The boys have had a busy summer period, despite the time off from school. We were able to organise two weeklong training camps for them, allowing them to get huge miles done in the boat together, as well as an opportunity to have some other coaches take a look at them and offer their insights.
At the start of the summer break the squad was exhausted after a long term which was rounded off with three weekends away racing in succession. After a few days of rest and light training, they hit the first training camp hard and spent a lot of time in the coxless quad which we hadn’t managed to do in term time. The coxed quad is prioritised here as an event, and when we were racing around Victoria there were no coxless quad events available for us to race. The quad was beginning to find some easy speed through the week, and the boys enjoyed the chance to mix in with athletes from other schools. They also jumped into some eights, spending some time training sweep. Unfortunately, they weren’t well conditioned for jumping into sweep boats for long sessions, having spent almost all of the last 6 months training sculling. This caused a couple of small niggles to pop up, and resulted in a cautious end to the week, and missing a timed race session in the coxless.
When I left the boys after the end of the first camp, I generally pleased with how things were going. A couple of small setbacks, sure, but the boat was still moving incredibly well. I was very excited for the next camp to finalise selection and see what times can be produced on fresh legs after Christmas.
The squad trained at home for three weeks over Christmas and did a fantastic job of holding each other accountable and following the schedule. There were however a couple of hiccups, a missed session here and there due to other commitments, and worryingly one of the squad members had to isolate for a week due to a positive covid test.
The start of the second camp was a hectic affair of trailer loading and piling on the bus to travel to the river that would be our home for the next week. More bustle followed amid the excitement of new coxed and coxless mens quads, before finally being able to get on the water that afternoon for their first paddle as a crew since the end of the first camp, nearly a month ago. The first few days of camp went smoothly, the new boats were very much enjoyed and gave the squad a huge boost in confidence and in boat speed.
The night before we were to seat race to decide the crew, disaster struck. I was awoken by a knock on my door at 3am to learn that one of the rowers had been up for a little while because he was feeling very unwell. This resulted in the athlete having to be sent home and he was obviously unable to complete seat racing. This was most unfortunate as he was one of the pair of guys in tight contention for the final seat. We have had to postpone the seat race until after the camp, when both rowers are fit and ready to give their best performance.
For the remainder of camp, the crew was more settled due to being down to a squad of four. Training went fantastically, and on the last two days with nearly two hundred kilometres already in their legs the crew were able to put down blistering times in both quad classes. As a coach the most positive aspects of these time trials was that there were some obvious ways to generate yet more speed, not least racing on fresh legs, that makes the potential of our crew this year to be quite something indeed.
The summer didn’t go perfectly, there were setbacks and trials, but with hard work we’ve been able to come out of it with more boat speed than we had going into it and a ferocious desire to get stuck into the racing of the next couple of months. I can’t wait!
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