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Even through the festive period, the training never stopped.
 The relentless continuation of session after session is even more mentally demanding when you are at home with your family for a week, but I was certain that the main opposition would be doing the miles.I just needed to be tougher than them.
The Christmas and New Year celebrations seem like a distant memory and they were only four weeks ago. Since returning to group-training on 2nd January after an exhausting ‘break’, we have endured some of the toughest training loads I have ever battled my way through.
It started with a high altitude training camp in the Swiz-Alps; not a rowing camp like our usual training but this time we were on cross-country skis. I have since heard that this particular sport claims the fittest endurance athletes in the world, and I can appreciate why. Each ski lasted up to 3 hours of constant, sweaty work even at temperatures as low as -15ºC. By the end of the morning our hair and the outside of our wet kit had frozen solid and we still had 2 or 3 more sessions of weights, ergos and core work to do. I really enjoyed myself for those two weeks away and proved to myself that it was worth training so hard over Christmas.
We have been training back at our home venue, the Redgrave & Pinsent Rowing Lake, for the last 2 weeks and we have barely stopped to catch our breath. Rowing in pairs, fours and eights, racing on ergos and competing in the gym has started to grind us down to new depths. This is all a reflection of the fact that we are now in the Olympic year. It is now 2008 and the biggest race of my life will creep up very quickly – I just need to make sure I am in the best shape of my life when I get there and it starts now. |
