Paul Rosenquist

Well were in a really pictoresque little town by a nice lake surrounded by 2500m mountains. This is the little epic center of the rowing world.

We arrived yesterday, came in by plane and took a 45minute train ride into Lucerne. Our hotel is by the river that is streaming out of the lake and it is just to cosy to describe. However, we are not here to be a tourist…even though the mountains are calling…anywere you look you get reminders why you are here. 2meter tall loosely dressed guys on flipflops easing around. Extremely tanned, little bag with some training kit, bruses on the calves…broad shoulders with long dangling arms. Aah..rowers.

Here we stand with the final 750 meters of the coarse behind us

Yesterday eavening we rigged our brand new Hudson boat. The boatpark is surreal. It is really cramped, on a grass field lokated right next to one of the most buetifull regatta coarsed in the world. You can hardly move without bumping into someone elses boat.

EVERYONE is here. All boatclasses have 20+ nations there and that means serious racing for everybody. The training yesterday was fun. The water is packed with boats. But since everybody adheres to more or less to the same rules it goes really smoothly. The water however is horrible. With so many eights, fours and whatever on it, it never calms down. After 8km’s we were rolling pretty smoothly along when suddenly a stiff little breeze came up. We did not think a lot of it and did sort of did not connect it to the ongoing thunder fashes that we saw further down the valley. The surrounding are amazing. You are rowing on cristal clear water, warm, high peaks with some glaciars surrounding, swiss cows with their bells on the hill slopes ..so different. Suddenly while we were att the far end of the lake the stiff breeze became an insanely strong wind. And than it became even stronger..this happened in seconds. The lake became an ocean. The starting tower blew over…it took us 15 minutes to row the 1000meters back to the dock. By that time we were sinking! It was crazy! The water was being picked up by the wind gushes and it was just flying everywhere. We exactly made it in before having to abandon ship. Carrying the boat was like a wrestling match. We won though.

This moring things are back to normal again.

Tomorrow racing starts. Our heat at 11:00 if we dont make it directly to the semifinal (first two proceed) we have an other chance in the repechage at 17:00. If we feel in our heat that we have no way to take 2nd place we’ll step of the gas and save some energy for the afternoon re-run. It is really important for us to get to the semifinals. If we make it there, we have a chance to earn a trip to the world champs. If not, we have just a lot of homework to do for next year… www.worldrowing.com for the diehard fans.

Be in touch!

Part 2

Well Friday morning was race day….We decided to take it a bit more easy in the morning and do a little longer warmup. If a race goes at lets say 11:00 it is normal for rowers to get ut really early, stumble to the regatta course and do a 4km row. Than hurry back to the hotel, eat a break fast and rest for an hour.

A nice early breakfast in the hotel…

Than back to the course and start the warmup. Since we sort of counted on not going through directly to the semifinals (2nd place in the heat) we thought it would be smart to save our strenght to the repechage (the second race where the top2 go through to the semi finals). This morning I was nervous. We had a new race plan. Max it to the 750m mark and go for an other push to 1000m. If we by than still be in the race for 2nd place we would fight on. Otherwise we would take the foot of the gas and safe strenght for the afternoon repechage. I did not really like this…it is confusing for the mind…Your body (at least mine) is really smart and it is hard to fool it. Of course it is great to go directly to the semi’s after in a heat race, so you can skip the repechages, but than you need to be really fast in the heat. We were meeting the Olympic champs, and lots of other guys that have shown their muscle earlier this season. Can we fool ourselves to press everything we have and see how long it holds? At the 250 meter mark my head is usually ringing with alarmbells….System overload…do not proceed,…abort abort..Here it is important to put a smile on your face and enjoy the pain! Experience tells you that you can do this and that it will get better as soon as the pump is pumping at its fastest. But than this little devil comes around the corner and tells your body ‘Hej’ if you are trailing the other boat,..it is no use to press more…’ This is a confusing situation! No good. A race should be 100% max or noting.

