Update from Prague: Tomorrow it all starts!!!

I have been planning specifically for this regatta for 15 months and it's starting tomorrow! It's hard to believe. Last spring we put our push into preparing for trials, then, with our win at trials, the 13 month process of preparing started: unifying FCRCC women and men under one banner of FCRCC High Performance DB Program, setting a selection criteria and creating the hype, momentum and, hence, training numbers that has created our current mixed team. With the open (men's) team, the process was similar adding in a training camp with our Eastern guys coming out to Vancouver to get the whole team together and provide a starting framework for their season goals.

Final training here has been great. A couple things to be said for jet lag and a different type of boat than we've used before is that you really do feel better and better in the build to race day. We came 6 days ago to take care of the jet lag (9 hour time change from Vancouver) so each day we feel more "right". The boats are Swift boats. They are much like BUK's with slightly more banked sides (boat slants in from gunwhale, rather than straight down), lower gunwhales and a little more rocky. Now that we have them figured out, I really, really like them. Perhaps the chance of swamping in the 2000m is larger though for heavy crews. We'll see tomorrow when we race the 2000m!

The regatta is five days long with:
Wednesday: Open and Mixed 2000m
Thursday: Open 1000m
Friday: Open and Mixed 200m
Saturday: Mixed 500m
Sunday: Open 500m

I have been able to take a peak at the Canadian Senior teams too and they look incredible!!! I expect the same from the youngsters and grand masters but I haven't seen them. There have been lots of phenomenal teams out practicing so it's gonna be a tough fight!

Thanks for following our adventure!

Kamini