Mary Jones' race strategy in the lightweight women's single at World Cup III in Lucerne was to go all out from the start, and it brought her very close to a bronze medal.
But in evaluating what she was doing earlier this year, Jones thought it might be time to try a new approach, one that might leave her a little more energy for the second half of a full two-thousand meter international race.
In her opening heat at the 2017 World Rowing Championships on Sunday, Jones put her summer of training and new strategy to the test and moved directly from the heat to the quarterfinal with the second fastest time of the three heats.
The new plan obviously worked, and having had the experience of racing internationally this spring, it gave Jones the confidence and knowledge that if there was a time in a week-long regatta to try something new, the heat was it.
"The heat is the first race of the regatta, so I was just thinking about building into the race, having a clean start and seeing how I can do in the second thousand," Jones said. "I feel like I really executed my race plan and it's a really good step for the week.
"It was all about being a little more conservative in the first half, and then having more for the sprint at the end. But I'm still playing around with different race strategies. The best thing about the heat is there is not a lot of risk and you can try something a little different; you can race a little bit of a different style."
Of the 10 US crews that raced Sunday, three of them, including Jones, men's lightweight single sculler Nick Trojan, and the women's lightweight double of Michelle Sechser and Emily Schmieg, advanced to the next level in their events. The remaining seven crews are headed to the reps.
row2k talked with someone from each crew to see what their approach was for the opening heat.
Lightweight Men's Pair
Alex Twist and Jack Devlin raced consistently in third place in the four-boat heat and will race in the Tuesday rep.
"We've had a few 2ks in practice and our goal today was to feel in control of our own speed the whole way down the course," Twist said. "This is really only our first-time racing against other crews, so I think we just wanted to get comfortable being surrounded by other boats and other crews who are at or near our speed, and knowing just how to react with them around us."
Lightweight Men's Single
Nick Trojan is racing internationally in this event for the first time. For him, the heat is usually a kind of a shock treatment.
"Every heat is sometimes the hardest race because just breaking into the regatta is a little bit of a shock sometimes. This was a good race. But jumping into a regatta after a long taper can sometimes be a little bit of a shock. I tapered a little longer this year than I have in past years. It was good though; it felt good everything is going smooth. I just need to recover now and get ready for the quarter."
Men's Pair
Anders Weiss raced last year in the men's pair in the 2016 Olympics, and his partner Michael Colella is a first-time senior teamer. In their first international race together, both Weiss and Colella said they thought they had a solid race for their first time in this regatta, but they want to make adjustments to their approach. They led through the first five hundred meters, were in second to the thousand, but fell into fourth in the third quarter and finished there, missing one of the two qualifying spots. They will race again Tuesday in the reps.
"I think it was a good first race," Colella said. "We were pretty shocked to be up ahead there in the beginning. We kind of made a decision to go for it and we paid for it a little bit in the second half. But I think it was a really good learning experience, so we can evaluate this and come up with a solid plan for the rep to get into that A/B semi," he said.
"Overall, it was a solid race, but not our best," Weiss said. "We seem to be struggling a bit in the second half. It was a great start but my legs just sort of fell off. We tried taking power moves to stay in it. We were racing some pretty fast crews and they took advantage of our weaknesses. Now we have to come back with a solid game plan for the reps and try to hammer down a piece that gets us into the semis."
Lightweight Men's Double
Sunday's heat was the first time that Peter Schmidt and Chris Rogers have raced together since World Cup II in Poland in June. They finished fifth Sunday in a heat from which only one crew advanced.
"The game plan was staying as internal as possible," Rogers said. "At this level, you have to race your own race and take the opportunities as they present themselves during a race. It's a little bit of push and pull, racing your own race, and analyzing how it goes. We have a lot of basic buzz words and technical calls we use that are more sort of on the fly based on how the race plays out and how we're rowing.
"It was good to get back to six across racing," he said. "The racing environment comes out and the performance has to step up. We're looking forward to taking that experience of six across into the reps and executing the second half of the race a little bit better. We kind of built on what we wanted to accomplish this morning, which was getting off of the line and staying with the pack through the first 1k. It's been a good week of training and we're excited going into the reps."
