Wellington

On my way home I am stopping here to visit/ meet some family. As it turns out a coach who was in Duneiden with the NZU men's heavy 8+ is from Wellington and is coaching here now. He was kind enough to open up his home boathouse to me so I could get some extra erg training in before the long flight back across the Pacific tomorrow. Training certainly never ends.

Final Row in Duneiden

Got canceled... It was quite windy this morning and as the 8 was stuck on land rowing a single was probably not the best idea. I went to my coach Malcolm to see what he would give me for my last workout under his guidance instead of rowing the single and he responded just as you would expect him to, with an absurdly difficult workout that he promptly followed by his iconic laugh. "20K, strait through."I had never rowed 20K strait through before, but why not do it at 6am on my last day, the day after my 2k. Who said training ever ended...

2 Kilometers

2 Kilometers. 2 tiny kilometers have brought me 12906 Kilometers to New Zealand, the other side of the globe. It has been just over 6 weeks since I arrived in this far flung corner of the planet to train at a higher intensity than ever before with the express intention of being able to cover 2 short kilometers just a little bit faster. Today was the day. My last day. The day of my 2K test. It all came down to this. My goal was to break 6 minutes and 30 seconds. This was my last shot to do it in New Zealand. I did my warm up, I had been practicing it all week. I set my monitor for 2 kilometers. "On the job. Attention. GO." 6 minutes and 28 seconds later I collapsed in the glorious agony that is success. Never before in my life had I covered this distance in so short a time, never before in my life had I felt quite like this.

BATMAN

Just another little perk of spending time in NZ this summer, Batman released here first!!!

Bungee Training

I got to do some bungee training in the single for the first time the other day. It was really strange to have absolutely no run in a boat where maintaining the run is so crucial. The work, 8x 3' on 3' off, was hard but it was a lot of fun too. It didn't hurt that it was strangely warm and perfectly flat on the harbor that day. Although navigating was quite unnerving as it was 6am, well pre dawn, and I had only been that far down the harbor once prior. The bungee training gave me new appreciation for the run that you get in the single. When the bungees came off the boat felt like the most graceful thing in the world. It was an incredible morning.

Queenstown

Queenstown is basically the adventure capital of New Zealand and we go to spend 5 days there while the NZU team was racing their Australian counterparts. The Kiwis did fairly well, the women's open weight 8+, women's light weight 4x, and mens heavy weight 8+ swept the three race series. After 2 races that were not close the kiwi's mens light weight 4- admitted defeat. The light men then joined forces and stuck it to the heavy men by racing an 8+ of their own, they did quite well and actually took second! We also go some great training in on the beautiful Lake Hayes, it was quite cold in Queenstown, we often found frost on our clothes and in our hair after training and such. We also took some time to enjoy ourselves. I finally go to ski outside of the US (this skiing wasn't quite as good). We all chipped in to go on a Heli snowshoeing trip to the Remarkables and took a cruise  through Doubtful Sound in Fiordland. It was great to have a bit of change thrown into all our time spent in Duneiden.


Oh and we jumped off a bridge...

Road Trip

After a quick extra 30min on the erg we hit the road, to where we did not know. After driving through the Catlins for about 2 hours we arrived at Nugget Point. In less that an hour we were in a rain forest looking at the Purakaunui Falls. Quite a variety of sights in a very short period of time! We then drove all the way to Invercargill on the very souther edge of the country. Just as we the sun was setting there we launched, all be it about an hour late, for our afternoon row in an 8+ with a few local guys. Rowing back in the darkness was well worth it to be on the water during sunset.