long overdue

yo. so this entry is seriously seriously overdue and will encompass a bunch of shit so be ready lol.

the most salient, pertinent, and important news is that this past saturday, (6days ago) I had a long overdue, fulfilling pr on my 6k erg. I had a pr the previous weekend as well but it was not nearly as good of a piece (14s slower) and mentally not all that great either.

I think there were two things in particular that allowed for the jump in speed, both of which were mental. Obviously serious speed gains on the physiological end cannot occur in a week. Both changes sort of went hand in hand but were spurred by another one of the weekend's occurrences: the GMS banquet. At the banquet we did all the typical schmuzin and chatting and eating etc etc etc but when gman gave his little spiel to the junior about what their efforts meant and how he hoped that they could one day be like the hps group, and that this is their effort and their thing, and the erg was like the rowing world's sat score... well. all of that sort of added up. Post banquet we had the "barn party" which was essentially a few good drinks with a few good people in our small erg room in the barn. During an erg the next day at Nyac i made up my mind. Steffan was sitting next to me and i was mulling over in my head the things that had been said the night before and the combination of finishing a piece with the tanks not empty and the words of inspiration by gman I made up my mind. I was going to test again.

The second aspect of the equation was that i didn't feel I had enough mental prep time to properly ready myself for this piece. Basically, we had heard that it that gman would prefer we go on feb 6. not jan 28. but when jan 25th rolled around we found out that we had presumed incorrectly and that we were going to piece that weekend. This sort of threw me off and I got a bit nervous and didn't have my focus together. The result was dealing with the stress by eating improperly the day before and not readying my self mentally to attack the piece. After making my decision, on monday night after the banquet, to test again, I had ample time to wrap my head around this and give it a whole hearted go.

Training the week leading into the next piece was almost trance like. When I got on the erg I used my time there to focus intensely as if I was mid piece. Even while doing steady-state, I focused on hitting the wattages with consistent, long, and efficient strokes, no wasted movements just effective strokes.

On our travel back to New Milford on Friday, we made our usual stop at the P&H truckstop about 1hr outside Craftsbury, here I resisted the oversize chocolate chip cookie and went for the orange cranberry muffin. I had a wonderful cinamon raisin cashew butter & jelly sandwich for lunch with an apple and then later for a pm snack the muffin and an orange. Delicious. Wow. I almost forgot to mention our flat tire. HA.

So...... put this in your mind's eye: we're driving on the dirt roads from cbury toward the highway, snowy, dirty, bumpy roads, which end with a 1/4 mile stretch of paved road before we get to the highway. Jon and I are making the left onto the highway when he asks me what that rythmic bumping noise was... having blocked the background noise out of my head with whatever silly thought I had been thinking, I gulp and think "oh fuck" as I immediately recognize what he's refering to. That unmistakable flap flap flap of a flat tire.

We stop, I open my door and look back, a breeze of burned rubber greats my nose. 'uh, yeah dude. we've got a flat'

Both in unison: "fuck."

To Jon's credit, he quickly fixed the flat and we were back on the road within 15 minutes. The catch was that bmw x3's don't have full size spares; we were rolling, but no faster than 60 mph. We made it home nonetheless. Things actually worked out perfectly (sort of), because we stopped in Hartford CT a the bmw dealership to try and get a tire - they had just sold out of the last one. but we ended up going to whole foods, which allowed me to pick up some goodies for dinner: whole wheat ravioli w/ butternut squash + grana padano and some broccolini. Delish. blanched the broccolini then sauteed them with some garlic and red pepper and olive oil, boiled the ravioli then threw them in the pan as well. yum. This was such a great pre-race meal. Awesome.

Going to bed friday night, I was tired, well fed, and mentally prepared. There was that little voice that pops up every time you voluntarily do another piece that says "hey, you know you don't have to do this" i shut it up and went to bed.

In the morning I woke up, ate my half pb and j and banana and made my way over to the trailer for our pre-training meeting. Gman had caught wind of my plans and was 'surprised' 'but in a good way' . So we warmed up and with a bit of nerves I took my first few strokes; I settled in with focus, and pretty decent rhythm.

This piece had a focus that can only be described through a flow state. The kind where you are just so focused and determined to do what you're doing that the world seems to disappear. This time it wasn't so much like a pair of horse blinder, but more like me, the erg, and gman. Every so often he would walk behind me and I would just think to myself, haha you fucker, eat this.

I knew that in my last 2500, I would need some serious determination and focus, this was the worst point of my piece the week before and possibly the toughest part of any test piece, the last half. This time I wasn't in survival mode like the previous week, I was determined to put this piece away. And, as you know, I did. I was ecstatic. It's amazing how your mental state can be so different after such similar levels of exertion. The difference in split was likely only 1.5 or so seconds, however even after going harder, I was able to feel amazing. The mind is a seriously powerful thing.

The six k pr was celebrated that night with a very nice dark chocolate bar :) This was a great weekend.

Sorry this post took forever and a day, but... better late than never I suppose.