Lightweight Women's Double
Michelle Sechser and Emily Schmieg have both raced at a World Championships, Schmieg in the lightweight quad last year and Sechser in the lightweight double at two World Championships in 2014 and 2015. They finished second in their heat and advanced directly into the Thursday semifinal. "I'm just thrilled to be back on the start line" said Sechser. "This is what we live for and it's good to be back. Our race plan is very simple. It's just one stroke at a time. One step. One punch. One round. It felt good to get some nerves out. It's a long week ahead, and a lot can happen over six days. I think for us, some of our practices have been really good and some have been a little shaky, so it's just making sure that we can execute under pressure and make sure we have the highest quality race possible."
Men's Four
Ben Delaney, Alex Richards, Bobby Moffitt, and Ben Ruble are part of a new and young men's team. This was their first race together as a crew and while they raced in the fastest of the three heats and posted a time good enough to win the heat before theirs, they finished last in the five-boat heat and missed a top-three qualifying spot. They race in the Tuesday reps.
"That was a change of pace for all of us," Delaney said. "We've been in a bubble and it's good to get out of it, get out of our comfort zone and experience what real life is all about here. I think you go into (a heat) with an open mind. We knew we had a couple of really fast crews in with us, the Italians are the Euro champs. So, you've just got to go into it guns blazing and risk it all and then reassess the result for the rep.
"For a young crew like us, the first full 2k we've done, racing the rep is a good thing. We get more experience and can come out faster and better because of it."
Men's Quad
Also racing for the first time together is the men's quad of Leonard Futterman, Erik Frid, Lucas Wilhelm, and Jonathan Kirkegard. They finished fifth in their heat, missing one of the top three qualifying positions, and race again in the reps on Tuesday.
"The race was not as good as we had hoped," Futterman said. "There were some promising things. We got out, but we didn’t keep the length as much as we had hoped and once we got down we were dealing with some steering issues. We're going to have to just grab the next race by the scruff of the neck and go for it. It's all you can do. It's our first time racing at Worlds. Now we know what we have to do to go faster," he said.
"We tried to stick to a plan, but everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. At this point, we're trying to take it race by race, take the good with the bad, and row every single race trying to put our fastest out there so we can qualify for the semis see what we can do from there."
Women's Quad
Kara Kohler won an Olympic bronze medal in the quad in London, and Maureen McAuliffe, Emily Huelskamp, and Elizabeth Sonshine all have either under 23 or senior team international experience. But this is a new crew and part of an overall young women's team. They raced in qualifying position through the last 1500 meters, but were nipped by next to nothing at the line by the British (see the photo finish here). They race in the reps on Tuesday.
"The goal was to be aggressive off the start, and I think we achieved that. We just need to work out some kinks and be ready for the rep," McAuliffe said.
"It was pretty exciting to be out there with some fast boats, and I'm excited to be in the rep and move onto the final," added Sonshine.
Men's Single
Michael Clougher is a new comer to international racing. He won the elite single event at Club Nationals and Senior Trials in August, and finished third in his heat Sunday.
"I just wanted to get the first race under my belt and move onto the rep tomorrow and focus on that. Similar to pretty much every other race and have the best race I can and try to go as fast as I can," Clougher said. "That's how every race should be."
Notes from the Course
The organizers held a mock lifeguard rescue; if you weren't paying attention, it was pretty startling; file it in the "too real" folder.
There is a large Polish community in the Sarasota area, supported by three Polish American societies, and the local Poles came out in full gear to cheer on their fellow former countrymen. It was worth the effort; Polish crews won races across fully *six* events today (light men's single, light men's double, light women's double, men's quad, women's quad, and men's single), and advanced in the light women's single.
There was a live band in the spectator area today, and they were playing their standard repertoire; when row2k walked by, they were playing "Hey Joe."
Air conditioning is the secret sauce of life in Florida, but sometimes it can be too much, even on a steaming day like today; in particular, the media tent is a deep freeze that many welcome, although photographers are not so sure – many are struggling to keep their equipment from fogging over when they go back out into the heat and humidity after a sprint through the media tent. Some are more than prepared, though, wearing North Face down jackets to the course.
The US light men's double definitely did not get a 'uniforms do not match' warning for their socks.
In the Men's Eight Final of the Youth Challenge events, the winning crew's five seat stood up and pounded his chest while the coxswain held up an ear of corn. It was the Midwest crews, maybe it is a Midwest thing?
We haven't seen an alligator yet, but we are keeping an eye out – and an ear, as apparently the radio code for an alligator sighting is "Rocky in the water!"
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