Following on from my last post talking about the 720 days between competing in a 2km race, I managed to break the drought and race at the NSW Small Boats Regatta. The day of racing completely knocked me for six, and it's taken me until today to sit down and compose myself.
At the NSW Small Boats Regatta the heat of the men's single scull was not until late morning so I had some time to reflect during the lead in on how nervous I was*. In particular, reflecting on how I am sharing this journey, creating some build up in terms of getting back to racing and how embarrassed I would be if I came last by a country mile and therefore reassess my short-term goals. Obviously not the best mental preparation for a race, however just prior to and during the race I was able to tune into some of the technical focuses I had been working on while training at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra.
*Although the concern was present, by no means am I implying this completely overcame me and reduced me to a feeble mess prior to racing. I just feel it is important to continue sharing with you the honest insight into my thoughts.
Fortunately I was not last, in fact I managed to win, as the results below show. Not a bad way to calm the nerves following an extended period on the sidelines:
Upon qualifying for the final and achieving my goal for the day, the pressure was somewhat reduced leading into the final as I had nothing to lose. I could give it my all and see where I stood within the sculling group in Australia on this particular day. My goal was to go as hard as I could in the first 800m and see if I could maintain speed with the frontrunners in the race. As it turned out, I was with them for about 0.06 of a second before they blasted away from the blocks never to be seen again. So I simply put my head down and bum up and rowed as well and as tough as I could. The results below show the outcome:
Having these two races in the space of around 90 minutes most certainly took the sting out of my legs (or put the sting in my legs, whichever way you choose to look at it) and following that I would have been happy to get on the plane and fly back to Melbourne. To look back to 7 months ago when I was sliding around on the floor of my house barely able to stand up, let alone walk, to go to consecutive races following limited speed or competitive work in my training leading up was certainly a shock to the body.
I followed that up with racing the double scull with Kieren Kobelke later on in the afternoon but for multiple reasons it didn't fire. Needless to say I was ready to recuperate and head home.
Going forward from here we head to Sydney again this weekend for the NSW State Championships Regatta which also doubles up as the selection event for the Australian World Cup 1 team to race at SIRR 2014 from March 23-30. I will talk more about this later in the week so stay tuned. But for now I need to get to my last University class for the day, head to the gym and complete the day's training before getting an early night to continue recovering from what has been a big few weeks. Things have ramp up considerably.
Thanks for all your support and kind words.
Cheers, John
good luck mate!
ReplyDeleteThanks Hugh.
ReplyDelete