We earned a silver at the USRowing Youth National Championships. This is how we did it. – Part Two

In part one we covered the start of this crews journey to Youth National Championships from Head of the Charles to tracking their erg progress. This part will take a further dive into the rest of their season and the outcome but also what can be learnt from this process.

Post regionals/Pre Championship Training Plan: 

Our regional championships took place five weeks before the national championship regatta, providing enough training time to schedule a complete and effective micro-cycle of physiological training.  Training was again 6 days of 90 minute training sessions weekly, in the mornings, with 2-3 90 minute strength and conditioning workouts scheduled in the afternoon. One athlete tested positive for Covid around the end of week 2, was asymptomatic, but still missed 6 training days due to quarantine. The last 10 days were scheduled based on athlete feedback on fatigue and soreness. With seven days to go, all four athletes failed to successfully complete an “On Your Own” erg workout of 12x500m w/3’ rest at 2K target pace. This informed me they were at peak training volume and needed to start tapering.  This was earlier than I had anticipated, but we down-shifted appropriately. 

I do not have accurate training hours or days recorded during this period as I was largely “feeling” the training day-to-day based on the athletes feedback. I would estimate weekly training volume was 12-14 hours a week. Those hours were very full however, as there were only four athletes to consider and little time was wasted on day-to-day contingencies.   

Splits during training pieces consistently worked down towards the 1:35 goal, until the Monday before the regatta the crew successfully completed a 500m piece (with racing start), a 1000m piece (also with start) and a final 500m (with finishing sprint) at a 1:35 or faster pace.  

Regatta Performance:

The crew raced their time trial (1900m) on Thursday and placed 2nd with a 6:11.388 (1:37.7/500m). They held a base rate of 36spm. 

In their semifinal on Friday, they placed 1st with a time of 6:27.559 (1:36.8) and had difficulty keeping the base rate below a 38 (as instructed) and their pacing was as follows: 

I was very happy with the pacing. That the crew took a second off the split from the time trial to the semi (and racing 100m more) was a strong indicator the taper was working, and with a day of well managed rest & recovery (the grand final was scheduled for Sunday) I felt confident they would be in medal contention. I would have preferred their third 500 to be slightly faster, but chalked it up to the adrenaline pushing their base rate to 38. 

The final was as good a performance as any coach could ask for. They placed 2nd with a time of 6:19.898, .654 seconds from a Gold Medal and a National Championship. Their base rate was a 38 and the pacing was as follows:  

All medal finishers beat the winning time last year of 6:26.418. As an estimation on course speed, only one other event (the U19 mens 4x) set a ten year event record time. 

I was extraordinarily proud of these athletes and their performance. As a representation of the season and their commitment to the process and each other, this result is superlative. 

Rig:

The crew raced a Pocock Large K4- that was about 3 years old and rigged at 84/114. Oars were C2 Fat2 at a length of 369. Pitch was 4 degrees.

Recommendations & Conclusion:

One final chart that I frequently refer to is “correlation of ergo score with the boat speed” from the website biorow.com. Based off of this chart, and using the weight average of the crew and averaging erg PRs, our subject crew was predicted to go 6:18(!). That’s a one second predictive delta.  I have found this chart to be highly correlative in the past, and use it as a strategic tool to determine which athletes would be most competitive by height/weight/boat class. You can also use it as a predictive tool. For example, if we know the average winning time (over the last 10 years) of the U19 Men’s National Championship youth eight is 5:55.8: 

Then using this chart you can determine that a crew averaging 70kg and averaging a 6:30 erg has a reasonable shot at a national championship (all other factors being presumed as optimal):

I would not recommend using this as an individual athlete selection tool. While it might demonstrate potential, ultimately there are dozens of other factors that contribute to how well an individual athlete might make a boat go fast.

An analysis by the numbers also doesn’t account for the broader subjective criteria like motivation of the athletes, experience/knowledge of the coach, availability of good equipment and consistent training conditions. One factor that I feel was considerable in this case was the amount of trust and respect the athletes had for each other. Sometimes the “power of friendship” can be facetiously referenced, but in the case of these athletes it was a powerful motivator. 

Finally, I hope this information will be useful and inspire some reflection and consideration of what is needed to compete at the highest youth level in the United States. The athletes in this case study are superlative but their performance can and will be repeated by others in the future; if their coaches understand objectively what is needed to be fast. Now you have some real, verified data to build upon. Go make your own history.

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John Wojtkiewicz

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