We’ve all been there. It’s race day. It’s the race day. You’ve been preparing for this for months, maybe for years, with your coach and your squad. You’re sat on the start line, and the question pops up unasked for in the back of your mind – am I ready for this? This is a moment that plagues us all on the start line, and so I believe it’s worth digging into a little deeper. How can you know if you are ready?
Firstly, it is worth acknowledging that there are different levels of ‘ready’, and everyone will approach this in their own way. The specifics don’t matter, it’s about finding something that works for you and your goals. For a novice crew, knowing the umpires starting procedure and what is expected of you is a perfectly sufficient level of ‘ready’, whereas experienced high level athletes may have planned their entire race in great detail. And there are of course so many different ways in which to be ready, are you physically fit and ready to row hard, are you mentally ready, knowing the race plan and prepared to deal with the pain? Are you tactically ready, are you aware of the crews you’re lining up against and what moves you might expect to make in different race situations? Is your equipment ready, all checked and measured and double checked, are you in appropriate race clothing for the weather?
It can all be quite overwhelming and dealing with as many of these aspects before you’re sat on the start line will go a long way to ensuring that you’re able to race your best. As I’ve heard many times, it’s all about the P’s – Proper preparation prevents poor performance. Or some variation on this.
Physical preparation is vital to racing, over and above many of the other aspects of readiness. Most crucially, train for the race. Train in the crews and combinations that you’ve been racing for sure, but get the miles done to prepare your body’s engine and get it tuned. Trust your coaches on this, they’ve been around the circuit a few times and they know what works. If you’ve done your best to be at every session and put out your best effort in each of those then you’re away to a cracking start. Something that often falls through the cracks of a training plan is proper recovery, make sure that you’re looking after your body with plenty of stretching, maybe some foam rolling, but most importantly food, drink and sleep.
On race day you need to be sure that you are eating well and drinking plenty. Especially if you’re racing multiple times, make sure you are refuelling between races, replenishing the energy and nutrients that your body used up. Part of being ready for race day is to make the most of your training as you go, proper nutrition is necessary to aid good recovery and allow you to make the most progress. There is heaps of excellent advice on this front all over the internet, here is a great column from JRN that details rowing nutrition more broadly: https://juniorrowingnews.com/rowing-nutrition/
Sleep is also critical, and something that can be really challenging around racing with perhaps earlier starts than usual for travelling to the event, or maybe you’ve struggled to sleep with the nerves. Do your best that you can the night before, getting an early night if you need it, but prepare for this over the nights on the run up to the race. Make sure that you’re well rested days in advance, and if you’re aware that you’ll need to get a good nights sleep on an early night then make an effort to shift your circadian rhythm forwards. It’s all about turning up fresh at the start line.
Mentally preparing for a race can be a huge challenge, and for most people can be quite a personal affair. Being mentally ready can be about knowing what to expect during your race, knowing the pain that you’re about to put yourself in and being prepared for the doubts in the back of your mind that can come with that challenge. Knowing in advance what to expect from yourself in a high-pressure race situation can be a fantastic tool for managing your mindset, controlling yourself and controlling the race.
Having set yourself an appropriate goal for the race will influence all this mental preparation. A novice crew on their first race will have vastly different goals in racing to an experienced well-trained crew going for medals, and the mental states of each crew going into the race should reflect this. Goal setting Is something that should be done as far in advance of the race as is reasonably possible, in order to get the crew and coach on the same page, helping with motivation for training and in some cases giving structure to the training program.
An additional side of mental preparation can be based around racing tactics and knowing what you might expect from your opposition. In crew boats particularly, it is crucial that the rowers are all on the same page so you know when to execute and pushes together. Or it could be that you decide that you will go for a technical focus on a crew issue at a certain point in the race. Ultimately, a good race plan is one that plays to a crews strengths, allowing them to feel in control of their race and hopefully helping them to victory.
In bigger races, of if you’ve been racing for a long time, you may begin to know some of your opposition crews and begin to be able to sculpt your tactics around them as well as your own strengths. If you’ve raced a crew many times before, you may know that they have a very quick start for example, so you can go into the race expecting this and mentally braced for the challenge of being half a length down 250 in.
Another component of the readiness checklist will be the equipment that you’re using to row with. Starting simply, are you in the correct clothing? Then going further, are you confident in the rigging of your boat? Further depth on the rigging will have you checking out your heights, pitches and spans, as well as double checking and perhaps tweaking the gearing on your oars depending on the conditions.
Readiness is a simple case of controlling what can be controlled and being aware of the ways in which things might go sideways. If you’ve found your way to the start line, then you must be doing something right. So, back to the start line on the big day. The umpire calls you up to approach. Are you ready? Backing on to the stakeboats. Are you ready? Sitting forwards ready to start. Are you ready? You’d best hope so! Attention…
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