recap.

Note: This blog entry was written over 4 days: Sunday 8/2 - Wednesday 8/5

It's kind-of hard to write this; because, to write this entry, I must acknowledge that it's all over. Being that I am currently sitting on my couch at home in new york, it is, for sure, over. Exactly one week ago today, more than a full year of preparation, execution, and racing, came to a sharp point - 2000m down, a third place finish in the B-final at world u23 championships in Racice, Czech Republic.

(blm4x B-level final, usa middle of picture, 3rd place)

It is almost unbelievable that 2/3 of summer has passed, along with countless meters and stories, sunrises and erg sessions, weigh-ins and rainy afternoons. As always when I never thought it would come, it came. I remember the elation of landing in Prague, it was the same feeling as when we were told by G-man on the dock of Mercer Lake that we would go to worlds; both moments were like - holy shit! this is really happening.

(Sebastian Kirwan looks ecstatic upon his arrival in Czech)

After the typical airport shenanigans, and one seven hour flight and we'd arrived in Praha. As we settled in, we worked on adjusting to the time differential. No naps allowed here - the less you nap the more quickly you acquaint yourself to the new schedule. So we resisted our urges and battled odd drops in blood sugar with an old friend, jolly ranchers. After our travel day, our boats finally arrived. Monday morning were rigged and prepared ourselves for what would prove to be the 3 toughest races I have ever experienced.

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Our heat, was an interesting introduction to international racing. At 11:24 on Thursday July 23rd, we lined up against: Germany - who would go on to place second in this event - Hungary, and Venezuala. Our goal for this race was to be second or better. We wanted to send a message that we we're fast enough to medal.

Germany was blazing fast off of the line and got way out early, a lead they held comfortably throughout the race, while we battled with Hungary who was able hold us tightly and push away in the final 500. Though, we didn't place second as we would have hoped we were able to avoid the repechage, which took place on friday.

We had a full day of practice on Friday, and were able to make some rigging adjustments which allowed for a little more comfort within the boat. We were also feeling more comfortable in our surroundings now; we knew that if we were to have any shot at making the A-final, we had to put up one hell of a fight. We needed to come top three to make it to the a-final, and with Germany, who had already handily beaten us, we focused in on russia, france, denmark, and turkey. Everyone was gunning for the three A-final spots; we had our work cut out for us.

Before bed on the friday, we met with g-man and spoke amoungst ourselves, prepping for the biggest race of our lives. This seems so trite to say, and almost silly, but, I shit you not, it was true.

Our race plan here was simple, qulaify for the a final, third or better. If it's better, great, if not, keep making moves until we're third.

The morning of the semi was rather blustery, raging tailwind as had been the case all week, there was a bit of swirling wind at the start when we locked onto the stakeboats. As we sat ready, our point well adjusted for the wind, a gust blew us astray. With the polling over we proceeded to start, taking our first 5 strokes into the buoy line. It is to all of our credit that we kept our cool. We were last off of the start, last through the first five hundred, but as we came scratching back, our speed improved greatly. By the 1000m mark, we were within 4 seconds of the leading German quad, and within 1.5 seconds of both Russia and France, who were in second and third respectively. We had surpassed Denmark and Turkey, and we'd be damned if our push was over now. At 500m to go, we were less than a second behind France, we had made our case in the third five, it was now time to see who had the legs for this last five.

Our increased cadence and maximal exertion was not enough to out sprint the french. France secured the last spot in the A-final by 1.72 seconds.

We were pretty floored by this, we seriously felt that we deserved a spot in the A-final. There was no way to remedy our feeling, the best thing we could do was focus on a first place finish in the B-final.

Bob and Mike's room in the hotel, due to its honeymoon esc nature became our boat's meeting place. They had a couch and a flat screen, I didn't know those existed in cheap 3-star hotels, but apparently they do. The night before the finals, we met and spoke with g-man. Again, it became clear that we needed another all out race, we had something to prove. We needed to prove that we deserved the A final and that we were above the other boats in the B-final.

We lined up Sunday morning with fire in our eyes, it was time to end this thing, prove our point, take it home. We sat ready for the third time, 2000m away from the finish of what has been the most fulfilling experience of my life.

"Denmark, Sweden, United States, Spain, Czech Republic, Turkey; Attention."

RED LIGHT

GREEN LIGHT

3/4 - clean
1/2 - clean
3/4 - port blade bobble in 2 seat, my bad, fuck, FOCUS
Lengthen - Clean
Full - Clean

38 spm, here we go, hit the legs, go.

