Competition...how does this word make you feel? Excited, nervous, intimidated…
Last night the word made me excited, but this morning when I woke up, this word made me nervous. But nervous isn’t always bad. Nervous means that the competition matters to me and I care about what’s to come. Though nervous, I tried to stay calm and positive - just go into today as I do with training. Why should it be different? I’ll be on the machine I train on during the winter, and I am not competing against anyone except for myself.
That was easier said than done.
My [AMAZING] teammate Claire and I both arrived at the Hershey Center early as I had to weigh in, and from there we headed out to get away from the high energy arena. It isn’t hard to get your heart rate excited as soon as you walk into the Hershey Center. As I see races in progress, my eyes are subconsciously telling my body and mind that they are about to face a challenge (a very uncomfortable one!). I heard people talking about their targets, athletes throwing up in garbage bins, cheers from family and friends, and more…
Without fail, The Canadian Indoor Rowing Championships is always an exciting event to compete in and watch! It’s thanks to the amazing organizers, volunteers, athletes, coaches, and fans. I was so lucky to have my amazing family and friends there too (I'll post pics tomorrow…I was surprised by my friends who came with signs - THANK YOU LAURIE, RORY, JULIE and JENNAJ).
Nerves started to build up as race time approached. I followed every detail of what I had to do for my race prep – physically and mentally. I truly had no excuses today, and I don’t think I ever should. My race warm up was good and I was hitting high watts comfortably. But sooner than later, my warm up was over and I had to take one last trip to the bathroom before I headed over to the competition area.
The competition area has several ergs (maybe about 30 of them) set up in one section of the arena. They are set up so that the athletes on the ergs face outwards (towards the spectators) – this makes it additionally fun for the spectators to watch because they can see how an athlete’s expression changes during the race…from nervous, to fierce and invincible, then to discomfort, and then maybe torture:S
I raced in the Senior Lightweight Women’s race. This year the National Team wasn’t competing, so there was room to get onto the podium. I hope that with continued focused training, next year I could make the podium with the National Team girls there tooJ.
I raced with “Watts”, not “Splits”. Athletes often use splits (I always have until I changed over to watts just recently in December). Watts show you your power, versus splits which shows you your time per 500m piece. So for 2000m, your split would show you what your pace is for 500m. In practice I was holding 244W at fixed stroke rates, so I was confident I could break my personal best and hold 265W average for the 2000m race at race pace. I’ll tell you right now that that didn’t happen.
Today I raced more with heart than I did with my head. Last night I watched a Steve Prefontaine movie with my teammate Claire, and something really stuck with me:
“A lot of people run a race to see who is the fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can push himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more” – Steve Prefontaine
I know that if I raced with my head and paced myself from the beginning, I would have had a very different race. But instead I went out and applied my power for every stroke from start to finish. I have been working a lot on building my power and from this training I have come to know what I could do at low stroke rates (14, 16, 18, 20), but it was time to find out what I could do at stroke rate 30. So, I raced at a stroke rate 30 today to see what my body could do…with power per stroke…and boy did it hurt!
The start is always the same, you have an announcer call everyone to sit up, and then a horn sounds off to officially start the race. Just before the start, I breathe methodically to control my nerves, focus my eyes on the erg monitor in front of me, and blur out the spectators. I know that they are there but I need to focus on the one thing I can control: myself.
The horn goes off and my legs drive down fast! Every second counts as soon as that horn goes off because you want to reach that finish line in the shortest time possible. My focus for the first 1000m was to stay in control of myself: breathe, stretch out to get the most of my stroke, drive the legs down fast, and stay calm. For most athletes, the first 500m feels so easy, if only the whole race could feel that way. I could have gone right into my pace, but my legs weren’t listening and they were going hard each stroke . Today I was listening to my body and just looking at my watts as a secondary tool to see how I was doing, so today my legs were winning this internal game – I looked at my watts and they showed 289 (much higher than the 265! Laura, what are you doing!). I knew that being up here would mean I would pay for it later, but I was on a mission to punish myself, so if you’re going to do it, then just do it and learn from it later. Don’t worry, I learnedJ.
On the erg monitor I could see what spot I’m in for the race…and I have to say that although I didn’t achieve what I was hoping to today (a personal best), I definitely got a competition out of racing! On water and on land I am fortunate to race some of the fiercest lightweight athletes, and today was no exception. I wasn’t alone when I went out hard. A true competitor, Lil, was next to me and did the same. We were going for it and it was going to end in punishment, for both of us.
I crossed the 1000m mark in first and hung on to win the competition. My watts suffered greatly in that second half, but now that I look back, I wouldn’t change it. I learn from every race, and today was no exception.
Will I do this again in my next race or test? Probably not. In March we have more erg testing and so I will do those with more consistency - and even then I think my legs will still hate meJ.
Today was bitter sweet…no personal best, but I am proud to have competed because I have learned more about myself!
Congrats to everyone, special congrats to Claire Hutchinson (Senior Women, Bronze), Dan Lebl (Senior Lightweight Men, Silver), Kaelen Chambers (Bronze), Lilianne Page (Senior Lightweight Women, Silver), and all those who were able to learn something from their race.
Well said :) Congrats!
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