Week 7

Monday of this week was an interesting start. In the morning I was in my Single because we had people not show up for practice. This irritated me because Tom and I are suppose to be racing a little over a week. It happened again in the after noon so we said something to Christian. Instead of doing a water practice I sat on the erg for an hour. Erging in the humid summer air is fun...

Tuesday evening we were going to not be in the double again so we said something to Christian and he shifted the line-ups so we could practice. We were doing pieces. They were OK but not our best we needed to clean up a lot.

Wednesday was reserved for a totally small boat practice. Tom and I got 12 miles in and had solid rating and swing together. In the evening we were going to go out again but it was canceled due to thunder and lightning. So instead I was again on the erg and doing some weight lifting.

Tom and I decided to do an extra practice on Thursday morning and we did some pieces with a pair. My head and body never really got together. I think my Head was still in bed. I was doing an awful job of steering and we just never really got together. In the PM Tom and I decided that we would take this practice and do nothing but starts to try and clean it up. We ended up doing almost 3 miles of them. They got better but never quite there. We were having rating issues; not getting the rating up not settling, etc. We decided to ask Christian and see if we could get a little attention next practice.

Friday morning Tom called me and we decided to take Friday morning off because we were both exhausted from working and the extra practices. This was I feel a good idea because we had a really good evening practice. We were told to treat our arms like ropes and just focus on the legs at the starts. This is possibly the best analogy that I have ever gotten in regards to sculling. It translates so well into the stroke. We were able to get our rating up to a 40+ off the start and our connection and rating were a lot better in our 1000 meter piece we did. We also got complimented on how good the start looked and how crisp/clean it was.

Sat: was another set of pieces, including the best 1000m Tom and I have done yet. We are going to be fine at Canadian Henley. I then spent the rest of the Saturday and Sunday working for the Sultans of Schlep. It was two incredibly long day of moving stuff. When Sunday night came I was beat. Thankfully I don't race until Wednesday of this week and can recover a bit. The money is good, but the work is tough.

On Wednesday Tom and I race at 2pm in Canada against 4 other boats. We need to place in the top 2 to move onto the finals because the eliminated the Semi-finals for the event. I am very positive about the race and am looking forward to it.