This regatta course is something else. Cowbells at the 750m mark indicates where you are…Lying at the start you can see the kids jumping of their diving platform into the christal clear warm water…what a contrast…only 50 meters away from us. Here we are on a line with 5 other boats. 12 totally focused guys,..most of them slightly trembling…every nerve in the legs is awaiting an explosion of nrg…Total silence. All the rowers are in the catch position…meaning the legs are 75% bent and the oars are locked in the water….And than you see these kids who dont even care about these crazy rowing boats playing around. What I am doing here??? Attention………BEEP. And were off. Reasonable start.
When the bells start ringing I throw a quick look at the other boats. (picture below)… shit,. allready half a boat behind 2nd.
At 750m we were still in the pack but 2 boats had allready gone way ahead. We do our push as agreed but it feels half hearted. At 950m mark I call for Peter to ease it down. What a horrible tactic. We gently row the rest of the course in 22 strokes per minute, Very frustrating, but probably smart.

Later that day we would get our chance. We needed to get second there! It was us, the danes, white russia (with the largest rower in the world whom we call Lumberjacker), Swiss, Estonia and the fast Belgiums A really tough challenge. Lumberjacker beat us earlier in Poznan. The Belgians have caused problems for us in Holland. Any way we really wanted to see how close we can match these guys. Our push at the 750mark putt as pased the danes! I thought there were two boats in front of us and at the 1000m meter mark I started to notice the rear end of one of them in my peripheral vision. The Lumberjacker pulled of such a fast start that we were getting their swell (waves) after a while, this really disturbes our rowing, we also had lane 1 meaning closest to the warmup lane, where 12 fours were warming up meaning lots of swell from them as well. But at the 1000m mark the water became great and we really we rolling! The rythm was great!

And I noticed that we were catching up quickly with Lumberjacker! I though these guys we’re in second position so I was getting really excited. With maybe 100meters to go, we were passed them I thought,..but their sprint was faster than ours….beep, beep……silence..beepbeep. Shit that was four beeps…meaning we were fourth. I did not mind…we had a great race! We actually rowed the fastest last 1000meters of all the repechages.

C final on saturday. Again against Lumberjacker and the Danes etc. We wanted to win this race!
We though, If we could pull of a faster first 1000m, and than roll into our strong second thousand, we have a good chance! As planned! A great start! I think we were amoungst the quickest of the block! We rowed our fastest first 500 and second 500! great…Now our push..BOOM..their Peter hit the wall!

Lumberjackerman’s arms…
Lactose acid in the legs…shit our speed was dropping. We were losing turf directly! Now Peter was rowing in survival mode and I was also struggeling. Meaing our perfect rythm and timing was probably not that perfect anymore. At the 1500 meter mark I was dying…damnit! The danes that I felt we could beat, caught up with us, and I cant do anything. We wrestled our way to our sprint and tried to lift the rating to 40. It worked but we were not flying. 4th place again. This time it did not feel so good. Our time of 6:33 anyway shows that we rowed a reasonable race. Still a lot to develop in our new team!

Later that day I wanted to get rid of some more energy and I decided to run up to the Pilatus peak…a 3,5 hour run with a 1500meter climb. Perfect! Aill I needed to feel happy again. I ran down as well…which I now regret…My legs are aching so much I cant describe it.
That eaving we drank a beer with the danish guys. Reall nice guys, they invited us over for a training camp in Kopenhagen.

Whats next???? I do not know yett. We are not automatically going to the Worldchampionships since since should have made it to the Semifinals and we did not. We will see. Training with the danes, and the norwegians will definately give us a boost.

Lassie had a great regatta ending up 6th in the Afinal. (slightly dissapointed there), Frida was amazing in her A final! 4th. The twins came 2nd in their C final. All together we atleast showed some yellow and blue on the fast wates of the Rotsee!

Thanks for the messages and emails!