Fall 2013

Alex Twist and I pack up the Subaru post-speed orders, getting in some last-minute tanning

As usual, it has been a while.  And as usual, I've committed the sin of not updating the blog until there is good news to share as opposed to sweeping less-than-stellar performances under the rug.  As this blog is my attempt to share the process unfolding in my life with rowing, work, friends, and fun, it's not right to go radio silence for so long while things get worked through, leaving out the bad performances as if they didn't happen.

It was a very different Fall season from last year.  Last year was great!  This year I did a lot of losing, especially during racing, but also in practice, day in, day out.  Now, losing, to lose, that's a loaded term.  Winning in rowing, outright, comes so seldom and is so sweet for it.  Did I have high hopes for this Fall, to repeat some of the victories of last season?  Of course.  Pride was wrapped up in performance, as well as a sense of momentum and improvement.  After all why shouldn't performances improve year to year?  If they don't, what is happening, what factors are influencing certain outcomes?  Often this fall I would ask myself these questions and to put it in perspective I could usually find precedent in my own rowing career for what was happening (or not happening!) on the race course and in practices.

But there's also an exciting sense of doing things you have not done before, positive and negative, or rather... familiar and unfamiliar without being sure of the outcome in advance.  That's about trusting a process, a plan, or simply experimenting on the guinea pig that is myself, or my own rowing, or sense of purpose.  This is vague stuff so far.  Here's the specifics:

Worlds: Injured RIGHT before our first races.  Kept it hidden from teammates; coach, raced right through it.  Injury did not significantly affect the racing itself but hurt like hell!

Post-Worlds: Conscious decision to let my body recover from an exhausting mentally and physically 2013 campaign which began in April and concluded in September.  It felt like such a long time attempting to be in peak physiological condition and at weight deserved a break.  I don't usually take extended breaks but everything indicated this would be a smart idea moving forward into the coming seasons.

Took 3 weeks off exercise.  I don't mean off rowing.  I mean I didn't work out.  At all.  Mostly I stayed up late, ate out a lot, had a lot of recovery beverages, and squeezed every last drop of fun I could out of the time unstructured and away from rowing.  Truth be told I felt no immediate pull to get back into training, or back into rowing, or even exercise.  I felt lethargic and unmotivated.

Then... went on some bike rides for a week.  Fitness... where did you go?  I miss you fitness.  Please come back soon.  Fitness said... nope!

Then went on some rows.  Now things getting ugly.  Shoulder injury acting up, had to take more time off, and let it heal (proactively of course with the help of Karen at The Next Step PT in Seattle a.k.a. The Miracle Worker).  Finally travelled back to Philly where my Malta teammates had been training for two weeks already after their three weeks off - non-worlds members training since trials in July.

Simply put:  got ass kicked.  A lot.  And had to miss another few days here and there for shoulder issues nagging me.  Let it heal.

Then: YES!!! Finally, with 3 weeks to go before the Charles (for which I had highest of hopes having won the damn thing in 2012) I strung together my first full week of real, no compromises training.  Yes.  Hell yes.

Then got sick.  Really sick.  All week.  Who gets sick for a whole week?  Following week slept 15 hours+ a day and did no training.  Extremely frustrating.  Raced Navy Day that weekend... and surprisingly things going OK.. until I hit debris and broke my oar and flipped.

The very next day--literally--I hit gravel on my bike and went down hard.  Road rash all over the right side of my body and some cuts on my elbow that a smart person would have gotten stitches for. Picking the gravel out of my skin was not the rest day I'd envisioned with one week to go until racing the single at the Charles.  I tried to pretend it hadn't happened, which was easy enough but no amount of ibuprofen will help you sleep when you're up all night with pain.  And I'd read enough about Tour De France riders who go down and then pull out of the event a few days later.. when you injure your body and the tissue needs to knit there is nothing left to recover from workouts.  Ugh.  What a grim situation.  Ignored it.  Out of mind!

Now Charles week had arrived... kindof was at a loss about my preparations.  Where did the time go?  What the hell kind of preparations had I done?

Ignored all the negative thoughts, put my best effort forward on the day.  And lost by so much that I missed the 5% qualification window for next year.  Wow.

With only 3 weeks left in the Fall I discussed the results and the comedy-of-errors events of my "training" with my coach.  I had no desire to race so, so unprepared and on such little training.  He said no, you are racing Head Of the Schuylkill, you are racing Speed Orders, it is part of our selection.  So be it.

I was really nervous about the erg and the exposure it would yield to my lack of fitness.  Strung together three good weeks of training and noticed gradual improvements in practice.  On the day my goal was to finish the erg in less than 20:30 which I thought would put me somewhere in the middle of the pack of the other lightweights at the East Coast Speed Order.

Went off real easy on the erg, just hitting a rate and rhythm I knew I could easily sustain.  Problem was.. splits were 1:40.  Oh well I thought, better than seeing 1:50!  So just relaxed and kept it up.

With a fairly conservative piece I went 20:07.3, a new personal best.  We have done no erg sessions this Fall and last time I did a workout on the machine would have been last February.  It left me excited to see the gains that more consistent work (more than a few weeks anyways) will bring going forward.

Honestly, I was bummed I had to not lift Thursday for the racing this last weekend.  But I suppose I could have just lifted anyways.  The results in the boat were similar - and reflected the process I've put in this Fall.  It has not been smooth and at most times not enjoyable.  Seeing the hard work put in by my teammates, and having the support of my family in Seattle and in Arizona, and the guidance and plan from my coach here at Malta, have made the Fall endurable, and set up some solid patterns of learning and improvement that will gain momentum throughout the year looking towards August 2014.

It's been so so important to have other people involved in this process, be it breakfast with Shane at RyBread, congratulatory phone calls from Malta club members, shooting the shit with Alex on the ride back to the airport to see him off to Seattle, runs with Colin clicking yes too many times on Tinder, scary movies with the Vesper girls, Dartmouth alumni rowing through a haze of nostalgia and other haze-inducing ingredients, or checking my phone to find brief and loving texts from mom, pics of the pug from dad.

If you like this blog, and you've told me so, thank you too.

Hugs and Pugs,

Dave

Pele, my pug back in Seattle, dozes and recovers