Racing the heat

Until seeing the draw on Thursday, the most stressful part of the experience had been finding a seat on the bus. The 7am and 8am buses from the village to the course were very popular and very crowded. Yesterday morning, I was one of the last two people who would fit on Bus #3 to the course, and there were two seats left. But, Karsten (W1x) was saving the seat next to her for someone (who wasn't being allowed onto the bus). It took a few minutes of convincing by me and a Dutch rower also needing a seat that Karsten and her coach couldn't each have two seats to themselves. The organizers have solved the problem by making managers reserve seats in advance and checking off athletes from each country as we climb onto the bus.

Then I saw the draw and up til racing, that was the most stressful part of this experience. I am ready to race. I know that I have picked up speed in the last year, and I want to show that. All the same, seeing the draw gave my stomach a turn. It cemented the fact that I am here for a big, important race. Not to socialize with my friends and eat above-par dining hall food. There are 28 entries in the women's single. 13 from developed nations (qualified through 2011 Worlds or the Qualification Regatta) and 15 from developing nations (qualified through Asian, African or South American qualifiers). The race progression starts with 5 heats (3 of 6, 2 of 5). The top 4 rowers from each heat progress directly to the Quarterfinal on Tuesday. The remainder head to one of two reps, each with 4 rowers. The top 2 rowers from each rep join the Quarterfinals. There are four Quarterfinals (yes, that may seem self-explanatory but just in case...). Each with 6 rowers (full use of the lanes). Top 3 rowers from each Quarterfinal progress to the A/B semi-finals on Thursday. (The bottom 3 go to the C/D semis.) Then, on Thursday, the top 3 from each semi head to Final A while the bottom 3 go to Final B. The top 3 rowers in Final A medal.

Before racing, I practiced using the warm-up zone and the starting system. Dorney is unique in that it has a narrower lake (man-made) that runs parallel to the course and is connected by a few channels (with low bridges overhead). Usually, the warm up zone is either on the course (which means moving over into Lane 7 as races come down--lots of interruption) or a little bulge in the shape of the shoreline where there is room for a 750m long oval. It is a treat to have a separate warm-up lane. This way, if bigger boats are warming up/cooling down, the boats racing won't be hit by their wakes. And, it's longer than most warm-up zones (a full 1250m loop) so there is less spinning. I love it! The starting system here is using a new "boot" version. [The boot is a device that comes up from the bottom of the lake and clamps onto the bottom of your hull so that it's impossible to false start. There is also a plastic "U" to place your bow into so that you are exactly on the starting line and exactly pointed down the course.] They're taking care of some of my difficult tasks for me! No being off center at the start and needing to tap my bow around! The difference I notice in this boot system is that the plastic U lights up with some red lights when you touch the plastic (aka are all the way in).

Now on to a recap of racing: I faced Russia, Algeria, Belarus, and Mexico in my heat. The cast of characters:

--Levina (RUS) was one rower I needed to beat to qualify the single for London at Worlds 2011. She got off the line at a blazing speed, and I was in her wake wondering what had happened and trying to catch up. I didn't make it past her. This is her 4th Olympics.

--Karsten (BLR) is the most famous name in women's rowing currently (and maybe ever). She is fast. This is her sixth (yep, sixth--no one on the 2012 American team can claim that.) Olympics! Oh, and she has FIVE Olympic medals to her name (Gold in 1996 & 2000). She won Worlds in 2009 and has been on the podium at Worlds the past 2 years. I am sure she wants another gold.

--Rouba (ALG) has raced the light single internationally, and her best finish is 5th at a World Cup. I had never raced her before and don't know too much about her.

--Gonzalez (MEX) raced two World Cups this year and places 13th and 32nd, respectively.

Many of you watched or have seen the result: I was 3rd in my heat to Karsten of BLR (1st) and Levina of RUS (2nd). Top 4 advanced to the Quarterfinals, so all three of us move on to the next round. Plus MEX (4th).

It was an amazing experience to race down the Olympic course. We had gorgeous weather Saturday, and big crowds came out to cheer us on. The grandstands were packed, and impressively, there were many, many people lining the banks of the course from the 100m mark until where the grandstands began. I could hear the first shouts of the fans at 100m, and the noise didn't stop until after the finish. While on the shore before racing, I saw the crowd do the "wave" a few times. I feel lucky to compete on the Olympic stage in a country which very much loves the sport of rowing and is very, very excited to watch it.

I had a good race, not a great one. I executed a clean start, raced at a respectable rating, and followed my race plan. I had the fastest middle 1000m of my heat. It is impossible to know how much effort my competitors put into the race, but I was closer to Karsten that I ever have been in a heat, and the three of us were relatively packed together as far as heats go. Being closer is a good thing. Now I have to add the extra umph and extra efficiency to get even faster so that I can get past them. On the bus home, I was frustrated by finishing 3rd as I had hoped for 2nd.

