Paul Rosenquist

Fed up with this bloody dark, wet, windy and warm winter.
This week I felt something has to change. Sitting on ergs after work is just to depressing. So, more running and paddling.
Been running to work this week. A nice route along the lake and over Hagabacken. I nice little hill. Yesterday I thought I should test paddling home as well. I perhaps picked a bit of an dumb day to do this. I rant to work in the morning (10km). Than, rushed around town with a trailer to pick up our new sofa. Back to work, helped my new collegue out at the warehouse with filling a truck with 24 kayaks and the racking system that they lay on. Than back at the office struggling to install my new Macbook.

Between all this I ate something, but not a lot. At 19:00 I chucked a Kevlar XP into the water, put my head light on and pushed of from work. Its a nice paddle. The XP is a fast Sea Kayak and I’am actually pretty fast in that stable craft. In pitch blackness I paddled into the city along Karlbergs kanal. Mirror flat water. Than to the old town that is slightly more eery. The lock between the salt and sweet water was open…this means water is flushing through it in grade 2 or 3 white water style. It beeing 2° o so in the water and beeing alone I made the mature decision to lift the boat around the lock instead of flush through it like a turd in a toilet bowl. People (tourists) looked slightly confused seeing me tiptoe along with a kayak on my shoulder. 5minutes later I was on my way again. Along the nationialn museum and into the so well know training waters of Djugården. After a total of 60 minutes of paddling I passed the rowing club. 11kms to go. 2 km’s later I was really tired. Shoulders were just dying. I always have the ambition to keep the XP on its sort of maximum cruizing speed. Not be used to paddling, and probably not having eaten well, totally finished me off after 75 minutes of paddling. DAMN; a very long 10km’s lay ahead of me. In the harbour I met a small tanker ship. Cosy. When FINALLY I glided into the narrow channel connecting the lake we live at with the sea I felt nearly ready to faint. So freeking hungry and cold.
I found a great little grassy beack and quickly jumped out. Stepping into the water with my five finger shoes
I could not really care about the freezing water. Like a ninja I strapped the wheels under my boat and jogged home. Our neighbours just stood outside and was wondering what the hell I was up to jogging home with a kayak. Dont ask I said and fell into our kitchen were Louise had a steaming home made union soup ready.
This is going to be great, paddling to work every now and then! Just make sure I have more energy in me and perhaps do it in daylight next time. Damn country.
This weekend we are heading of to Idre for 3 days of XC skiing….YEAH! David, Louise and me. Look forward to some snow, sun and fun.

Last eavening we gathered a happy bunch to go running on Haga backen. A 70 meter high slope at the other side of the lake where we live. Louise, Ruairi, Roland, Britta, Nick and I wobbled of from our front door at 18:45. 20 minute jog later we were at the foot of the hill.

Over excited I pointed out the three paths availble. One long and steep, one slightly shorter and steeper, and one ridicilously steep…but short. Somehow I thought we should try 5 ascents on each and take the shortest way down to get a nice ‘work-rest’ ratio.

So of we went. In the dark, and unfortunately it stopped freezing the night before and the lighte drizzling rain turned hard packed mountainside into mudslide. The long trail up is awesome. Than thundering down the steepes slope I quickly found out that more caution hade to be taken here. On my ass I slid 20 odd meters through the mud. 70 minutes later…we decided that we only had 10 descents in us and that the 5 left on the super steep one would have to wait. It was also only Ruari and me left as the others wisely jogged back to the apartment after 5 runs. A good 2 hours later we came home. Shaking legs, mud clad faces…cant be better.

We quickly threw a huge Bolognese together and had a cosy eavening.

Though training hard, it can still be a lot of fun!

Keep it going all, and good work on that slope!

Just give a sligth insight in the day of 2008 Paul

Gets, up and re-alizes he is still not motivated to jump out of the bed, commute to the club and freeze his balls of on the water. But the temperature is probably not the issue…the erg is calling and I’m giving her the finger from the bed…
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Ok, this morning finally jumped the fence…I put my single (Lola1) in the water.
She is actually camping over at work at the moment and I felt that had to start rowing the narrow little boat again. It has been MONTHS! Lots of erging, rowing in the fat coastal boat, and off coarse rowing the Dubbel with Henrik has been the rowing I have been doing basically since the Nationals in September.

To be honest the first five minutes were actually scary. The sub 12° water isnt really the helping my private little come back here…
But after 5km’s the strokes were getting lenghtier and the good ol rythm was coming back. It is so nice! The waters at work are not to bad. Really enjoyed the 16kms and a big hour later I was standing in the office again with a big smile on my face. This will reall help us in the double I think.

Keep rowin!

- Paul

While the guys I have been rowing against and with during this season in the single scull are prepping themselves for the races of their lives I am going through a whole different process.

Yesterday the World Championships started, and the racing for the 11 qualifying spots for the Olympics is on. Tomorrow I will start working full time again and basically putting all my energy into Point65 to become the best Kayak brand in the World.

Having spent a whole bunch of sleepless nights lately I sort of came to the conclussion that I will no more race competitively in the Single Scull. Even stronger,…All the the rowing that I will do in the near future, I will do only with Henrik. Knowing how much time he has for rowing I am pretty confident it wont be much. We will see. I see in front of me countless of fun sessions with my friends in the outrigger canoe doing allnight outings on the open sea, biking long distances, racing paddling with the little kayak culture around Kungsholmen, running in the mountains and perhaps a fun rowing race here and there. Ooh yeah, maybe try to bring in Stand Up paddleboarding in Sweden…

Above all this, Louise and I bought an apartment so some focuss will be there as well.

Rowing, the monster of all monsters, I just took it by the neck and threw him out the door it feels like. It will knock on my door and look through the windows to get back in I guess…but I will just laught at it.
A huge emptyness it leaves behind. Even though I only have rowed 100% for 1 year all the years (four) have been 100% focussed on getting better at it. Eveything I did in my life…the first question in my head was…will I gett better of this, what consequences does this have for my rowing etc. Those thoughts are not neceserry anymore. I will try to get into a physically even better shape as I am now by training more versitile and with more focuss on fun and crazyness.
We will see how it will work out. But I feel relieved to have come to a solution for the gruelling situation of not knowing what was going to happen.
I am so gratefull for the awesome year I could do in international rowing, but I am bloody frustrated about the lack of follow up and posibilities that it resulted in. A whole stringe of circumstances lead to that I basically had no more choice than to keep compteting for a all or nothing goal and that is to tough to do under the circumstances that I was doing it in i felt. All or nothing as in, my only chance to get somewhere was to become the fastest rower in either Sweden or Holland. Not just fastest, but by a big margin it felt like. Of coarse I have felt that it was possible. I have felt challanged by it go and try for it. But,…If I would strike out lets say with a second or maybe just a half one it would mean I would still be sitting on the sofa watching the fucking tv nex year in august.

I could re-set my goal and make it a personall goal of just trying to improve a bit from this year, and try to row some A-finals etc disregarding of if it would take me anywhere. But I somehow suddenly came to the conclussion that it is not worth it.
Mentally, physically, economically and socially I felt it was a to expensive thing to buy. I did not decide this…deep inside this just suddenly came to the surface and made me. Thats is what I like about myself…this sounds weird…but I know that I can count on myself when it comes to good judgement. SO No hard feelings!

OK folks, no worries…this web logg will keep rolling on, but it will be a lot more bragging and about different feats as earlier I guess.

Hasta la pasta