Worlds - Last One, Fast One

Post # 149

Chungju, South Korea - With a second place finish in the semifinal yesterday, only one race stands between us and the end of the season: the World Championship A Final.

Our race will be STREAMED LIVE at 3:48 pm tomorrow. That's 2:48 am EST Saturday morning and 11:48 pm PDT Friday night. Set your alarms!

We'll face the exact same countries and athletes as we did at the World Cup: Italy, Germany, New Zealand, Great Britain, and the Netherlands.

You can also check out World Rowing and ITA's Twitter accounts for up-to-the-minute results. I'll update mine later on in the day.

To all the Team USA crews racing in this weekend's finals: let's make this last one a fast one!

Last few strokes of the semi. Full photo gallery here. 

Winner winner chicken dinner: men's four gets their bowball across the line first in their semi

Powerful women's pair stays ahead of New Zealand to take second place in their semi

Worlds: Semifinal Day

Post # 148

Chungju, South Korea - The last few days have dragged on. We had three full non-racing days and that's provided a lot of time to for practices, but also for rest and mental preparation for our semis and finals. I've been polishing off yet another book and closely followed my teammates' heats and reps racing via online tracking to break up the monotony.

The good news? Tomorrow is our semifinal. The draw has us in Semi 1 at 10:54 am, which is earlier than the original schedule due to predicted storms. We'll face Denmark, New Zealand, Italy, South Africa, and Argentina. Something interesting about our semi draw is that all three Lucerne medalists are in the same one. Yup, gonna be some fun racing. Top 3 will advance to the A final and a shot at the medals.

You can WATCH LIVE video of this one - 9:54 pm Wednesday for the east coast, 6:54 pm in CA. And if you're going to watch my race, it's well worth your while to watch the ones before and after mine as well. It'll be a fast, tight, crazy morning of racing for Team USA. Here's the full schedule.

Go USA!

World Championships: Heats

Post # 147

Chungju, South Korea - Sitting on the starting line in the last moments before any race is tense, and rowing races are no different. Once we're locked on and ready to go, everything goes silent (save for the cameramen's shutters clicking away) and you can feel some intense nerves in the air. We were in full-on race-mode today when that tension was cut by a grasshopper that unexpectedly landed on Kate's hand. She tried to flick it off and instead it jumped onto my hat, right near my eye. This of course startled me and gave us both a laugh - maybe just what we needed to stay light.

Grasshopper crisis averted

Overall, day 1 of racing at the World Championships was a successful one for Team USA with four crews winning their heats. Kate and I are excited to be one of these crews and will advance directly to Thursday's semifinal. With Worlds being a week-long regatta instead of the the three day boom-boom-boom formula of World Cups, there's more of an opportunity for recovery between races. We'll have a few days to sharpen up and get ready for the big races ahead.

Results sheet select "LW2x" under "Select Class," then click on the  >  for heat 2's results.
Bio on World Rowing to see just the final result

Report from Row2k on the whole team

More to come later this week!

The Eve of the 2013 World Championships

Post # 146

Chungju, South Korea - The course has been perfected, the opening ceremonies are in the books, and Korea is officially ready for the World Rowing Championships. From the athlete's perspective, we can't wait to get this regatta going. We've been here for nine days and are acclimated and tapered, so we're itching to get on the course and let it loose.

The heat draw came out today. Kate and I racing at 12:27 pm local time tomorrow against Sweden, Argentina, South Africa, and the Netherlands. The top 2 crews will advance directly to Thursday's semifinal and the rest will get another shot at the semis in Tuesday's repechage.

By my calculation, that's 11:27 pm on the east coast and 8:27 pm on the west coast. Although we're racing on Sunday here in Korea, those times are for Saturday night in the US. You can follow live here by scrolling down a little to where it says "Live Results." Turn up the volume to hear commentary, too. You'll see 500 meter splits on that tracking page; keep in mind the race is 2,000 meters so whoever gets the fastest 2,000 meter time wins the race. For all live tracking and results, look for LW2x - that's the lightweight women's double (our event).

To really get in the spirit of things and learn more about how we got here, check out this article that Team USA did on us.

Also worth a look are these crazy cool pictures row2k took of the Korean Air Show at the Opening Ceremonies. There are three pages of shots - here's one of them:

Go USA!

Making it Normal in South Korea

Post # 145

Chungju, South Korea - We're all settled here in South Korea and feeling more and more acclimatized by the day. Life in the week leading up to a World Championships is decidedly "boring" because our priority is to feel as normal as possible. Even though we're in a really cool foreign country, the goal is to be ready to go when it's time to sit on the starting line. This means we adjust to the time zone as quickly as possible, tinker with the equipment until it's just the way it feels in California, and create a practice and eating schedule that we can rely on. You almost forget you're in a foreign country because all you see are the hotel, racecourse, and bus ride in between. All is going well so far and we are getting really, really excited for racing. Only four days to go.

I'll post an update later this week with racing times and schedules (though converting my race times to US time zones will be challenging because the International Date Line blows my mind). Until then, here are some more photos from practice: 

Land warm-up in the boatyard. To everyone who I've made do lunges: I "suffer" through them too!

Training row

View of the boatyard from the top of the boathouse

South Korea - first few days

Post # 144

Chungju, South Korea - Here are some images from the first few days of our trip to the World Championships:

Team run across a big dam near our hotel

Racecourse facilities are great!

Downtown Chungju

Fish at the open air market in Chungju