Winter Indoor Training.

As you all may be aware of, there is a lot of snow in Ontario this winter. Unfortunately or fortunately, (still determining the answer to that question) the ergometer, or erg for short, is the main source of our training right now. There is an event called the Canadian Indoor Rowing Championships (CIRC) which takes place every February. This year it happened to fall on my birthday. Woohoo! Lucky me! Pulling a 2km on my birthday! Not as much fun as you may think.

Let me paint you a picture. We are in the Hershey Arena in Toronto, with ergs lining the perimeter of the rink. Half of the ergs are used for racing, the others are used for warm up and cool down. The racing ergs are all linked to the big screen where all the spectators can watch your progress. We are broken up in age categories, so many races are happening during the day. When your race time comes, we are assigned an erg and then we are called to ATTENTION, GET READY, ROW! And everyone starts their 2km. It can be very intimidating and overwhelming if you let it get to you. That is part of the mental game.

Photo courtesy of Rowing Canada Aviron

Photo courtesy of Rowing Canada Aviron

The picture above is just about everyone that I train with (a few people had injuries and did not race). The picture on the left is the screen upon which the spectators can track everyone's progress.





This year at CIRCs, I did OK. It wasn't my best performance but it wasn't a total blow up, which can occur. You may have recalled that on this day it also was my birthday. You forgot! Don't worry, I also forgot that it was my birthday too. The 2km race stress takes total control of your thoughts till its done. After completing the 2km and I was going to start my cool down, I was feeling a bit nauseous. This isn't the first time I have completed an erg and puked. As I was bent over the garbage can, a teammate yelled out "Happy Birthday Rosie!", what a great way to spend my birthday! Haha! All in good fun! Don't feel too bad, upon returning back to London I had some friends over and we had a little birthday party! With treats and cake (don't tell my nutritionist)! It was a great way to finish my birthday!

When we aren't erging we spend a fair number of hours at the gym cross training on the bike, elliptical, stair climber, anything that will get your heart rate up. Thankfully this month the Sochi Winter Olympic games were happening which gave me extra motivation to keep pushing through the long hours knowing that one day my Olympic dreams may come true!

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and encouragement as I continue on this journey!
God Bless!