Second Camp Done and Dusted

Our second camp which was held in Sydney, after our imposed quarantine, started out on Thursday afternoon, once the rest of the crew had arrived. We headed out for a row to just get ourselves back into the swing of things. It wasn't too bad and we were able to blow out some of the cobwebs!

We were told on Thursday afternoon that we would be doing some racing over the coming days with a number of the Senior A and Under 23 crews that were heading overseas in the coming months for World Champs. These races were being held in conjunction with the 2nd World Cup which was being held in Munich on the same weekend. As Australia opted not to send any crews overseas this season it was going to be interesting to see how we compared to the crews racing in Munich.

The schedule that was set out for the camp was on each day...an early morning session to warm ourselves up, then a race around 10:40 a.m., a few hours off and then back for an afternoon session. So it was to be a pretty intense few days and I was really hoping that everyone stayed healthy and injury free.

Our first race didn't feel too bad and we were able to take about 3 seconds off our time from the selection trials, but in my books still not good enough. But with each row that we had, the boat was moving much better and we were really coming together as a crew and rowing as one.

Our second race on Saturday was slightly better, taking another second off. But again I think we were all getting a bit frustrated that the times weren't coming down a lot faster. Lisa was great in trying to get us to relax during our rows as the more we become frustrated the slower we row. Tara (who was coaching us) had us do some really hard and fast 250m which seemed to help us tremendously, so we were really happy with our row after that session. We realised that if we could put those 250m together then we could do a fantastic last row.

Sunday morning came around and I think that most of us had a few nerves. I know I did as I wanted the selectors to see that we meant business and really wanted to go to Poland. And even though we knew that this was not a race for selection, they would be watching to see if we had made any great improvements over the last month and a half.

We had a great warm up and headed to the start. We were racing with our Australian rep in the Mens Arms/Shoulders single scull and the Trunk and Arms Mixed double scull. The single sculler Ben went off go, the double with Kathryn and Greg went 35 seconds later and then we wnet 60 seconds after the double. This had basically been the same the last two days.

We had a pretty good start and during the race were making up some pretty good ground on the other boats. But to be honest, to me the row felt really messy and all over the place. The two previous days we had caught the double but this day we didn't, so I was very doubtful that we had a good race. We headed back to the landing and it was extremely quiet in the boat. I think that the others were thinking exactly like me, that it was a terrible row.

Upon getting to the landing Tara was waiting for us and when we had stopped told us it had been a PB (personal best). I remember looking at her and asking her if we had gone under 3:50. At that point she smiled and said "Way under!" We had just taken 8 seconds off the time from the day before and 14 seconds off our time during selection trials. There was a loud WooHoo from the whole crew! We had finally learnt how to race! Although the race had been a bit messy it was alot faster.

I can't even explain the feeling in the boat during the afternoon session. Doing that good row had completely changed the way the boat felt that afternoon. It had obviously made us all relax and realise that we do have the potential! Tara had us do a couple of 500m pieces during this session and we were able to equal our time from the morning...so it wasn't a fluke!

(Photo: Exiting the Sydney International Regatta Course)

Our last row on Monday morning had some good pieces in it and some bad. We were all extremely tired from the last 4 days and I know myself I had no strength left in my right arm and both legs. My old body was telling me that I needed a day off!

Over the last couple of camps we have become like a small family and we have shared many laughs and stories with each other. One of the phrases that has come out of our time together is a shared joke, one which I won't go into here as it would take too long to explain. But we have a catch cry for our crew of "It can't be good for the fish!". This is thanks to Henry! So during the week of my quarantine I found a shop who made up some shirts for me for the entire crew, which I presented to them on Saturday. Tara had also made all of us bracelets in green and gold to wear as a crew.

The camp was fantastic but also sad. Unfortunately we will not have Tara to coach us anymore. In a way it is bitter sweet. Tara has been identified as having Olympic potential in the sport of Kayaking and has been invited to live and train in Queensland. So it is fantastic for her but not so great for us. We decided that we wanted to make sure she still felt part of the team and at dinner on Sunday night gave her a lovely photo of all of us together. We were all wearing shirts that I had made up and hopefully she will remember how much she has done for us in our quest for selection. Of course we all wish her the best for her future in kayaking. Hopefully we will see her name "Tara Huntly" on the list of Australian athletes for London 2012! (Photo from left: Tara, Carol, Stoodley our mascot, Lisa, Henry, Alex and Pete)

We are now all back at our home bases and will come together again for one last training camp before our selection time trial on the 12th of July.

