As I'm sure anyone who's been checking results has noticed, the last 48 hours have had some ups and downs. Yesterday's race saw us out the back end early and unable to recover from the deficit. The middle race speed ("base pace") wasn't too far off, but was lacked the look and feel we usually go for. The ends of the race were slow in comparison to the rest of the field. Our final time was deceptively slow since we didn't push it through to the end when it became clear we wouldn't get one of the top two spots, but we were still in a bad situation, and would be racing the next morning in the reps.
Generally, being in the reps isn't something you want, to understate it. You're left fighting to stay alive, and have to make weight and race again while the rest of the field is resting. This isn't a huge handicap because we still have 48 hours between our rep and semi due to scheduling, but is still a consideration. On the other hand though, to put a positive spin on it, we as a boat are young and have very little experience racing in an Olympic environment. We executed well qualifying in Lucerne, but the pressure is different, the stakes are higher, and the competition much much more experienced and skilled. To put things in perspective, the stroke of the Danish four that secured the final semi bid from our heat won his first Olympic gold medal when I was 7 years old. So by rowing in the reps today, we will have twice as much experience, as a crew, going into our semi Tuesday afternoon.
We knew, meeting together last night, that if we raced the way we did Saturday in the rep our regatta would be over at about 9:46 AM on the second day of the Olympics. It couldn't be helped that someone's would be, and we had to be ready to "go blind with effort," as our coach put it, if we didn't want that to be us. As a crew we looked at how we wanted to perform, how we've performed in the past, and got ready to race. We knew it would not take an extraordinary effort from the crew that won in Lucerne to proceed from the reps, but we had to be that crew. And we were not ready to go home.
After this morning's race, we're back on track. We haven't arrived yet by any means, nor have we proved anything. But we're ready to line up on Tuesday against the best in the world and put everything towards achieving our first goal of making the grand final. The draw is out, so Tuesday at 12:40 it will be, from lane 1 to 6, USA, Netherlands, Switzerland, Great Britain, Germany, Czech Republic. We'll try to post tomorrow about what to expect. For now, it's time to rest, rehydrate and recover.
That's all for today.
-Will
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