Last, but certainly not least

Written by: Lisa

Well, if you havent already checked the results, we finished in fifth in our heat. Out of five. But place aside, we were pleased with our race...the conditions were extremely challenging, with a brutal head\cross-wind, much worse than anything we are used to, and we felt we handled them very well. We stayed ahead of Poland, last year's world champ, for the first half but they managed to get us in the second thousand. So we came in a bit disappointed with our place, but overall satisfied. Josh then went over to the results list and came back jubilant, turns out our heat was by far the fastest of the three; if we had been in either of the other two we would have easily placed third, automatically qualifying us for the A\B Semi. But we still have another shot to make the Semi, by racing in the "Repechage" or "second chance" race tomorrow. Top three from that will continue on to the Semi, while the last three go to the C Final. Our goal, that we set weeks ago, was to make it into the A/B Semi, which would mean top 12 in the world and would be a big step for U23 lightweight women, who typically have not fared well on the world scene due to lack of sculling experience together (because we only sweep in college)as compared to the Europeans, who have been doing this since like age 11. So yeah, that's our goal, and going into the Rep, we have the second fastest time from heats. So we feel getting top three is within our grasp and are EXTREMELY pumped to race tomorrow.

So Kristin has already experienced this Worlds racing scene before, but this was my first experience, and I was surprised at how calm I felt going into it. I've been reading the biography, "Bill Bowerman and the Men of Oregon" and there's a lot about Steve Prefontaine in there. This guy has really inspired me. Last night I was reading about how he would just embrace the pain he experienced in races and take his body to a whole new level of being, so I went into this race ready to embrace pain like never before. Last week when we were on the Occoquan Josh reminded us that yeah, the crews were were going to be up against were going to be fast - obviously. "But they're people too...you cut them, they bleed; you put them through a 2k and they hurt." We're all going through the same thing. Rowing up to the start I felt some degree of nervousness but thought of this statement, and of Pre as a model, and of how the first race I was ever in, at awful Head of the Conn back in 2001 just weeks after I started rowing for Nisky, I thought to myself, "Wow this rowing thing is more painful than I would have thought!" Yet the pain is nothing compared to everything else you can get out of this sport.

The calls that Kristin made during the race that we had scripted out in our race plan were awesome.Yesterday we were searching for something, that one call that would really inspire us, and came up with "Twelve months." Because for twelve months, we have been working for, thinking about, talking about, and planning for this. Every awful erg workout this winter, I thought, "Do it for Germany." Through trials and tribulations, we have worked for this, and finally, it has arrived. 12:30pm tomorrow is our chance to put it on the line again, and we are so ready. The fan support has been awesome - thank you so much! It's so inspiring having so many people cheering for us. We're sorry we havent had time to respond to each individual email, but please know that they all mean so much to us!!