First 250 down, breathe, heads in, take it to the 500, then we look, survey, and attack.

500m gone, down again, not last this time, 5th, turkey is done, lets real them in.
"GO" - we move, noticibly and with signifigant increase in boat speed.
750 down, "Go again" We are going for this one goddamnit, GO.
1000m, still in fifth, the czech and turks are ours, GO again. GO. Spain is right there.
1250 down, will calls the sprint, "PICK IT UP!" We jack it, 36, 37, GO.
1500m down, its us, Denmark and Sweden all fighiting it out for first. I make the call to empty the tanks, we all gasp for breath, lactate reeling in our legs, here it is boys, the last five, 400 to go, GO!, 300, GO!

250 left, bouys turn red, i look to our left, there the fuckers are, they're walking, I scream GO! one last time and we make our last push for the line, hands quick, legs pressing, heart pounding, breaths loud and fast. We hit the line and collapse.

3rd place.

Fuck.

In all of our heads, I think I can safely assume that this was the first word to pop into our brains as we crossed the finish line and looked over our shoulders to see what the finishing positions were.

We went for two short cool down laps and took the boat in to de-rig. As we passed the grand stand each time during our cool-down, there was loud cheering from the usa contingent. Thanks to all who were there to support us, you made us truely proud in our endevours.

Shortly after derigging, we entered the catering hall and gorged a bit. This did feel pretty good and so did the cold beer they were serving at the grandstand. Aside from the gear trading and beer drinking that followed, I hope I've left you with a pretty good gist of our experience on the u23 national team.

Thank you once again for all who have supported us and believed in our efforts.

-Pete

FINAL RACE IN RACICE

Hello everyone, sorry that I haven't written in a while, I was trying to stay focused for my races and weight and wasn't able to easily find a computer. I hope you enjoy this post because it will be my last one from Europe. Now on to the good stuff -

So we finished 9th of 13th in the lightweight men's quad. We got 3rd in the B final behind Denmark and Sweden. We beat out Turkey, Czech Republic, and Spain. It was extremely competitive racing and our starts were never that good, which makes all the difference at this level of racing. We were always the slowest boat off the starting line. The real nail-biter was our semi-final race where the top 3 boats went on to the A final on Saturday. We got off the line slow because our boat was pointed directly at the buoy line in order to compensate for the cross tailwind. This would have helped compensate for the increase in wind speed but because the announcer started us sooner than we would have liked, we hit the buoys with our oars. After straightening out the boat and cranking up the rating, we were able to push our way into fighting position. France was in third and our goal was to overtake them in order to make the A final. We were able to pull up even with them, then with about 500 meters to go, they made a push and held us off. An incredible race to watch and quite a frustrating one for us after that slow start. We came into our final race on Sunday hoping for a win, but again we had a rocky start and Sweden and Denmark got up on us, and even though we were able to walk back even with those two boats, they were able to hold us off with about 300 meters to go.

Personally, racing in the U23 World Championships has been an incredibly eye-opening and very productive learning experience. I've raced and watched some of the best rowers my age from around the world, which reminds me, I would like to make a shout-out to the women's lightweight quad who trained with us all summer at GMS and congratulate them on their silver medal and one incredible performance. Victoria, Katherine, Summers, and Devery - awesome job and I'm expecting to hear a lot more about your accomplishments in the future. The USA women's 8+ and men's 4- (four without coxswain) both captured silver medals in their respective events.

After racing, a lot of crews traded some of their countries' gear with one another. I was able to pick up an entire French warm-up suit (pants and jacket) and t-shirt, as well as a Dutch shirt, and Great Britain and Australian polo. Mike Nucci, however, got the one item I sought after, the Italian racing vest - truly a popular and much coveted piece of gear.

So that's it from me. I plan to take August pretty lightly in terms of training and work and plan on using that time to relax in order to prepare for the much anticipated senior year at Columbia. I'm stoked to get back and see my teammates, but mostly, I'm excited to start training in anticipation of making senior USA team for the World Championships in New Zealand next fall. It's been an awesome time with my boat mates Pete, Will, and Mike, and I really enjoyed my time under our coach, G-man (Guenter Beutter). I would like to thank all those who supported us, especially family, friends, and fans - without you guys we wouldn't have accomplished all that we did. If you didn't check out our fundraising site here it is:

http://www.firstgiving.com/guenterbeutter1

Thanks again to everyone. Go team USA and go Lions!