Exile is Over

Today we are free! Well we have always been free but at least today we will see all our other crew members and be able to row at SIRC!
What a boring week this has been. But sitting at dinner the other night, Lisa and I figured out that we probably had more contact with people we didn't know in the last 4 days than we would have if we stayed at home. At least we are both still healthy, no sign of a sniffle or cough!

Pete is flying in from Queensland around 12:30 p.m. today and Alex and Henry will be driving over to Penrith from their inner suburbs of Sydney. Tara (who has been coaching us) will be driving up from Canberra. We are all staying at the same motel which is great for that team bonding feeling!

We aren't sure what kind of training will be happening but it looks like we may be doing some racing as well. I know that Rowing Australia wanted to run a type of regatta during the weekends of the World Cups and this weekend from the 18th-21st there is a World Cup in Munich, Germany. It will give us an idea of where we stand at this point since the selection trials. We have all had more training since our 4 days during the trials, so it will be very interesting.

So our second camp starts at 2pm today and one that I am itching to get to.

Quarantine begins!

Lisa and I arrived in Sydney yesterday and made our way to Penrith to the Log Cabin Motel. It is a beautiful spot right on the Nepean River and the rooms that they gave us have beautiful views of the river.

Our first job was to buy some supplies for breakfasts and lunches, once this was done and as this was Sunday and a rest day from training, there really wasn't much to do but hang out in our rooms and wait for dinner!

We decided that we would try the bistro in the motel and bugger if it wasn't outside. Thank god for patio heaters! Dinner was a quick affair and then we both retired to our rooms. I decided that a cup of tea would go down well and as I tried to fill the kettle in my room with water the tap blew off the sink with water spraying everywhere! I couldn't get the tap turned off quick enough. Thank god there was no CC TV in the room filming this, I was absolutely soaked! The walls, floor, everything was wet. I had to use one of the bathroom towels to try and dry everything. I looked in the mirror and just started to laugh, what a sight. I was able to put the tap back in the hole and actually use the water by holding it down with one hand and filling the kettle with the other. I tell you that cup of tea was well earned!

I must say that I had an interesting night with my neighbours having an all out fight at about 3am. The male was calling the female unmentionables and the female screaming back then eventually just crying. Luckily this only lasted about 15 minutes then all was quiet.

I had checked with the reception staff about a pool as I was supposed to do a swim Monday morning. They gave me vague directions and at 6am this morning I attempted to find the pool they had been talking about. Needless to say after driving around in the dark, I gave up. I did remember a pool in the vicinity of the Penrith Panthers Stadium, so headed over in the general direction and low and behold I actually found it.

It reminded me a bit of the Fitzroy Pool at home as it was outside and through the fence I could see the steam coming off the water. So I headed in, stripped off (it was only about 7 degrees) and jumped in the water. Oh I should have tested the water first...it was freezing! Apparently the heater had died in the middle of the night and the water was only about 20 degrees! I couldn't believe the number of people who were actually swimming. So I decided that I would try and do a couple of kilometers. I lasted about 50 minutes and I just had to get out.

Back at the motel, I had the hottest shower I could stand!

Once I was warm and had some breakfast I geared myself up for going to the dentist. Yes the dentist! I broke a tooth on Saturday and was able to find a dentist here in Penrith who was able to fit me in. He even turned out to be a Canadian! He fixed me right up.

Lisa and I are now going to head to a gym down the street and try to get them to let us use the facilities. I have been known to be able to talk my way into and out of things, so hopefully it will work. This will end the second day of our imposed quarantine...only two left to go!

Heading to Sydney

I have just finished off a tough week of training with probably the best row I have ever had!
I headed out on the Yarra River this morning at 6am with a huge number of other rowers from Mercantile RC. It was really good to see so many from the club out in force.

I love this time of the morning. The sky is pitch black at this time of the year and with all the Mercantile boats with their safety lights on, it looked like fireflies dancing along the water. It is the time of the day where you watch everything wake up, ducks, swans, traffic and the city itself. I was one of the first on the water and although there was a slight wind the water was fairly smooth and it feels like you are slicing through virgin water.

I had felt really tired but I was hoping to have a double session this morning, the first being in my single and then the second in an 8 from Melbourne RC. So as I headed out in my single I thought I would try to just relax, not overdo it so that I would have enough energy for the second session.

