Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Grüße aus Essen!

Essen Slideshow 
We arrived in Essen on Monday, and we're absolutely loving it. We took a quick red-eye flight from JFK to Düsseldorf, and then had about a 45-minute drive, mostly through gorgeous German countryside, to Essen. It's an industrial city, but most of what we've been able to see--the area around our hotel and the racecourse--is beautiful.

Essen racecourse, looking towards the starting line
There are eight of us here, comprising two quads. We are racing this weekend in what will be the first national or international sculling races for many of the group--two elite sculling events here that each have a heat and a final. I've never raced on an eight-lane course before where all eight lanes are being used, so there are some firsts here for me, too!

My quad's lineup is, from bow, Sara Hendershot, Jen Kaido, Sarah Zelenka, and myself. Our teammates are racing with the lineup of, from bow, Adrienne Martelli, Ashley Kroll, Desiree Burns, and Mara Allen. We're being coached by Annie Kakela and Katie Bitz, and assisted by the always awesome Andreas. We'll get some photos together today and put them up so you can see our smiling faces! In the meantime, please 
check out the photo slideshow above to see our travel and training adventures so far.


Everyone loves a red-eye!
We have been training a lot--building back up to our training volume from Princeton while also getting ready to race this weekend. I don't know exactly how our event names are translated, but we will be racing four times on Saturday and Sunday, which I'm very excited about! It seems early in the season to be doing so many 2K races, but then again, NSR1 has already happened and NSR2 is next week, so we are ready!




Today we had amazing water--it's been a bit windy so far this week--and were able to get in some good work, 2K pieces that I think helped us very much with getting ready to race. We will do a bit more race prep tomorrow before fine-tuning Friday and then putting it on the line on Saturday!


I'll be putting up photos and another post tonight from our adventures around Essen today (afternoon off!), so check back soon! You can also find out more about the Hügelregatta here: http://www.errv.com/10Regatta/regatta.php

1 comment:

Stesha said...

long time listener, first time caller here. look beautiful! glad to hear you guys are having fun. since my german is a little rusty that website is a little hard to navigate. what other teams will be racing the quad this weekend?