The women's fours had the longest wait of the regatta finally to get the heck underway. While heaps of crews raced several days ago on Sunday, the women's four had to wait until the first race of the morning today to get at it (thankfully it was the first race of the morning), on this occasion in a "Preliminary" race-for-lanes event.
And for US women's crews, a few extra days of waiting means one thing: a few extra days of hard training.
"We did talk about it a bit – 'It's only Monday still!' – but with our training to get ready for racing, it kept us pretty focused," said three-seat Adrienne Martelli.
"We tried to use it to our advantage," bow seat Kristine O'Brien said. "We have a couple more days to get it together and sharpen up."
"We have been developing a really good rhythm for the past couple days," Martelli said. "We really found it a couple days ago doing pieces, and once into our rhythm it was really just a matter of doing the work within it, and not kind of going crazy - but just being aggressive within the rhythm."
It seemed to work, as the US women dominated the race, leading from start to finish and getting out to over five seconds ahead of the rest of the field at one point.
I asked how the crew dealt with the long wait, and in addition to the training, they did what a lot of folks at home are doing, which is watched the racing - on a computer. It seemed to help as well.
"We tried to let the other races excite us and get us ready," O'Brien said. "It was definitely inspiring watching some of the races."
"It’s really fun to be able to support your teammates, but when you can’t go down to the course that’s the way to do it," stroke Grace Luczak said. "And then you can relay all the fun British announcer quotes to all your teammates."
The long wait meant doing some of their final hard training out on the course during the brief and heavily trafficked training sessions during the racing. That seemed to help as well when the placid conditions of the past week or so gave way to a pretty stiff crosswind on the top 1000 of the course that created some challenging conditions.
"It definitely helped us to at least prepare for this crosswind today, because we had to deal with a lot of wobble and wake from other crews," Martelli said. "It wasn’t like 'oh, yeah I can’t wait to do pieces in wake,' but I think it helped for sure."
"The bouncy water due to all the crews being out here was first off pretty cool because this is the most number of entries at the World Championship; but it also definitely gets you ready for anything," Luczak said. "Our race today was really bouncy in the first 750, and it was really bouncy every day we would go out for practice, which I think was really good prep because it helps you to learn how to relax a little bit, bring your shoulders down, kind of settle everything in."
When you are trying to do hard and long-ish training pieces while everyone else is out there tapering, you are bound to hit some traffic issues.
"We had a few international incidents, I guess I’ll leave it at that," Luczak said with a laugh. "Not everyone is looking around all the time; it’s defensive driving and Kristine’s on it; she’s our Long Island driver."
When race time came, the crew made sure to tamp down the possible effects of days of anticipation.
"Our coach Rob Weber made a good point before we launched," Martelli said. "He said you’re going to have a lot of adrenaline going but don’t let it control you, just use it to your advantage. The best thing to do is make sure you stay relaxed and that you’re not getting too wound up to the point of you’re kind of crazy. Just making sure you stay loose."
"When I was in high school I used to get crazy and so nervous, but I kind of learned to just reel it in," O'Brien remembered. "Now sometimes I feel the nerves building up and I think relax, it’s okay."
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