During the summer, while I'm taking a break, I think of what I would like to accomplish or what has been missing that could make me happier inside, even if its slightly unrealistic. Don't we all love underdogs?! So as I turned in my application for my master's program, my athletic goals were brought up: what do you plan on accomplishing in the next year? With that question I decided to create two groups because fixating on one goal is mentally grueling especially if you don't succeed.
As a primary goal I wanted to win the French National Championships with my teammates in whatever category because that's a medal I haven't really been able to attain. To do so, a lot of training needed to be done due to the high level of the leading guys on our team.
My secondary goal was to qualify for small boat nationals in the single and perform as well as I could against the elite. If that were to be a success, university national team spots would be in contention.
So I'll recap how my current status holds up next to these goals.
With a lot of good training and pushing myself to row the single as well as I could (a lot of technical changes were made), I felt confident I could contend with the best during the week leading up to the regional qualifiers. Knowing that only the top 10 could qualify (the top 4 were preselected and given a free pass due to their elite status and spot on the national team) which left truly only 6 spots behind them, it made things very interesting and exciting. As much as we try to keep ourselves healthy, somethings are out of our control and that Thursday I got the stomach flu. Of all times right... But I still decided to go down the course feeling awful just to tell myself the last 6 months of training by myself weren't for nothing. I actually believe that I was more upset than sick when I got home and lets just say I spent 5 days in and out of the bathroom...
Now I'm left with an entire goal that I couldn't even give a try at; so disappointing. With these slight dark moments, some rays of light do poke through. Some of my teammates and I bit the bullet and took an 8 hour bus ride from Paris to London in the middle of the night to spend an entire day in London for my birthday. Why London? Because that day was the BNY Mellon Boat Race and if you know me well, I'm a fangirl! What an amazing experience and a wonderful way to spend my 24th birthday.
Onto the next goal. As much as I trained and was complimented on the work I was putting in, things felt neutral leading up tot his week. On Wednesday, we had a meeting to announce the lineups for Nationals. To my eyes, I wasn't well taken into consideration for the results I had put out, but you can't always fight the system , which leaves me now in the second boat: the quad. I'm not going to lie, the first 24 hours, every scenario and negative thought rampaged through my head, but I learned to accept my faith. It's not the first time this has happened and I am sure it won't be the last. With acceptance, I face a new challenge. The quad this year is predicted to be an extremely hard event but that truly doesn't scare me because who doesn't love an underdog, right? And this is actually fitting for the upcoming months.
On Sunday morning we leave for a week training camp in the South of France and I plan to make my body hate me, in other words put in a lot of good strokes and hard ones too. After Nationals are over, I'll be heading back to Jacksonville in June to finally join Emily after a very long wait and to pick back up where I left off with the single. I'll be transferring from a Filippi into my Hudson and I have no doubt that it won't make the slightest of differences. I have a few quality races I'm planning on attending but I'll keep that to myself for now.
We can plan all we want, nothing happens as designed. You might read this and think "Well everything went down the drain for him..." but to me it's all part of a larger picture that needs obstacles for the biggest reward.
Much love.
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