Here is one last post with some pictures of my experience in Belarus.
The hospital. My room is the first one on the bottom floor. At night there would be people walking around outside smoking. The building in the background is the newer portion of the hospital where I had my CT head scan done. The building I was in was the infectious disease section. I still don't know exactly what I had but it was some form of virus.

This was my room. I did have my own bathroom but was not very sanitary.

The whole team including coaches and physio staff. It was an awesome group. Everyone got along and we called ourselves the 14 best friends!

The crew after they received their medals.

It was difficult watching the girls receive their medals and I shed a few tears.

My health has improved a lot. I still have spouts of light headedness and I'm trying to keep my liquid intake high but overall I feel great. I am back to training and rowing in a single. I am really enjoying it and the change in activity and boat is great.

Again I'd like to say thank you to everyone for their support and their prayers during my adventure this summer. Your support has meant a lot to me! I will continue rowing and sometime early next year I will be moving back to London,Ontario to train full time with the senior national team with aspirations to get a medal for Canada (as I didn't get this one).

Have a great summer everyone and God Bless!

Finals

The girls came 3rd! It was a really great race for the girls. Tough competition but the girls stood put to the challenge. It was really difficult watching from the stands but I know that I put all the work in that boat for it to place where they did. I was included in all the photos and celebrations which was nice. I did shed a few tears with the girls but they were understanding.

We are leaving tonight at 10:30 for Warsaw. I am looking forwards to getting out of this country and into some more American style civilization.

Thank you everyone for your support and prayers during my trip. When I get back to Victoria I plan on writing a little bit more on my blog and provide a few more details and pictures for you.

Belarus

Hello Everyone,
I apologize for not posting anything since I have arrived in Belarus. It is a long story so I'll give you the short version. Upon arriving here in Belarus, my body started to shut down as I got some kind of bug in my system. I was having diarrhea that was not going away. I thought that I was improving but I ended up fainting when I was at lunch. I have never fainted before and I took a very big tumble (I have a nice black eye to prove it). I went up to my room to rest but ended up passing out again. Our team doctor was really concerned so he called the ambulance and I went to the hospital to get IV fluids. I ended up staying two nights in the hospital receiving over 7 liters of IV fluids. I am now at the hotel with the team but am still regaining my strength and appetite. Due to the status of my health and for my own personal safety I will not be racing on Sunday. One of the girls from our lightweight crews will be racing in my spot. My crew still has a very good fighting chance to repsresent Canada. I will be in the grandstands cheering with all my heart.

To those of you who knew my condition I thank you for your support and prayers during my illness and to those of who were wondering what happened to me I again apologize for not being able to update you.

Day Seven (July 18)

As I promised, here are some pics from last night and a full team picture.

Left: whole team; Right: my boat!

This is how we put the maple leaf stickers on the oars.

Today was our last day in Poznan, Poland. It was a cool day as last night there was a thunder storm that came through. The cool weather is a nice break from the humidity we have had all week. This morning we had a practice and then we loaded the trailer and it is on its way to Warsaw where we will meet up and cross the border with the boats. This afternoon we had off so I went shopping! I was successful found some cool stuff for cheap!

Tomorrow is going to be a long day. We are leaving at 7:15 for the train that will take us to Warsaw (about 3 hours) and then we cross the border, who knows how long that will take (could be hours) and then we are driving about 3 hours to Brest, Belarus (and the roads could be quite bad, good thing I have my gravol). I'm looking forward to traveling by train across the country. Hopefully there will be a lot of fun/cool sights to see.

Well off to pack!

Day Six (July 17)

One week until we race! Yeah! It's coming. I'm getting really pumped and so is the crew! Speed is coming easily and we are posting some good times for 500m and 1000m pieces.

