July 4 2017
Hi there,
It's a week out from my departure to Bulgaria and so I thought it would be a good time to check in!
I've been on this campaign for over a month now and I can easily say it's been one of the best experiences of my life. Every week the squad focuses on improvement and success to prepare ourselves for racing at the Junior World Championships in Lithuania. Our team does this through collaboration and inter-crew competition, for example, doing races against not only juniors but under 23 crews, as well as squad weight sessions.
One of the highlights of this campaign has been the Winter Series Regatta. This is a regatta designed by Rowing New Zealand to mimic racing overseas - this includes pre-rows, race warm ups, race warm downs and proper nutrition as per the world champs! Here we raced boats of similar speed to us, meaning that my Junior Womens Double raced Elite Womens Singles, U23 Womens Double and Junior Mens Singles. It was great to have that experience as it allowed our crew to figure out needed race adjustments prior to the proper racing.
As mentioned before, I depart to Bulgaria with my crew (including the Junior Mens Single) with the U23 team on July 9th. We are going to Bulgaria as our coach is also an U23 coach and needs to attend the world championships with his crew over there. We will stay for 2 weeks and from there we will head to Lithuania to compete at the Junior World Championships in Trakai.
I hope everything is well and I'll be in touch!
Thanks,
Sydney
