Henley Day 3

Saturday June 24th - Reading Town Regatta. We took cabs to the course and sat in a ton of traffic. To get Colin back into the groove of what we had been working on during the long row we did a quick shake down row and the boat felt better again...Always really encouraging to feel better every time you put the boat on the water. We lined up for the Elite 8+ sprint race - 800m only against Kent School Alumni and Hobart College USA. Feeling rather unprepared given that we hadn't really practiced a starting sequence we blasted off the line and took an early lead on Hobart while Kent moved out. Hobart gradually worked back through us and we ended up finishing about 1/2 length back. Awesome to feel the intensity of the action even as my body started locking up with about 20 strokes to go. Petey arrived straight from the airport and we went out for a 2nd race in the Senior 8+s against Kent and Shiplake. We were blown away off the start and were sitting a full length down to Shiplake before we started coming back. Finished 2 feet shy of Shiplake and closed the margin to Kent by about a length. Improvement again and it gave us lots of stuff to work on in the coming days.

Had a quick chat with one of the Leander coaches and spoke about a neat erg demonstration as well as some sports psychology ideas. Awesome to see the Bourke and Naylor families supporting their sons!

After a quick bite to eat (leftover pastries!) we left Reading at 6:30 PM to row back to Henley. This time the locks had to be manually operated and we finally got back around 8:45 PM. Rowing in the evening was GORGEOUS! Boat felt smooth and pretty relaxed though we could have given the boat a little more time to run. Visited the Asiana Indian Restaurant for some delicious chicken korma as Andrew Kaiser regaled us with stories of living in Moscow.