Tonight we had a maple leaf ceremony. The purpose of this ceremony is to present to everyone their maple leafs that go on the oars when racing. Our oars have the countries flag painted on them. These oars are only made when we go to world championship events such as the one I am going to. (World Cup events do not count.) During training the maple leaf is taken off and the oars are just red and white stripped. So getting maple leafs (which are stickers) and putting them on our own oar is a BIG deal. It symbolizes all the work you put into it and that you have earned your place on the team. The ceremony includes the coaches calling out your name and you receiving your maple leaf (sticker). Nothing big but still significant. Tomorrow morning we will be putting the leafs on the oars in preparation for going to Belarus. (So I'll have pics tomorrow about the event.)

That is all that happened today. GO CANADA!

Day Four (Friday July 16)

Good morning to those in North America! :)

Today is another training day. Nothing too special to report to you but I have thought of some things that I do here that may be worth mentioning for your interest.
First, laundry is really expensive (about 5 euros for 2.2lbs of laundry) so I have been doing laundry in our tub and hanging it around our room. I anticipated this so I have a sunlight bar of soap which I use to do my laundry. Second, it is not recommended to drink the water from the taps so the staff got us bottles of water that we drink instead. It's not too big of a deal but it is a bit of hassle to remember to get water from the stock. Third, in regards to the food that we are eating, it is mostly North American based. The hotel we are staying at provides buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner for us. Every meal is a hot meal with a make your own salad and fruit. We don't get any Polish cuisine (ie, perogies).
Back to rowing now with some more info for you (well for you Dad and anyone else who may be interested). When we are practicing, our coaches do have a motor boat at their disposal but sometimes they also ride their bikes along the shore (depending on the workout; the hard workouts they get in the coach boat, paddles rows they ride their bikes). There are no other rowing crews practicing here on the course, only Polish kayakers.

If 2's company and 3's a crowd …what's 4 and 5? A really good time! (Just for you Dad! Haha)

Day Three

Today was great! We had two practices this morning so that we could have the afternoon off and go into town to see the sights! Practice went really well and we felt some good speed in the pieces we did. Getting faster! :)


This afternoon we went into town. It is really easy to acces from the hotel which was great. Walk to the start line and take the tram 5 min to the city center square. We started as a whole group (all the women, the men still had to practice) but we ended up spliting. The city is very beautiful but also quite small. It is basically shaped as a square with a museum in the center. The buildings are beautifully decorated and designed. There are many little shops with trinkets as well as big stores for shopping. I ended up spliting from the group with Liz Fenje (who is in the lightweight double) and we went and saw some churches. They were amazing! Imaculate and by far the most decorated churches I have seen in Europe. I was so shocked. Every inch of both churches has some design and detail on it, with pictures, sculptures or scripture writing (in Polish so I have no idea what it is). I also don't know what the names of the churches are because I can't make anything out with the Polish language. (I just point and hopefully I get what I am asking for. haha)

It was a nice afternoon of seeing the sights and being a tourist. It was great fun!
Here are some pictures for you to enjoy but I must say that pictures don't do justice of the beautiful city. Oh and all the streets are cobblestone. (I can't stop thinking about all the hours it took to put the roads in. Wow.)


The city square


The museum in the center of the sqaure. I am jumping in the foreground.





The church. Unbelievable.

Day Two

Second day here is Poznan was pretty good. It wasn't quite as hot as yesterday which is nice for training. Oh, in regards to my AC dilemia (for those curious) it was solved in that we moved rooms to one that had working AC. Jet-leg didn't hit me that bad changing time zones so I'm thankful for that.

Rowing is moving forward. There are less changes that the coaches are doing to our boat and we are getting our legs back to working properly so things are improving. Tomorrow we are starting some race pieces for practice so I'm looking to getting the rate higher and going fast. The race course is really nice except for all the kayakers. They go down every lane and every direction, they don't seem to follow any kind of flow pattern. It's a little frustrating having to watch out for them but they do seem to move out of our way. This may surprise some of you, (Mom and Dad) Europeans don't really know rowing that well. Walking through the airport some people were asking what we were doing, and trying to explain rowing is really difficult. Even if we told them the world in German they still didn't really understand. I was a little surprised myself.