One reason I may have been in a bad mood about my racing yesterday was that I was tagged by doping control. That's enough to make anyone grumpy. Immediately upon coming in after my warm-down, I was informed to make my way to the doping control building. I asked to grab my bag and to say hi to my Mom and sister (whom I hadn't seen yet). The woman reluctantly consented and said we could do it "on our way". [Adding to my grumpiness, I found out after sitting in doping control that athletes have one hour to report to the doping station after being informed of testing. The doping officers prefer to bring you straight there but if you insist, you can do your normal warm-down routine (flush, ice-bath, etc) while hydrating and waiting to pee.] Well, after racing on a decently hot day, I was not very hydrated. After two bottles of powerade, two bottles of water, and over an hour, I finally managed to pee. My saving grace the whole time is that the doping control station was televising the Olympic road race so I did have good entertainment while waiting for my bladder.

The US team did have some great performances yesterday and today. Notably, the W2- showed some real speed and hung with the Brits (silver at last year's Worlds) for the entire race. They placed 2nd and head straight to the A Final. The M8+ also had a great start to the regatta, winning their heat and advancing straight to the A Final. Today, the LM4- showed sharp and clean racing to lead their rep start to finish and head to Semifinal A/B. And, lastly, the W8+ displayed a very powerful, dominant performance winning by "a country mile" as the BBC announcers phrased it.

On the international level, the Kiwi (NZL) men's 2- (Murray and Bond) set a World Record by SIX seconds yesterday. That is absurd. It's unheard of. All said in a very good way! They are unquestionably (I think) the best men's pair ever in the history of rowing, and it is sooo fun to see them continue to go faster and faster. Plus, they're nice guys who always says "hello" when you run into them around the race course.

Now let's really backtrack...I can't skip some of the fun Olympic happenings from Friday! That evening we had a full rowing team photo. Now, all team photos have to be done in Nike gear. Ideally, in these sweet navy Nike zip-up sweatshirts with a red collar. But, we didn't know that when we were packing up our gear to send half home, and many people shipped those sweatshirts back to the States. The one Nike outfit we were all guaranteed to have: our podium outfit aka our space suits. These jackets are SUPER reflective. So reflective that if you take a photo with the flash, you can't see anything but the bright white of the jacket. (We also have sweet neon green and black sneakers and socks to go with them...and the socks say "Be brave" on one foot and "Do good" on the other.) Fortunately for our team photo, the day was bright enough that we didn't need a flash. And, it was really fun and incredible to group up with the entire rowing team for a photo. Made it truly feel like #oneteam #onegoal.

After the photo, we headed to dinner at the rowing village cafeteria. Much to our surprise, a marching band came to play! Starting out with the score from "Rocky"! All the rowers (from all the countries) headed to the patio next to the cafeteria to watch while eating dessert. They played well and choose some fun songs. And to up the celebration, during the songs, a kids' acting (?) troupe dressed as different species of birds starting wandering around the crowd. There were ducks, swans, storks, ravens, and these awesome dragonflies on bouncy shoes with ski goggles on their foreheads (they also had giant wings--about five foot spread) that were hitting the occasional head.

About 8pm, most of us rushed off. (Misguided into thinking that opening ceremonies began at 8:12pm because that's 20:12 and how cool would that be?!) A few American boats (M1x, W1x, M2-, W2x, LW2x, and two from the W8+) changed into our opening ceremonies outfits. Really, when are we going to get to wear the entire ensemble again? Gotta get into the spirit! Our team manager had reserved a room and organized a projector. We sat watching and enjoying the thrill of it for the first hour til our coaches sternly told us to head to bed. Of what I saw, I loved the James Bond/Queen skit, Mary Poppins floating in from the sky, the Mr. Bean appearance, Wiggins ringing the bell, and the singing of Jerusalem (one of Winsor's school songs...I still remember our 5th grade pantomime motions). Great moments in the performance.

Next race for me is Quarterfinal #2 6:50am EST on Tuesday July 31st. Keep thinking speedy thoughts!

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

Olympic Credentials

My Dad and I arrived early yesterday morning (very early east coast time) at Heathrow. Immediately upon walking out of the jetway, my Dad and I are approached by two very friendly British men wearing bright pink "London 2012 Volunteer" polos and carrying a sign saying "USA". They guide us through the airport, around the edges of the jam-packed passport control hall with lines that could easily take 2 hours (I've been in them before.) to our special Olympics passport control lanes (two lanes for two people when we arrived) to baggage claim (our luggage had beaten us) and finally to the Olympic welcome desk. As the men's eight's flight was very delayed, we were the only two on a coach bus to the rowing satellite village in Egham (about half an hour northwest of London, a few miles closer to the city than Windsor Castle). I felt incredibly pampered! 

