Time to Work... Hard!

A friend of mine (who coaches the JW16's at the same club as I do) said something to me this weekend that got me thinking... that the girls should tick off every session as 'money in the bank'... resources that they are going to cash out at Champs. Every interval, every push, every stroke, every rep... things that will make them faster for that one day that counts.

My girls have had a pretty tough week or two... we've had to shift them around in the crews due to illnesses and it has not been very comfortable on John or myself. It has been a real disruption, and I cancelled half the sessions this week so that everyone was at least getting better over the course of the week. All of this happened at just the right time though... our first race of the season was this previous weekend, and we had to field the fastest crews that we could. The first race is, after all, the first proper reference point to see where we stand relative to the other clubs.

We got beaten... quite badly, although the girls enjoyed the racing and it calmed their frustrations at not knowing how fast they really are. They needed to be beaten I think... rather now than when it's too late to wake up and get some work done to fix it. It jolted them into realizing how much work we really have to do to beat the opposition, and I think that they'll be alot more focused and driven from now on. They're beginning to understand the 'money in the bank' analogy... and John and I are too. Everything we say and do must be geared towards driving them on to perform better.

On the bright side... we didn't race our proper crews this weekend, and I still don't know how fast we really are with everyone at 100%. We've got 8 girls to pull from for that 1st crew, and we definately are faster than we showed this weekend. The gaps are close-able but only if we work hard now... because the other clubs will be faster by the next time we line up next to them.

Some of our comptitors have written us off a little and that's a nice place to be... let's race as underdogs.