Stesha's Journal

Stesha's National Team Journal
Stesha's last journal entry was on: Saturday, August 10, 2002

Stesha Carle is attending the US Women’s Junior Selection Camp to determine the athletes that will represent the United States at this summer’s Junior World Championships in Lithuania. Stesha kindly agreed to give us regular updates on her progress. UPDATE: In USRowing's July 2002 Press Release Stesha Carle was named as one of the 19 athletes who made the 2002 Women’s Junior National Team.
Check out these photos of Stesha and the Junior Worlds Team provided by Row2k! (Photo Page 1; Photo Page 2).
Tuesday, July 2, 2002 This year's camp experience has been completely different from last year. It all started on June 11th, with a trip to San Diego. This year we would be training at the ARCO Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, about 20 miles east of San Diego. I was among 40 of the top junior rowing women in the United States. Throughout the past three weeks I have been going through a selection process. At the end the boats that would represent the United States at the FISA Junior World Games (eight, coxless four, and pair) would be chosen. Workouts started the very first day. The coaches started us with long "pushed" steady state pieces on the erg as well as on the water. We were put in random boats and encouraged to change our technique to flow with everyone else. We were tried out at every seat and even sometimes the other side. Within the first week, we took a 2K erg test. It was odd to see so many top athletes get just as nervous as me. Based on the results of the erg test they moved people around more, and continued to put together top boats. Within the next week, we all continued to do long workouts on the water, and strenuous ergs on land. In between practices, we became accustomed to the dining hall, where we were provided with as much food as we wanted. At the end of the second week, Robbie, the head coach, talked to us all individually. He had decided to cut about 20 rowers and 3 coxswains. So now were down to about half of what we started with. The third week rolled around, and the workouts remained equally as hard, but the boats seemed to get better and better. I had started as 3 seat, then moved to 5 seat, and now I am at 7 seat, on port-side. On the 30th of June, they would be cutting more people. The stress levels went up, and 5 people were cut. Now one by one, another person leaves. I had been concerned with the security of my seat. But now we are down to 14 athletes and 2 coxswains. So, I am officially going to Lithuania! The final cut that needs to be made is that of one coxswain. The last rower cut was made today. And one of the girls in my room was just told she was going to the World Championships. She is so pumped today. I am so happy that all the girls in my room are going. We definitely have made great friendships and we have so much fun today. Okay, well, Ian I hope this is what you wanted. Write me if you need anything else. I will write about workouts later. I have to go everyone is hungry and begging to go and get dinner. Good bye for now. Wednesday, July 10, 2002 So, let's see where I left off... So on Monday night of last week we didn't eat after 6:30 p.m. and just drank water. Then, at about 7 a.m. on Tuesday, we went into the trainer's office and we gave blood. It was a little scary, but also really interesting. We filled about two test tubes full of blood, and yesterday we received results. The main things they were looking for were iron levels, blood sugar level, and if we were overtrained. I found out along with another 9 out of the 15 rowers here that I am iron deficient. So, now, 10 of us are taking iron pills. yeah... Workouts are becoming increasingly harder. We do tons of steady state. Today, for example, we did 100 minutes of steady state. We ended up rowing about 24,000 meters. Our boat is now set. Robbie, the head coach, decided to try me out at stroke seat, but I guess I wasn't long enough. (Anyone who rowed with me this year could have probably guessed that). So I am back at 7 seat. Some of our other practices have been... 6x4 minutes on/ 5minutes off at a 32, 40 minutes of 20 strokes on/ 20 strokes off at full pressure at a 38-42, 3x10 minutes on/5 minutes off at a 33-34 full pressure, and so on. We spent the Fourth of July here and the festivities came to us. There was face painting, sack races, hula hoops and more. Then, there was a great fireworks display. We leave in 18 days to go to Lithuania. We have our uniforms orders in and almost everything is arranged. Many parents are coming, as well as my mom. Okay well, that pretty much brings things up to date. So good bye for now. Saturday, July 20,2002 So, we are still on the uphill of practices. Our practice schedule is not too rigorous, but the individual practices are. We practice