When I'm not rowing I sometimes watch TV. There are two English channels, Eurosport and BBC News. So I have been following the Tour de France right now. I also read my book and play cards with the other rowers. Tomorrow we are having two practices in the morning and then in the afternoon going into town to wander around. I'm looking forward to that. See some of the city!

For those of you who are just joining my blog and curious to what I am doing, here is a quick summary for you. (Hi Rob and Linda VanBoom! I just found your comment so this is mostly for you. Thanks for your interest and following me on my adventures!)

I'm training with the u23 Canadian national team and we are competing at the World Championships in Belarus from July 22 to 25. We are spending a week in Poznan, Poland for training and then going to Brest, Belarus to compete against the World. I am in the women's 8+ sitting in 4 seat.

Pictures of Poznan race course

The race course from the finish line looking at the start.

Grand stand at the finish line

Boat house (on left) and Grand stand (on right) at finish line. (view from our hotel)

Start line from our hotel.

As you probably can guess, we walk to the race course. It's about a 15 minute walk from our hotel. There also is a mall that is walking distance, about 15 minutes the other direction. It is directly across the street from the start line. Haven't been there yet! :) We will also get an afternoon to go to downtown Poznan and the city square too. It's a pretty small city, about the same size as London, Ontario.

Day One

Good Morning everyone in North America! It is about 3:30pm over here and you guys are just waking up. I've already gone for a row and got over 10 hours of sleep last night. :)
Just for your reference, Poland is 6 hours ahead of Ontario and 9 hours ahead of Victoria/Seattle.

Everything is going well. Both the men and women are training together now using the equpiment that the Senior team just used in Lucerne Switzerland. We are in the process of fine tuning our rigging and oars so that they fit us perfectly. The course is beautiful! It's straight and the wind doesn't have much of an effect on the water either. The course is public so there are many people that come to the venue to swim. They don't get in the way of the course or our rowing but they certainly are a sight for the eyes. Haha. The men wear speedos or tight shorts. It is certainly not what I'm used to from being in North America. Haha. The women wear bikini tops and shorts which is pretty normal. Polish people are very skinny and have long legs, or maybe thats from them wearing really short shorts, not sure. :)

I'd just like to take this time to once again thank everyone in London Ontario who made my stay so awesome. First; the Synesaels! Chris and Kellee, thanks for moving to Victoria so that I could meet Pete and Brenda through knowing you. (There you go Chris, got your name in my blog! )Pete, Brenda and Skylar, thanks for welcoming me into your home, cooking me meals and letting me use your vehicle as well. It was such a blessing staying with you! Brenda thanks for finding me a place to stay when Chris came and kicked me out. Barb thanks for letting me stay with you for a week. All your generosity made London a great place!

Arrival in Poland

It was a long 18 hours of travel. Including a 7 hour flight from toronto to germany then a 2 hour flight from germany to poznan poland. I didn't sleep much/well on either flight so I am pretty wiped out right now. I'm not too grumpy which is good but the AC in our room isn't working very well so we are talking with the people here about it.
We are staying at a hotel which is at the 800 meter marker of the race course. We are training on the course that is used for World Cup events. It is a gorgeous course. Perfectly marked out and straight. It's wonderful. We haven't gone rowing yet (went for a jog instead) as we haven't got our boats from the seniors who used them at the Lucerne World Cup III. Tomorrow morning we will be rowing for sure though.
Well that is all I can get my brain and eyes to focus on right now. More to come tomorrow and hopefully some pictures as well.
Thanks for all your support!

Leaving

Today was our last day of training! It has been 5 weeks in total since I've arrived, and they have been long ones too. This past week has been exceptionally grueling. Ontario got another heat wave that lasted all week. Temperatures were in the low 30s but the humidity made it feel as though it was 40. It was really uncomfortable as the breeze was warm, the water was warm and I'm sweating a lot so there isn't anything that I can do to cool off. This certainly is a change from being in Victoria. I did survive, and it sure felt like that is what I had to do to get through some practices; survive. Yesterday it finally rained. I was so excited! That is probably one of the few times I have been excited about rain. It was raining while we were rowing and it was raining HARD. I felt like I was taking a shower it was coming done so hard. But I was really happy! :) All the humidity left and the smog went too. The air felt clear and crisp, like west coast air!

