This week is testing week, and as you may recall from previous blogs, athletes who are aiming for the National Team need to submit various erg results to be considered. Right now my main goal is to make the lightweight crew that will be going to Bulgaria for the Non-Olympic World Championships this summer. So the tests we have to do on the erg are: 1minute, power test, 2km, 6km and 60 minute. Later in April we’ll do an on-water time trial and race. After my trip to Georgia, I am more than excited to race on the water, although I’ll need to work on bringing up my stroke rate to higher than 22J.
So far I have done the power test, 60 minute and 2km tests – although I will be re-doing the 2km on Monday to see if I can pull something out that’s a lot more representative of the hard training I’ve been doing all winter. Right now at this stage in my training, I have accomplished what my seasonal goal was – to gain more power (ROAR...calm down Laura). I saw this in both my 60 minute test and my power test. For power I am finally over 500 watts! It took me a while, but it was well worth the wait. It’s crazy because the heavyweight guys on the National Team can pull up to 1000 watts on the erg!! No joke, they are machines. The 2km and 6km for me have shown to be the most challenging. I am not comfortable right now at stroke rates above 22 (which is NOT a racing rate), and it would be crazy for me to do my 2km and 6km tests at this stroke rate. And aside from dealing with speed challenges, I have been trying to get through this week emotionally.
On Monday my mom had a very successful surgery to remove the cancer. The drugs had a strong affect on her, but she pulled in her amazing visualization skills and helped herself recover very quickly. Each day I am learning something new from my mom!
Again she puts everything in perspective for me, but nonetheless, I personally have not been myself during this week. I’ve fought myself mentally during tests, and it’s evident that that is no way to perform at your peak. It’s important to have your mind, body and spirit all aligned so that you can truly perform at your best – whether it’s in sport, work, or life in general.
All week I’ve been trying to use mental tricks to get me through, such as using colours/words to represent certain cues, wearing new gear to help me feel fast (below is an image of my new pink pair of kicks), and imagining myself as one of the top and strongest rowers in the world (in my mind I am 6 feet tall and look like a terminatorJ, haha)…and although I had good intentions with this, it didn’t work.
New shoes on the left...stinky (STINKY!!!) shoes on the right
So today I set no expectations for myself, wore my regular old smelly training gear (and STINKY shoes), and at the last minute said I’d treat today as a workout: do 2x2km – 250m at race pace, then the middle 1500m at SR28, and then the last 250m as a sprint again. This was just to trick my mind and force me to go at it like a workout. I never grunt as much as I do in a workout, so I thought this might work. In the end, I only ended up doing one 2km because the result was decent enough to submit. It’s not ideal or what I know I am capable of doing, but it’s moving in the right direction, and right now, I need to take anything that is positive to help get me to the finish line. Nobody said sport was easy, and rowing is definitely the toughest sport I have ever done, by far!
These tests will pretty much end the winter season, so no more ergL…J.
And although I had quite a great relationship with the erg over the winter (my husband may have been a little jealous), I know that all good things must come to an end.
4 more days left of testing on the erg, and then into a rowing shell I go!
All the best to everyone who is testing,
Laura
No comments:
Post a Comment