Paul Rosenquist

The rowing is going nice…I feel good…the weather is still great…but I somehow can’t get myself to battle through any of the tough trainings. The ‘easy’ long distance stuff is going ok, but as soon as it is time to sink my teeth into some beefy intervals or something the light just go’s out. I decided to quit putting more pressure on myself cause it wont lead anywhere anyway. SO, the solution I guess is Bigger boats, more friends, and different training.


This week will be as from today 2 Yoga sessions a day. I will row the quad with Henke, Haidar and David. A great boat! Henke, the motivational engine, and as a bonus only 10 seconds of reasonable form, Haidar, our strong arab who is leaving for the World Champs in a few days, and David, my mate that just lost his place in the 4-. Henke putt me in the stroke seat, which is a whole new experience!


Awesome. A bit scarry tough…is my rythm working for the boat?, am I steering well, etc..its just the same as the single, but a whole lot faster and bigger.
We have a few more sessions before the nationals and it seems we will get this crew to row pretty quick. I am really enjoying the challange anyway! It is amazing how different each seat in the boats are. I moved from 2, to 3 last year and that was so different. The responsibility for the rythm and feeling much more direct in a way. Now sitting in the last seat, it is totally different again. No one to follow, but you have to be so clear and sollid in order for stuff to workout in the boat. A great feeling when you feel it is working though! You putt down a rythm and suddenly you just feel the whole weight and power of the others click into the same power curves. The challenge is now to bring this up to 36 plus ratings….
The quad is not the biggest boat I’m rowing at the moment…we have the eight as well!
Big boat, big oars and big fun. Sitting in no4 in the middle of the boat life is easy there…just haul ass! Accelerate the oar and sit up. I love doing the hard pieces in crew boats as you are not suffering alone as in the single. Here you here Robban puffing like a steam roller behind me, Henke drewling all over the cox’s mike and hushing short quick commands to him in between breaths and me giving out some motivational calls every now and than to keep everybody sharp.
At times we are a pretty well moving eight. A pitty we cant get this awesome group of rowers to train more often together. But most of them having been more or less where I am now I understand that to everything comes an end….

Henke talking us through the day’s session…basically we will do a whole season wrapped into one session…start out with easy long distance, working though some longer 5min pieces down to 1 minute full sprints…

Robban and Ruaori into some weird stretching pose while nervously listing to what will come…Robban allready deciding all the sprints will be in tailwinds

Ruaori on one leg