Paul Rosenquist

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