Lightweight Eats

Last I wrote, I was prepping for World Championship Trials. Focus on the goal has kept me quiet for quite some time, but now that all of the adventures have wrapped up, it's time for an update!

As I mentioned, I got in a lot of really productive training while in Connecticut. I function really well in focused team environments. And spending the time reading and reflecting allowed me to learn a lot about myself as an athlete. For example, I learned that spending a lot of time socializing drains my energy. Since the days leading up to a race are often spent in close quarters with boatmates, I made sure to go on solo runs and secured some alone time to recharge.

This was also one of the first races where I managed to effectively control my nerves. The day before the final, I made a list of 10 reasons not to be nervous—which was super helpful. Everytime I got nervous, I simply drew on the list and used one of my reasons to calm my nerves.

But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.

After all that great training and reflection, we drove down to New Jersey on August 3rd. Our coach was in Lithuania at the Junior World Championships (several of his boats had qualified and were racing), so the four quadruplets headed down along with two heavyweight men from GMS.

Me, Sarah, Mary and Laurissa -- the quad

We spent Saturday and Sunday practicing and acclimating to a new environment. We had the opportunity to practice on the course. Our hotel also had a small kitchen, so we went grocery shopping and were trying to keep our food intake as controlled as possible to prepare for weigh-ins.

Our first race was Monday, August 5th. It was a race for lanes between two boats, so the results had no impact on future racing. We did have to weigh-in, which was good practice, since it was our first weigh-in as a boat.

After the first race, we had another opportunity to practice and went on a few runs, but mostly were laying low and counting down the hours to the final on Wednesday. We were up against some formidable opponents: many of them had been on the national team previously, and they were mostly more experienced than us.

Although we'd hoped to be closer to them at the finish line, we were relatively happy with our final margin. They beat us by about 10 seconds. It will be interesting to see how they perform at the World Championships at the end of this month.

There were four people, a lot of suitcases, toolbags, two riggers and a hula hoop all stuff into a Subaru hatchback—squishy! Did I mention the three boats strapped on top?