Ramping up to NSR 2

Post #45

Small town, Connecticut - After NSR 1, Julie Nichols and I decided to train and race the double together for NSR 2. For the lightweight women, NSR 2, which starts on Thursday, means a lot more than NSR 1. The first one is in singles and tells you where you stack up against others in the country. The second one is in doubles (our only Olympic event - and therefore our priority boat) and winning it qualifies you and your doubles partner to race at any or all of the three World Cups in Europe. But more on those later.

Julie and I decided that since there were only two and a half weeks between the NSRs (both held in Princeton, NJ), we'd stay on the east coast to train. We came up to a small lake in a small town in Connecticut and set up shop. It's nice and quiet here so we've been able to put in good work on the water, eat well, and rest well - all with few distractions.

The life of nomadic rowers: cars with boats on top

Our temporary training spot at dusk. Not too shabby!

In a few days, we'll drive back down to Princeton for racing. There are ten entries in our event, so our progression will likely be a time trial on Thursday, heats on Friday, and finals on Saturday (my birthday!). USRowing will be adding specific times and information to their website for the event as it gets closer, and I'll also be posting updates here.

Based on the entries in our event (LW2x), it looks to be some great racing. Abby and Ursula (the USTC-Oklahoma entry) won this event last year and will be racing together again. They were last year's Worlds double and were also my teammates in the 2010 Worlds quad. We'll also be lining up against Victoria, another member of the quad (who I shared an altitude tent with all of last summer, good times!). Both of the Pocock Rowing Center doubles have national team athletes in them, with multiple Worlds medals among them. There are also some doubles on the list whose names I'm not familiar with...but you can't ever count them out.

Not only will this be a big weekend of racing for us in Princeton, it's a big weekend all over the US. Virtually all of the colleges and high schools have their regional championships on either Saturday or Sunday. Fast thoughts to everyone else ramping up to racing this weekend - I know I'll be at Eastern Sprints cheering on the Wisco Lights on Sunday afternoon!

Stay tuned, more to come!