My First NSR

Wow, what a great weekend. Despite being plagued by pesky thundershowers and mildly oppressive heat all three days, the third NSR turned out well for me and for many of my friends and teammates. The racing in the women’s 2x event was pretty tight, with the field rarely showing more than a few seconds’ spread between top-placing boats. And as always, the men’s 2x and 2- events were a lot of fun to watch, especially with national team berths on the line. My first experience with a national selection regatta as being mostly successful was made even better when I got the news on Saturday afternoon that the Washington men won three national championships at the IRA—in the Open 4+, the JV and the Varsity eights. Go Huskies! So after a long weekend of racing and poring over results from the NSR, the IRA and the first World Cup, I turned in a sixth place finish with my doubles partner, Stesha Carle. Not so horrifically awful for my first shot at an NSR, and my first real 2k races in a sculling event.

Coming in to this regatta, I was one of three Princeton Training Center women’s doubles. Of the three, one was manned by former national team members Liane Malcos and Lia Pernell; the remaining two of us were the “development” or “novice” or “young” sculling group that have been hacking our way up and down Lake Carnegie for the past few months. We’d not been made to believe that we were very fast—mostly that we were new and inexperienced, and also that we rowed incorrectly most of the time. Regardless, we did some selection and some racing beforehand to create two similarly-fast doubles line ups and then hiked it over to Mercer on Thursday night.

Racing started on Friday morning for us with a twelve-boat time trial. Stesha and I were both experiencing the time trial format for the first time, so while deciphering the traffic pattern board we asked our coach, “do you row into the piece, or do a start?” To which our coach answered rather matter-of-factly, “you row into the piece with a start.” Not really having considered that as an option, and embracing our novice status more heartily than ever, Stesha and I both sort of looked at each other with cocked eyebrows and disbanded to nervously wash, sort, tighten, or straighten something. Once launched, despite not being new to the Mercer course, my head felt like it was on a swivel—there were so many more boats than we’re accustomed to on Carnegie, and if anything I was looking to them for cues so I didn’t do anything stupid—no doubt I was driving Stesha berserk with my turning around every other stroke. When we managed to finally cross the race course safely, I was much more comfortable in the warm-up area rowing in painfully small circles and doing some pulling to flush out some of the annoying adrenaline that was hindering my decision-making and communication processes. We made it through the time trial without incident, and once back on shore were pleased to find that we’d raced the third fastest time of the morning with a 7:19 behind Liane Malcos and Lia Pernell (7:11) and Jana Heere and Wendy Campanella (7:15).

That evening our plans for a practice paddle and flush were cut short rather abruptly by incoming storm clouds, which also put a halt to the third of the men’s 2- heats. As it turned out, the last of the three races had been called on account of “misadventure” in the Liwski/Deakin pair with a snapped steering cable. But with the incoming weather, the officials sent the men back to the docks to wait out the storm. The remainder of my development sculling friends thought it might be a good idea to also “wait it out” so we camped near the boathouse doors, happily observing the comedic antics of the men’s sweep team. Unfortunately the weather only continued to escalate into a nice little thunderstorm, which delayed the men’s 2- race until the following morning, and sent us home to bed with no evening row.

Saturday morning was our first time lining up side-by-side with unfamiliar boats. To that point, we’d done pieces against our other development double, and even Malcos and Pernell and Ala and Kaido—but Saturday’s heat draws landed us all by ourselves in the second heat without any of our PTC teammates. Again, we came down the course without incident and even managed to race a little bit stronger piece than we’d pulled the day before. I, however, seemed to be on another planet through the middle thousand of the race and missed some key moments like the 500m, 1000m, and 1500m buoys at which we had planned to shift focus, power, and/or speed. Whoops. The LW2x out of Vesper established an early lead near the 500m mark and continued to pull away from the field; we battled a Potomac boat two lanes over and led them convincingly for the majority of the race, but they ended up nipping us by half a second in the last 500 leaving us in third place but still advancing to the A final.

The weather held for us for Sunday morning’s races, albeit with a slight compromise in a light cross-head wind. Stesha and I drew lane six for the final so what little brunt there was to bear with the conditions, we got. We came into the race ready to have a solid piece and improve on the race from the day prior, but somehow didn’t manage to pull it off. We flew off the line at a forty-two (quite high for us) and had good speed through the first 500, but slowly tapered off through the middle of the race and fell to the back of the field to finish sixth. Neither Stesha nor I were very satisfied with our finish, but we both agreed that we could still be pretty happy about how we’d done overall on the weekend. We’d lined up against a lot of women who had been sculling a lot longer than us, and we’d done ok. We also had three fairly strong pieces that we were able to work with and learn from in order to improve successively throughout the weekend. No one likes to lose, but at the very least we have a clearer picture in our minds of what we need to work on to keep improving and getting faster for the next time we line up and race.

So congratulations to all of the NSR-III participants, and to the returning World Cup racers. This weekend’s results will no doubt make for some interesting progress around the boathouse, as the start date for summer senior team camps draws near.

See you out there,

--MK