; you'll have maybe a week off the water. So you rely on your base fitness training plan. I worked on the RP3 a lot this year, and that made the transition a lot easier. I identified in the fall the different places in my stroke I needed to build better strength, then I was able to see with their power curves exactly where it was. I felt as I transitioned back, I had this really good feeling of power and connection, which I usually don't have getting back on the water if I've taken time off.
I've also been working a lot of strength and conditioning, a lot of weight room power. Which is fun, for a lightweight, to see how much weight you can lift. It's great just feeling really strong.
Then it is trusting your training, and getting back on the water. You know how to row and race, and just shake the cobwebs off and get out there. But to be honest, I did a 1500 piece the week before I got here, and I thought 'I don't know if I can go any further.' I think anytime you're getting up for race pace in the first part of the season, it feels a little overwhelming. How did I ever do this?
But you just push your body through it and it remembers how to transition, and then you feel the speed come back with each progressive day. 'Oh right, I know what a race plan is, I know how to get off the start.' By the end of the week, which is a great thing in a regatta like this, you've built through the week and you've got your feet under you by the end of it. You think, okay, now I remember how to race and what I need to do for the remainder of the summer.
Hugh McAdam, Lightweight Men's Single
This is kind of classically when the first NSR usually is, and they always have the lightweight single there as well. Again, it doesn't really mean anything, but there's always been this early season race. We didn't have it last year because of Olympic trials, but the three years prior to that there was.
So yes, it's a no pressure regatta; I was looking at it as a way to test my speed, to see what improvements I need to make going on later this year, what has been effective so far, and trying to have fun with it.
On getting up to cadence… with difficulty (laughs). We were in Sarasota for about six weeks, at least for me I just force it. I just really have to spend some time at base rate just getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. I think we started doing speed work three, four weeks out, something like that. At least for me that's how long it takes to get comfortable with being at a 34, 35 for seven or eight minutes.
row2k: Did anything unexpected happen during the regatta, and how did you deal with it?
Felice Mueller, Women's Single
What was unexpected to me was how much fun I had racing in the single. I thought it was just going to be a really sad, lonely, hard time.
It was actually very similar to racing the pair. It felt pretty similar to me, except it's a little different ratio, which I still haven't figured out yet, but it was fun.
John Graves, Men's Single
Nothing.
I think yesterday was a good example of what can happen. I was talking to Cam (Kiosoglus) about this, but especially at Worlds and higher stake regattas, really anything can happen. You always prepare to have everything go exactly right, but how do you respond when stuff doesn't go right? I think that's so much a part of it.
Yesterday, falling in the water was a good example of it didn't go to plan. Then you get back in the race and almost embrace the uncertainty of racing.
We asked if he was rattled by flipping before the start. Honestly, not really. It's fun at Craftsbury when they make every camper fall in the water multiple times, so we're taught to do it; fell in and I got back in in probably 15 seconds. The marshall asked 'hey, do you need any help?' Not really, though I'd rather not be soaking wet right now. But I think that was a good lesson of what can happen. It might be in the 1k mark, somebody throws a move at you and you're not expecting it. How do you deal with that?
Tom Peszek, Men's Pair
It felt pretty routine to me. We've done this a few times now, both in the pair together, and separately before that.
Yohanne Rigogne, Men's Pair
Before the race, we wanted to come here and prove that we are fast; we didn't know we were fast compared to the other guys, and we proved it. We went into the pack and we fight for it. What I'm taking from this race is we have the muscle and capacity to be good in a few months, and this is a good starting point.
We asked about jumping in the pair after training in the single; Peszek has been training in Texas, while Rigogne has been training in Philadelphia. Rowing as single makes you learn a lot about how to move a small boat. You go in a single all day long, and then you go in a pair, and realize oh man, I learned something in the single actually. You feel like you are doing better at moving the pair because you rowed the single before that.
Peszek: The difference with the single and pair is, if I had a bad row in a single, it's tough for me to blame him. Unlike the bad rows in pair, where I can blame my pair partner, I got nobody else to blame in the single. Mary Jones, Lightweight Women's Single
To be honest, my challenges happened prior to the regatta. We hadn't been on the water except for two weeks in Boston. I had gone down to Sarasota and they put me up for a week, I was able to touch the water there. I thought, okay, I'm going to come back and have two really great training weeks in Boston. Then I got really sick, when I got back I had to take about six days off of training.
So I was feeling like I was scrambling when I was getting ready for this race. It was a good mental check, because if you go to a bigger regatta, anything could happen. People get sick at regattas all the time, your boat doesn't show up on time, your travel didn't go as expected.
So it's actually a positive to have something go wrong, and say okay, where do you go from there, and work through the week anyway. Coming in I felt a little stressed, and all the things that go with being underprepared. But I was just thinking, if this was a qualification regatta, what would you do? You race anyway, and you better figure out how to have a good performance.
Hugh McAdam, Lightweight Men's Single
I wasn't expecting the weather for the time trial. I didn't think it was going to be that bad. It was one of those things where you just gotta roll with the punches, stay relaxed. You know that something crappy might happen, and you have to stay relaxed and say, okay, I can handle this, and just move on, don't dwell on what's going on.
The second 500 was almost white-capping straight across the course, and I didn't really handle it well to tell you the truth. I struggled with the conditions on Tuesday, at least through that chunk of the race. I got a little better once it got a little bit more protected. You just forget about it and go on to the next piece or the next stroke.
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