As soon as we stepped off the bus, we were greeted by another volunteer who helped us get our credentials (after we went through airport style security). The credentials are a VERY important, relatively large badge that is our IDs for the rest of the Games. (The photo has it next to my credit card sized library card for comparison.) Then, we stepped on another bus to get to the "south bubble". The satellite village is two "bubbles" (one for entering and going through security and one where we live, eat, etc) b/c it's on a university campus and they had to allow part of the campus to continue operating while we're here so that isn't a "secure" zone. If you take a bus from one "secure" zone to another, you don't have to go through security when you arrive, making your life much simpler. The ride from one bubble to the other is about 3 minutes. 

In the "south bubble", I was shown my room, and my bed was topped with an Olympics quilt as a welcoming gift (see photo). I get to take it home with me! I had about five minutes to refresh after the red-eye before rushing off to a quick breakfast. Then, my Dad, Andreas (the boatman), and I were off to USA team processing! 

If I haven't stressed it enough already, I want to emphasize: there are many volunteers everywhere on Olympics territory, and they are all super-friendly and super-helpful. It makes the experience much easier--so that the only stress is focused on competition--and that much more enjoyable.

Anyway, team processing was a really fun, "shopping" (b/c everything is free) scavenger hunt. Upon arrival, the greeters give you a checklist of all the things to accomplish: RL opening and closing ceremony fittings, Nike/RL gear gifting, head shot, ring fitting, watch, Oakley, P&G, shipping, medical forms, USADA. Our list yesterday was one short b/c USADA hadn't arrived yet. Darn. 

1) RL: I went to processing w/ the men's eight and their coaches. The girls rowing team went through when they arrived, and rowing was the only team to arrive Friday morning. So, I was the only girl going through processing Friday midday. At Ralph Lauren fittings, this meant I had three amazingly nice and fun RL employees fawning over me in a fitting room the size of a school classroom. They buttoned my buttons, they cuffed my sleeves just so, they put my hats on for me to get the proper look, etc. 

2) RL & Nike: I step into a school gym and am handed two large duffels (think LLBean bags size Large) packed to the brim, a backpack, and a big cardboard box. One RL duffel and backpack (full of RL attire) and one Nike duffel. The cardboard box is for sending clothes home. There's almost no way anyone could wear it all in two weeks, and it would be very expensive to fly home with three bags (four in my case b/c of my rigger). I packed a little over half what I was given into the box. It'll be like Christmas all over again in late September!

I spent about 90' trying on clothing to make sure I had the right size in everything and because it's really fun to try on new clothes. The staff enjoyed my walking out to show them an outfit every now and then because they only see the clothes in boxes and folded, not on people. Usually teams stick to the fitting rooms as they have each other for feedback on what they like, how things fit, etc. Quick summaries of the gear highlights:

RL (photo): lots of red, white & blue; lots of collars; some "vintage" look stuff; sunglasses!; zip up sweatshirts; sweet backpack

Nike: lots of black, gray and neon yellow; four pairs of sneakers; some very comfy long sleeves; three "podium outfits"; a bunch of comfy yoga pants; a few great lightweight jackets

Oh, and lots of t-shirts in both!

3) Headshot: Pretty self-explanatory (though not ideal after a red-eye and pulling on and off shirts for over an hour)

4) Everyone who competes at the Olympics gets an Olympic ring. Think high school ring with the Olympic Rings as the center of the design. Then, one side has your sport icon with your name above it and the other has 2012. I didn't know about the rings ahead of time. That was an amazing surprise. 

5) And a free watch by Hamilton!

6) Oakley: Oakley customized about eight sweet new shades for the Olympic Team. There were three super-awesome women's designs. I wanted them all. I had a TOUGH time making up my mind. I ended up choosing the aviators. I love them. 

6) P&G: Another fantastic goody...a messenger bag filled with full size toiletries: shampoo/conditioner, toothbrush, tampons, mouthwash, etc. Luckily, I was warned ahead of time and didn't pack much of that stuff. What a trip saver! 

7) Shipping: That big brown box heads to Newton

8) Medical Forms

9) USADA: N/A

Complete! I could then sit down and eat lunch. (I was very hungry by 2:30pm.)

After processing, back to the satellite village. This time in a mini coach bus with the men's eight. The driver took us right through the middle of the city, and we got to see Buckingham Palace, the Museum of Natural History, and other classic London city sights. There are signs of the Olympics almost everywhere: on billboards, on street signs indicating the special "Olympic car lane", banners hanging off street lights, etc. It's crazy. In the best way possible. 

Great to see the women's team back at the village. There's a really positive attitude among the Team USA rowing group. It's wonderful to be part of such a team. Smiles, lingering at meals, laughing, etc. Also, some cheering for the South African rowing team (who were also in the dining hall at dinner time) because one of them made BBC evening news for his Olympic Rings helmet--think green construction helmet with pipe cleaner Olympic Rings sprouting out of a stalk glued to the top.

And then I had a few hours before bed to revel in the day, take it all in and imprint it on my memory. Go USA!

-Gevvie