Louise and I spent 10 days in Stryn, Norway. A place made for burning calories.
900km’s over small winding roads (highways in Norway) brought us to a place that I would say should look like heaven. 1800mtr hight granite walls, green valleys, white glaciers, and best of all, mirror flat turqouise lakes and fjords…
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On our way home from Norway, we made a stop over in Dalarna. Louise wanted to do a White water kayak course at Kajaktiv, and I wanted to meetup with Lassi and Sjoerd
Even though the dissapointment of saturday still felt, it was time directly to recharge for the uppcoming Cfinal.
Rather relaxed I laid at the start. The first 250m I rushed of as quick as I could. I noticed it kept me sort of in the front of the pack. I allready than felt that I would try to save energy. So I let the pace come down all the way to 32/31 and just looked for rythm and a lot of boatspeed. Pretty happy with that.
Sneaking a peak to see how what the result was of those horrible forst 20 strokes…
Bart, the big Belgium former Rastaman, was striking a bit higher I felt. By focussing on technique and keep good lenght in the stroke I managed to slide by him and lead bu perhaps half a lenght. But he would not really let me go more than that, and I was really reluctant to start sprinting. At 500m I anctiously waited for his attack, secretly hoping or thinking that he would soon die. The Italian and the rest was by than out of the picture. happy to not hace to sprint from 500 I started to charge the batteries for the last 250. We both started our frantic sprint for the line at the same second. From 32 it went to 41 in one stroke….I did not even dared looking at him I just tried to move as fast as I could. I beat with 0.2 seconds…We both enjoyed that race a lot and had a beer together later that eavening by the river in Lucerne.
David and Ewa came over from Sweden and they just made it in time to see my race. Good fun with some familiar faces around! We will be cheering on the rest of the pack later on!
See ya!
Where I sort managed to walk the fine line more or less perfectly in Amsterdam, I basically just fell of it today.
1000 things I can think of were not right…but I guess it all came down to having rowed a bit to hard in the morning and still feeling the traces of it in my legs during the very important afternoon race. It felt that I had more controll and that I did not have to mentally race hard this morning, but the pain in my legs after 1500mtrs were not good. I felt that major pain in my but after finish making it very uncomfortable to sit on that damn piece of carbon fibre. That was a clear signal of not good.
Though not feeling super strong for the quarter final I anyway managed to push myself rather hard. I was pleased with that. But the downside was I guess that, even though I was working hard, I was not going fast. At 1500mtr I was were I wanted to be. Just a lenght down on no.3. I guy I thought I could beat. But I had no power at all left for that super sprint. I wanted to, but I could not make myself do it. Extremely dissapointed I gave up trying an just continued that damn race in 30. You are actually amazed about the thoughts that imediatly pop up in your head. I’ll keep em for myself.
So 4th place, and ready to row the C final tomorrow. Everything to win there! But I am not a happy sailor at the moment. Just dont understand why I’m getting so damn tired.
Catch you tomorrow!
Survived the heat this morning. Everything went more or less to plan and I relatively easy could take 2nd place a few seconds behind Henley winner Alen Campbell from GB. I took the pace down a bit at 500 to go, but my legs really started burning anyway. Wonder why. I felt that I did not row so hard, but it felt pretty much anyway.
Next race in two hours. Hope to give them a run for their money!
Be in touch from extremely sunny and warm Lucerne…
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