Practice In Pittsburgh

The last two days have been hot ones, ranging from the mid 80's to low 90's. On Tuesday we had a pretty normal day; two water practices separated by breakfast, a nap, a movie, and lunch. During the morning practice, we took out three 8+ and three 4+ and did a mix of drills and steady state rowing. The main focus of the drills was on the catch and making sure that we kept connection through the whole drive. Once we finished the drills, we started doing "steady state" pieces, which here is basically another name for racing as hard as you can at 20 strokes a minute against other boats for an unknown amount of time. By the end of these low stroke rating races, all three 8+ were pretty tired and ready for breakfast. By the time we got back to the dorms and finished breakfast it was already around 11:00. Most of us here, including me, use the hour and a half between breakfast and lunch to take a nap, something which I look forward to from the second I wake up at 6:00am. The second practice started at 2:30 and we were broken up into a group of three 8+ and a group of four 2+. The pairs were an interesting experience. Most of us had only rowed in one a few times before and the coaches had us doing 1 minute pieces at full pressure while also making us stay somewhat close to each other, something easier said than done. Despite the difficulty of going straight and staying up-right, the majority of us really enjoyed rowing in the smaller boats. The rest of the night was spent eating, watching movies, and making a run to Wal-Mart to stock up on snacks and drinks.

Today we only had morning practice but it was probably one of the most intense practices we've had all camp. It consisted of four 8+ racing each other in six 1300 meter pieces, some of which were seat races. This was the first time that we did racing starts and it made the pieces even more interesting because we had very little time to practice them before we did the pieces. By the time we had finished practice we had been out on the water for almost 3 hours and we were all dead tired and ready to eat. During practice the freshman coach from Yale had been on the launch with our coaches and at the end of practice all of us who were rising seniors were able to talk with about rowing at Yale. In addition to this coach, a few other college coaches have come out and watched us row which makes it easier for the rising seniors to meet these coaches. But after we finished practice we were basically done for day. We had the opportunity to do laundry and later this afternoon will go back to the boat house and clean the shells and launches. The next few days are probably going to be even more intense than today's practice seeing as we will be leaving for Tennessee in less than a week but we are looking forward to making our boats get as fast as possible.