Last Day of Practice / First Day of Racing

Hey everyone so again, we apologize for the lack of updates but we haven't had access to a computer in a bit. Anyway, a lot has happened since the last posts but I'll start with yesterday's practice.

Yesterday (Wednesday) was definitely the most hectic and stressful day of our trip so far. We kicked our day off by arriving late to the course, due to a late arrival by the bus driver at our hotel, and were consequently forced to practice during the busiest time of the day. The water is crowded enough when there aren't a lot of teams practicing, so you can only imagine how difficult it is when every 4-, 4+, 4x, and 8+ from every country is rowing up a space wide enough for one boat (they designated one lane going up the course for all fours, quads, and eights.) The main problem is that as a men's quad, we are faster than almost every boat in our lane, with the exception of the men's eights, so we are always stopping to avoid hitting boats or swerving into other lanes to pass them. We faced these difficulties on Monday and Tuesday as well, but they were particularly difficult to overcome on Wednesday. I'll elaborate: Every rower and coxswain on the water has only one thing on their mind while practing the day before a race and it's this: Get as many good strokes as you can, no matter what. What this meant yesterday is that every boat (including ours) only cared about getting the most amount of clean water to row on, even if it meant cutting off other boats or giving them bad water. Being one of the faster boats on the water allowed us to make our way to the front of the pack and by the end of both practices (morning and afternoon) we had rowed in some very good water and taken some excellent strokes. At the end of the day, we all felt ready to race the heats that awaited us.

That leads me to today: the first day of racing. In our event, there were three heats. One heat of 5 boats and 2 heats of 4 boats. We raced in the last heat against Hungary, Venezuala, and Germany. We only needed to finish in the top 3 to advance straight to the semifinals, which will take place on Saturday. Needless to say, this took a little bit of pressure off. However, G-Man gave us a little pep-talk last night where he explained we should try to get first or second in the heat, because that puts you in a position more likely to win a medal. We arrived at the course around 7:30, giving us two hours to check our weight before we had to do our official weigh-in. Bob, Mike, and Pete were all comfortably under their target weights and I was slightly over mine. However, they were all light enough to make up for my fatness. This allowed us to grab a bite to eat before the weigh-in. When 9:30 finally came, we weighed in with no problems. The came my favorite part: the pre-race lightweight feast of clif bars, energy drinks, fruit, and breads. It doesn't seem like much, but to me, it was Thanksgiving dinner. After we ate, we had a little over an hour until we launched, so we warmed up a little bit on the ergometers and performed the other pre-race rituals we've developed over the years. When the time came, we brought our boat to the dock and headed up to the starting line, ready to race our way down the course as Team USA. We had a good warm-up with little interference from the other boats and before I knew it, we were on the line. I can't say much about the race now because we have a boat meeting, but I promise one of us will give a play-by-play later. We finished third in our race behind Hungary and Germany. We didn't have a very good race and we're hoping to perform better in the semifinals. The good thing, however, is that we don't race tomorrow so we'll be able to practice and work out all the kinks that held us back today. Anyway, I apologize for having to cut this short, but I need to get to a meeting with the rest of the boat. As I said before, one of us will explain the race in greater detail soon.

- Will