Update #1

Hi everyone,

I've been meaning to set up this blog page for a while, but I'm a bit of a procrastinator. Thank you Jacques Janson for getting me started!

Well where to begin. As some of you know, my crew and I (bow to stern: Rachelle de Jong, Janine Hanson, Krista Guloien, and Anna Marie de Zwagar) qualified the quad for the Olympics last summer in Munich, Germany. This is a big step for the Canadian sculling program, as it has been a full 12 years since a quad has competed in the Olympics. Our coach, Carsten Hassing, has done an amazing job and he is a technical wizard. We would not be in this position today if it wasn't for his knowledge and patience.

This will be my second Olympics, as I was a spare for the women's eight in Athens, Greece four years ago. At the time I didn't think of my situation as a positive one, but I am now so thankful I could experience the Olympic environment without the stress of competing. I feel very mentally prepared, and I have a good idea of what I can expect.

The past couple of months have been a bit of an up hill battle for us. Our stroke seat, Anna Marie, developed a stress fracture when we were in Lucerne for World Cup 2. We didn't get to compete and she was sent home to Canada to recover. The rest of us stayed in Europe for a training camp in Volkermarkt, Austria, and then we competed in an exhibition race in Poznan, Poland with Lindsay Jennerich subbing in.

We arrived back in Canada on June 24th, and Anna Marie is only starting to row in the quad now. She is rowing with us every couple of days with modified workouts. Stress fractures are a very frustrating injury, and these next couple weeks are very critical to her full recovery. If she pushes herself to hard, she'll just go back to square one and she will not be able to compete in the Olympics at all.

The good news is that when Anna Marie is in the quad we're still showing speed. It's amazing that after almost 2 months of not training together we're still able to move a boat. Tomorrow we're going to try a fairly high intense workout, which is exciting in our progress. The training program Carsten has designed for us is incredibly grueling, and everyone is just hanging on.

That's all for now, I'll try to update this page regularly so everyone can follow my progress into my races in Beijing.

Bye for now,

Rachelle