This must have helped because the boat felt so easy to move through the water and everything just seemed to click. I even heard bubbles under the boat which means that it is running quickly on top of the water! It was great to be part of a number of boats out together and before I knew it we had covered just over 10km. I felt so good and so relaxed it was great. When I got off the water I knew that I would be fine for another session.

Unfortunately for me the 8 didn't go out, so the second session for me was cancelled. So I met up with Stu my coach and we had breakfast to discuss the coming camp and beyond.

So as I sit here at home tonight writing this post, I am thinking about the upcoming camp and I look forward to seeing the rest of the crew. Lisa and I head to Sydney tomorrow to start our 4 days of quarantine, then our training with the crew starts on Thursday. We are all focused on our goal of racing in Poland and this is just the next step towards that goal.

Don't Oink Before you Sneeze

Well Melbourne has become the "Swine Flu" capital of Australia! Due to the fact that there have been quite a few number of confirmed swine flu cases, even though they are milder than the normal flu, Victorians have become marked people. I can understand why people are worried, but it seems to me that the media have made this a lot worse than it need be.

Our LTA4+ crew are about to embark on our second camp in 6 days. The first thing we had to overcome was where it was going to be held. Lake Burley Griffith is still closed due to the algae so it was decided that we head up to Penrith, New South Wales to the Sydney International Regatta Centre, loving known to us as SIRC. It is a fantastic rowing centre and was purposely built for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. We couldn't ask for a better venue to train at.

Enter "Swine Flu".

All athletes from Victoria now have to be quarantined before any contact with other rowers and coaches from other states. This means that Lisa (our cox) and I have to head up to Sydney 4 days before the rest of the crew. This is not a problem for me as I am able to move a few things around but Lisa has exams for Uni and is desperately trying to get them re-scheduled. If she can't she will have to miss the camp and we will have to have one of the other AIS coxes come to help us out. I don't believe that this is the best thing, as I believe that we need stability at this point in time. But at least we will still be able to have the camp. Here's hoping that Lisa is able to re-schedule the exam, we will find out tomorrow.

The funny thing about all this is that since my diagnosis of MS in 1998 and starting on the Inter-feron drugs I have not had a cold or flu. That is 11 years of not catching anything, even when my husband Russ has been sick. I can't really understand how an immuno-suppressant can do this or if it is actually the cause but I am not about to complain!

So it will be an interesting 4 days, trying to work out how and where to train so as not to come into contact with other rowers. So once I am up in Sydney I will let you know how the quarantine period is spent!

The Training Starts - Our First Camp

After the disappointment of not qualifying for the Beijing Paralympics, having a relapse of my MS and then a holiday back in Canada with my family, my hunger to once again represent Australia in rowing returned. So my training intensified starting in September of 2008.

The hard training paid off and in April 2009 after selection trials I was once again named in the Australian LTA4+ crew. The crew is slightly different from last year: Pete Siri from Queensland and Lisa Brown were named once again with me, with two new rowers Henry Macphillamy and Alex Green both from Sydney, joining us.

We did have some training time together after selection trials and did a time trial at the end of that week. We just weren't quite fast enough to be automatically selected to the National Team. We have been given 2 1/2 months to train, do another time trial and then hopefully be selected to head to Poznan, Poland in August with the rest of the Australian Team to compete at the World Championships. We all believe that this is possible and will be giving it our all to be there.

We have all been doing our own training in our respective states but recently met up at the Australian Institute of Sportl (AIS) in Canberra for our first training camp.

Our week long camp didn't start out to great. We all arrived at the airport at roughly the same time and headed to the ACTAS (ACT Academy of Sport) rowing shed. They kindly were lending us a boat to use for the week. Upon our arrival we were unable to actually row due to the fact that the police had found a body in the lake.

The week was a fairly tough one with 3 sessions scheduled per day. Unfortunatley Lake Burley Giffith has been hit hard by algae and by Thursday afternoon they had closed the entire lake. This led to a change in our camp with a lot of our training done on the ergos, stationery bike and the pool at the AIS. It actually came at a good time as Pete ended up with tendonitis at the back of his knee.

We did however have some very good rows...not bad for a new crew. The end of the week was a tough morning of ergo time trials with personal bests by all of us who did them. So not a bad way to end our camp.

We are now back in our home states for some more training with our respective clubs and we will meet again in 2 1/2 weeks for another camp.

I am hoping that the rest of the crew will also contribute to this blog so that you the reader can get their opinions, views and feelings about our journey.

I also look forward to hearing what they think!