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

Two day till racing

Today we did our first race pieces of the trip. In total we did 3 laps in total. On the second and third laps we did 250m from a dead stop on the final 250m of the course. The first piece was all out in terms of rate and power, while the second was supposed to be a the same as the first 250m of a real 2k. Our pieces were almost identical in time, which is not necessarily a good thing, but the second piece which simulates the 2k more was definitely fast. This was also the first practice without any wind and it turned out to be a really good row overall. I hope the weather stays the same and doesn't become rainy and windy.

While sitting at lunch today we all realized that everyone can understand us while we can't understand them. All the other teams can joke around and talk about whatever they want without anyone else understanding them. It kind of sucks that we don't have some secret way of communicating like Gaelic for the Irish, but whatever I guess if we need to communicate they will undoubtedly understand what we're saying.

Arrival: Racice

I tried to post this on Sunday but couldn't because of faulty internet.

So 16 hours after arriving to JFK, Bob and I have finally made it to the Czech Republic. We were also stuck on the runway in New York for 3.5 hours which only elongated our trip. We arrived at the course around 4 PM and were the last ones to get there. Pete had already checked into Hotel Roosevelt in the morning and Will had been at the course for hours.

As I looked around at the Racice race course I realized the awe of making it to the World Championships had completely subsided and all the guys are ready to do business. We're all ready to execute what we've been training to do for all these years. While we have only been training with each for 5-6 weeks, we've all been training for this competition for our entire rowing careers. The neat and perfect 2k race course is waiting for us...

We spent a half hour at the race course and then hopped on the bus to go to the hotel. We drove through little picturesque Czech towns that all look the same and arrived at the hotel ready to eat and sleep. Tomorrow is the first day on the race course and another day in the training program - nothing more, nothing less.

Czech

Hey so this is the first chance any of us has gotten to use a computer since we've been here, so we apologize for not posting anything earlier. We've been in the Czech Republic for about 36 hours now so I'll fill you in on everything that has happened so far.

We all left JFK around 6 o'clock on Saturday night and arrived between 7 am and 2 pm (Czech Time) on Sunday morning in Prague. There were buses that met us at the airport and took us straight to the course, where we met other members of the US team and had a chance to check out the course. The venue is incredible. It's 8 lanes wide, marked every 250 meters with towers, and has a pretty big grandstand. We didn't have a chance to practice on Sunday afternoon because our boat was still in transit so instead, I ran two laps around the course. This gave me a good opportunity to see it from every angle and I've concluded that it's by far the nicest 2000 meter course I've been to.

Our boat arrived this morning and after almost three hours of rigging and scrambling to find missing parts, we put on our Team USA unisuits for the first time and went out for a row. There has been a really strong tailwind ever since we arrived so it has made practice pretty interesting. We still have a few things to work out with the boat but overall, we are rowing pretty well and I'm getting very excited to race.

The area surrounding the course is really nice as well. The 30 minute drive from the hotel to the race course provides a lot of beautiful scenery including several small villages, distant mountains, and something I have never seen before: hops farms. One great thing about this area that Pete pointed out earlier is that it's a place that none of us would probably ever travel to on our own, so we feel very privileged to be here.

The food is also really good, which is both a blessing and a curse. Part of me was hoping I wouldn't like it so I could just stick to eating the food I brought, making it easier for me to lose weight. However, I can never seem to get enough of the breakfast pastries and the entrees they serve for dinner.

I can't think of much else to fill you all in on, but as we continue preparing for racing, we'll write more. Hope everyone is doing well back home. Bye.

an honor and a challenge

I'm finding that as this blog grows and I get to read the thoughts of my boatmates, that we are sharing one of the most extraordinary and transcendental experiences any person can have. It still jars me to put on my USA unisuit and strut around the house. I did this last night while my sister and her boyfriend (not a rower) were watching a movie; he was likely asking himself "what the hell is that kid doing walking around the house in his underwear when company is over?" My thoughts: yeah, whateva!

Leaving the white house yesterday was not nearly as sad for me as it was for the other guys (will) because I will be returning in the fall; however it did feel great to hear many a "good luck" as we walked out the door. Jon Winter especially offered up a few excelent tips for traveling and racing as he has had the experience numerous times over the past year.

I am nearly finished packing, I've been filling up my suitcase while writing this.

yes pete, this is really happening!