Paul Rosenquist

A week of Norge…

The hard week of training in Norway would end with the Nordic Championships. Friday morning we would ‘finish’ it of with a 1500mtr in 28 and a total of 150 hard ones. When I woke up that morning I felt tired. Not strange after the training we did before. For me it was a bit harder and a bit more than usual plus the fact that most of it was head to head against some of the worlds fines scullers…. The forest surrounded waters of Årungen mostly were nice an calm and the winds varied from easy against to easy from the side.

I went out for the warmup for that damn 1500mtr piece. Something that the Norwegians took pretty seriously appearantly since all the boats were there and times and split times were recorded. I did some 30 stroke bursts and felt waisted. I decided to do a 1000mtr piece by myself and turn in. It actually did not go to bad and I was satisfied with that and turned straight to bed…..by that time the clock was….08:00….because Olaf had to go out on a zillion arrens he sometimes has to train at ridiculous hours. That did not help for me. The next day would be more than enough for me to bite in I thought. At 15:00 I anyway could not resist the mirror flat waters and went out for a short paddle up and down the lake. You know…just to feed the rowing monster…it is always asking for more.

Unfortunately I had to leave my little bunk at the regatta course so I had to find something else. As it turned out Martha, one of the girls of the Norwegian heavy double scull had a summer house close by where I could borrow a little ‘hytte’. Great! The whole family was there brothers and all into rowing so the talk during the BBQ’s were pretty much about….rowing. Really nice to get away a bit from the course and focus on something else for a while.

I crept into the sack at 21:00. Saturday would be a monster of a day and I just did not know how I would get though it. Linz still left its marks…the hard Heat and than the totally screwed up reprechage were still playing in my head. But I knew that I had battled through far worse trainings this week and that went ok. The plan was at least to be as much of a scrooge with NRG as possible. Win with as little a possible.

I was totally not mentally loaded for my Heat since I had Olaf Tufte in it and I had allready decided not to eaven waste a breathe on chasing the farmer. Just get second. That I could do by keeping a nice 26. It made me tired anyway. Oh, yeah and I did try a little 200m sprint in the end,..just to feed the monster a bit.
40minutes on land and some Protein shake later out again. A repechage. Here some guys tried to go for it but by just keeping an eaven pace at 28 for a while they finally dropped of. I rowed in at 22 for the last 250mtrs. Nice. But yet again the legs got more tired. The warmup takes most energy it feels like so I made them shorter and shorter.
An other 40minutes on land, a banana and a Shapy bar later I was out again. This time a semifinal with Lassie in it and some fast Danish guy. I decided to what ever not go over 30 but just keep it as long as it takes to get rid of everybody. It took 1200mtrs so it was not totally easy. The first 3 would go to the A final. The two guys behind me were having a real fight with eachother and I was a bit worried that they would sprint all the way and make me have to row faster….but luckily on them dropped of at 500 to go. I directly U turned after the finish and grabbed my bike and went for a 15 minute bike ride. I felt I had to not row for a while. Now it was time for some serious sugers to start turbo boosting the system so I ate 1,5 Powerbar (1500cals)…Laid in the grass for a while and than 20 minutes to the start I went out. As I was not representing Sweden on this regatta I could were my Club suit…. I love that one…feels good to be a representive of our little club out in the world!

The warmup was pretty harsh as my legs were getting sick and tired of this really weird and really long intervall training. On the last 20 stroke burst I suddenly felt something fall in place and it went a lot lighter. I managed to get my hands out quicker and the tempo went up easier. Well well see what happends I tought.

I just really wanted to be 3rd and hopefully row a decent race. The start went pretty ok, I looked left after 100mtrs and had the farmer beside me and Lassi maybe a metre behind me. Well, thats nice,…and it does not even feels that much as a living hell! So just kept it light and quick in 36 until the little orange bouy indicating the 250mtr mark bobbed by. I settled for my planed 33 and just focussed att making life as pleasant as possible but maintaining 33 and keeping the technique under tight controll. This was going really nice and I directly felt that Olaf, Lassie and me were pulling away from the rest of the field. This was good. I expected some guys to go for crash and burn strategies but I guess the tempo was to high now. I just kept working along and eaven noticed my 500mtr splits on my clock. I was going faster and faster I noticed. Lassie was not to far ahead I felt and it really motivated me to push a bit more. At 500mtr to go the rate automatically slipped up to 34 and I started longing for the 250mtr mark from where I would start to go full out. I never had a race that felt so light and easy so it was basically just fun all the way. I pushed it from 36 to 38 and finally heard the beep indicating you have left the hell of 2000mtrs. Than a shockwave of lactic acids go through you in tsunami style….but during that I managed to hit the stopbutton on my strokecoach and the time indicator stopped on 6.59.9…..YEAH! this meant that I finally went under 7min.

End result: Olaf 6.48, Lassie 6.52, me 6.56
more results on: http://www.moss-roklubb.no/?page_id=1271&doc_id=1482

Even tough the race felt pretty comfortable I had troubles the rest of the day to stand up….the 8 chicken wings and 2 hamburgers helped a bit at lunch. The BBQ that eavening again was great…..
What is left to do….just load the depleted batteries for next Weekends racing in Holland! Really hope I can plan to do a similar race there when it is needed! It will probably take a race like this to just get to the damn semi finals….We will see! Looking forward to it!….well…soon anyway.