Some race recaps: heat and repechage

Imagine…

-          your throat feeling as if you took a razor to the inside of it

-          your body feeling so weak that it takes effort to speak, let alone eat a piece of bread

-          you feeling so nauseous that every breath you take makes you want to lean over and hurl

Well, welcome to the finish line of a 2km rowing race!

Yesterday we got our nerves out in our heat, and today we raced.  Both resulted in similar finish times but they were very different conditions and very different performances.

Our heat was the first race we had ever done as a crew.  It was also the first race for all of us at a Senior World Championship, so perhaps nerves got the better of us as we failed to advance straight through to the A Final (top 2 crews) and were put into the repechage.   As you may have learned while watching the Olympic rowing events, a repechage is held for the crews that don’t automatically advance to the A Final after the first round of heats, and so it’s a “second chance” for crews to make it to the A Final.  The remaining crews not advancing would be put into the B Final.

On the international stage crews are ranked, and so there is an A, B, C, D, etc Final.  A final is for ranking the top 6 crews, B final is used for ranking numbers 7 to 12, etc.

Today was quite the race.  I can honestly say that I have never emptied the tank as I did today.  I had absolutely nothing left and I’m not even sure I remember taking the last 10 strokes, ha!  Physically I did, but I was definitely going into another land.  I know I wasn’t the only one feeling this way.  Aside from our crew, I noticed other athletes from other countries demonstrating the same type of discomfort and agony.  Phew, at least we all worked hard and the race wasn’t a walk in the park for anyone!

In this repechage we were in one of the far outside lanes…as we later learned, it happened to be to our disadvantage as the wind was unfavorable and swirly.  But, that’s something you can’t control and it’s just the luck of the draw.  We had the lane and at the end of the day, there are no excuses.  Race with power, strategy, passion, heart, sweat and blood - Checkmark on all of those today!  Yes, there was blood (let’s just say my knuckle doesn’t look too prettyJ).  We led off the start and were top 2 with Australia until around the 1700m mark.  Then came the unexpected wind change and more fun with the water.  As hard as we all pushed, we couldn’t match the crews making their moves on the other side of the course, China and Sweden joined Australia to cross the finish line before us.

We will now have the B Final on Saturday morning around 9am Bulgarian time (that is WAY too early for Canada, so I’ll update you after the race).  We will be racing Sweden, Korea and Japan.

"Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't."

Let's see what Saturday brings:)