We are all very excited to be going to Poland and continue our training over there before we go to Belarus to race the World. Our crew is very pumped and we feel as though we have taken another step forward in the right direction; getting faster! Now that we are leaving for Europe everything seems so real. What we have been training for and working towards has finally arrived!

Our last practice on Fanshawe lake was great! Beautiful weather and no wind. Perfect rowing conditions. The first practice we did race pieces which went really well and we made some big improvements too. The second practice we had fun! Did a lot of fun drills with our feet out of the shoes, played some music through the cox box, switched with our pair partner and rowed the opposite side! Lots of fun! It was a great way to remember that rowing is fun!!

Practice

This is a picture of our crew doing some race pieces. We had a guest coach, Volker, Westerns Rowing coach, come and watch our practice. He has a very strong German accent and some of his sayings are quite hilarious but he has a great way of making you want to row harder. He enjoys sitting in the boat and yelling "BEINE!" at us. (Beine means legs)

This is a picture of the crew (minus one person and the coxswain who is taking the picture). This was taken just before we left to go for our warm-up run. We do a 10 minute run followed by dynamic stretching before we get on the water. The purpose is to get a little sweaty before we get going on the hard water warm-up. This was before we went and took on the Western Men's team.



Yesterday, Auntie Anne and Uncle John came to visit me. They are from Orangeville and made the trek out to see me. This has become our annual reunion! Whenever I'm over here in London for rowing I usually get to see them! They stopped at the Dutch store (yummy) on their way to see me and picked up the Holland visor (which is awesome especially since Holland is in the World Cup finals! Hup! Holland! Hup!). It was a nice break to get away from rowing.

London

I'm going to back up and start at the beginning of my summer, which is the beginning of this adventure! (I will keep it brief as most of you know the details already.)

I arrived in London, Ontario on June 8th and warmly welcomed by the Synesael family. The Synesael's are such a blessing. They provided a vehicle for me every day, cooked meals for me, and always had the fridge stocked with chocolate milk! I couldn't have asked for a better place to stay.

Selection camp commenced the day after I arrived. This included seat racing in pairs for two days and a time trail in the 8+. After the time trial, and some days of agnozing waiting, it was approved by Rowing Canada that an 8+ was going to be sent to worlds! (There is also a lightweight double and single going.) Once we got the stamp of approval, it's been full force training! I was sitting 2 seat when I was first in the boat but now I am sitting in 4 seat. The ENGINE ROOM! I really like sitting there. Basically all I have to do is pull as hard as I can! We are on the water twice a day along with weight sessions twice a week for an hour. We have also done some racing against the Men's Western Rowing team. They put together an 8 so that we can have some competition. The first weekend we raced them we lost by about 11 seconds. The following weekend we raced them again and lost by 9 seconds. This second weekend the men's 8 was faster but we still closed the gap so it tells us that we have gotten faster!
The girls in the boat are getting along great! No cat fights (yet). We are all very pumped to be going and the boat seems to be getting faster every day!

You're probably wondering what I do with all my free time. That's a great question! Generally I like to read. I have read Shutter Island (which was good and keeps you on edge), a CSI book and the Princess Bride. I also watch TV, do sudoku puzzles, watch movies (Eclipse was awesome) and get a pedicure with Brenda! I spend a bunch of time sleeping too. The Synesaels also got me out of the house taking me to the beach. They showed me Port Stanley which is by Lake Erie and they also took me to Sarnia which is by Lake Huron.

So that's about all for right now.

Rosie

Training

Hello Everyone,

Upon advice from my Uncle John, I have created this blog so that you can follow, if you choose, my adventures this summer in Poland and Belarus.

This is my testing blog so that I can learn how the program works. So bare with me as I experiment and fiddle around. The next blog will be more interesting.
I promise :)

Rosie