THIS SATURDAY!!!!!

Semi Annual CREW FUNDRAISING DINNER 7pm at the Richmond Marriott downtown!!!!

Get out of that spandex and get down to party.

Now what you all wanted....

                uni pics from a summer rower at Henley!!!

Tales of a Summer Rower

Hey folks! Hope you're all in bed by now to be raring for tomorrow's practice, but for the bad kids here's a super sweet post from Catherine, our beast women's captain. She rowed over the summer with Thompsons Boat Club in DC and had this to say about the awesome experience!

The first day began with 30 rowers from programs all across the country.  Clemson, Dartmouth, Deleware, Mason, GW, UNC, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mary Washington and as far away as Texas.  We were introduced to our four coaches and we were put out in three eights.  Seat racing really began the first day.  The object was to find the fastest girls as fast as possible in order to make them even faster.  Over the next few weeks we pulled the boats along side each other and switched rowers more times that I could keep track of.  We practiced in eights, fours as well as pairs.  

While seat racing is the best way to find out the fastest rowers we all know how important boat chemistry is as well.  A team tradition has been that all rowers and coaches go out to eat at Chadwicks every Thursday night. We also all got together for a 4^th of July party and walked over to key bridge to watch the fireworks.  

After 6 weeks, just over 50 practices, about 100 hours of rowing, the line ups were finalized for Club Nationals in Oakridge Tennessee.  There were a slew of 8+s, 4+s and 2-s entered in the regatta.  When we first arrived we rigged our boats and then walked them over to the weighing station where we weighed the boats and added weights when necessary.  We then made our way over to the US Rowing tent where we had to pick up our “credentials” (a laminated index card on a string).  When launching for a race we had to show the officials our credentials in order to be allowed on the course.  For the lightweight events we had to weigh in 2 hours before our event, once we made weight (everyone under 130 lbs) they gave us a bright colored wristband.  I raced the intermediate 8+, the senior 8+, the intermediate lightweight 4+, the senior lightweight 4+, the intermediate 4+ and the senior lightweight 2-.  With 6 races in 4 days we definitely used about every recovery technique available: Ice baths, power bars, power gels, muscle milk (ew), Gatorade and mass amounts of fruit and pasta.  

By the end of the week, Thompsons Boat club left Tennessee with a few gold medals, and a number of bronzes as well.  Upon our return to the District we began seat racing once again for line-ups for Canadian Henley.  My pair partner and I got to go out every day in our pair which was great because we had only really practiced 2 or 3 times before our race at nationals.  After two weeks of practice, we loaded an absurd number of boats onto the trailer, which included some of them hanging upside down between other boats, and we were off to St. Catharines.

After a long drive north we finally made it to the border, only to sit in line for an hour and a half.  Of course we all know that rowers can’t sit still for very long unless they are sleeping so a dance party quickly ensued.  We made lots of friends who were driving across the border back into America who were also waiting in line.  We finally arrived on Henley Island, welcomed by the nearly 20 bays of St. Catharines boathouse and the 8 lane perfectly straight, buoyed 2000 meter course.  We made our way to the course and searched for our trailer in the sea of boat-trailer madness to meet up with our fellow rowers.  

The next day my pair partner and I went to watch the other pairs race.  We also had to wait in line to get tickets to go practice on the course in the evening.  We did a row over of the course that afternoon in some pretty high winds and white capping water, but it was possible that we were going to be racing in those conditions.  On Wednesday we got ready for the senior pair race (we couldn’t race the under 23 because my pair partner will turn 23 this year, so we were racing a lot of really experienced crews).  We were treating that race like a warm up race because we wanted to get familiar with the course and the start situation.  We warmed up to the starting line and they called us onto the course.  We backed our pair into the starting blocks and adjusted our point.  They called out the names of the clubs in our heat, attention and finally a green light and a beep signaling go.  Each 500 meter marker was marked with a large metal tower and lane numbers strung across the 8 lanes.  We didn’t qualify for finals but we were happy with our time.

The morning of our senior lightweight pair race we woke up at 6am and weighed ourselves at the hotel to make sure that we were under the 59kg limit.  We went to the course to weigh in on the official scale.  At Canadian Henley you only get one chance to weigh in and if you don’t make it you are not allowed to race.  Thankfully we both were fine, they stamped us with a black 59kg stamp on out arm and we left to go practice.  

There was a small part of the river on the other side of the island sectioned off for small boats to practice during the day.  We walked our pair down to the small boats dock and shoved off to practice a few starts.  Once we put the pair away we started walking back to the car.  I saw the Kashper tent so I went over to see if they had any T-shirts, and I ran into the Danny Boy!  She was on her way back from being resurfaced on a trailer to Philadelphia.  We went back to the hotel and had breakfast and a nap.  That afternoon we made our way back to the course for our race.  We once again lined up at the start and waited for the green light.  We finished 5^th in the final and knocked a minute and 20 seconds off of our time from nationals.  Ashley and I were both really happy with the result and it was a really great race.  

We watched the 1^st eight finish 3rd in the 500 meter dash which was the last women’s event for us.  That night we all went out to dinner and then to the bars in Port Dalhousie, which was a really fun little town.  All of the bars were packed with rowers from other clubs and it was really fun to meet all of them.  There were many world-class rowers in attendance, there were also rumors that the US and Canadain national teams made an appearance in the races on Sunday.

We said our farewells and got back in the car to drive the 9 hours back to DC.  It was hard to say good-bye to everyone I had gotten close to this summer.  It felt a lot like the last day of camp and I am going to miss rowing and spending time with all of them.  I was really grateful to be able to row with such a great bunch of athletes and proud to represent VCU Crew among all of the NCAA programs.  

Practice!

We have started novice and varsity practices! We have a ton of new people, so if you are afraid that you don't have enough experience, just come and check us out! Everyday this week we will meet outside of Cary Street Gym at 6:00 AM. See you there!