about eight times a week. We only have two double days, which are on Monday and Friday. We do long steady state pieces intertwined with short full pressure pieces. This week we did two hours of continuous steady state and the next day we did a time trial. The time trial we did was a 2000 meter race on the water. We were aiming for 6:20, but raced a 6:39. This was a little disappointing. Everyone in our eight feels as if we could have done better. After the 2000 meter piece we did 3x 6 minute pieces at a 32-34 full pressure. On the last 6 minute piece, we were at the same splits as we were holding in the 2000 meter piece. This made us realize that our time trial was not our best. We have been trying out new gadgets in the boat. For a few weeks now, we have been trying to get this Data Acquisition thing to work. What it does is measure individual strength throughout each stroke. It shows the curve of power and can show the weak points in a stroke. Unfortunately, we have been unable to get this thing to work. We also now have a microphone attached to our coxswain, so that Robbie can hear all the calls she makes and determine which calls are effective and which are not. We are all getting along great. We all received our red and blue Nalgene a couple of days ago, and last night we celebrated our last day off. We had a nice dance party and all dressed for the occasion. Well, that's about it for now. I will be leaving for Lithuania on the 28th and we will start racing on the 7th of August. And I will be home late on the 12th. Hopefully, I will see most of you when I come home, and thanks to those who have sent me mail. I will try to write once more before I leave and again while in Lithuania. Bye. Wednesday, July 31, 2002 Okay, well, before we left we received all our gear, which was very exciting! We got tons of US clothing to row in. I am planning to trade most of it but I’ll definitely keep some. Anyway, I am now in Lithuania! After a flight to New York, a flight to Finland, and a final flight here, we were all exhausted. The total time was about 14 hours in the air. We left the training center at 5:00 am on the 28th and arrived in Lithuania at 9:00 am on the 29th. There is a 10 hour time difference here. We got into the airport and were welcomed by a few people, and we went on to baggage claim. Everyone grabbed their bags and left, I stood there waiting until the belt stopped and then realized that my bag was not coming. So, I got one bag, into which I had luckily packed all my workout stuff. But my other bag has yet to be found. It is a little rough without sportsbras and underwear, but I am borrowing sports bras and if you saw our LBJC varsity shirts, you know that I will be fine without the other... :) Then, after I switched numbers with the airline, we all loaded a charter bus and drove to the hotel. We are staying at the Holiday Inn. It is so nice! We are staying two to a room and we each have our own bed. The eating is buffet style, but the food is okay. They have different food, so we are adjusting. For instance the first day they had some sort of magenta soup, we skipped that. After we had lunch on the first day, we went back to our rooms. We were only allowed to nap a little, for purposes of acclimatizing, getting used to the time difference. So, my roommate, Rachel, and I fell asleep after she set her alarm. We were supposed to be back on the bus at 4:00, too bad we woke up to a call from Robbie at 4:05 telling us to hurry up. We ran around putting on spandex, and ran out of the door. As we got on the bus, everyone stared at us and Robbie told us all that the next time anyone is late, the bus will leave without them. And he added that a cab ride to the course is expensive. We were not the only ones who were late, so it wasn't as bad. The course is 40 minutes away. It is nice. There is a red brick castle that overlooks the race course. It looks a lot like SW Regionals set up. It has a 6 lane buoyed course. It has a platform to start off of, and a tower where the announcement will be made. There is a system of lights that we will start from. We have now had a few practices. We are rowing in a brand new Millennium with new oars as well. The boat is real nice, but a little harder to set up. The first day here we rowed 4k steady state, not too hard, but we were all exhausted from the flight. Yesterday, we did 12k steady state, mainly trying to get back into the swing of things and adjust to the boat. Today, we did 40 minutes of 20 strokes on, 20 strokes off,at 36 spm and above. Then we did drills. Robbie went out with us today in a launch, but it was probably the last time he can go out with us. So, we are going to rely on our coxswain a bit more. I am typing from an internet cafe, and since we are only having one practice a day, I feel that I may be in here a lot. If anyone wants to e-mail me, feel free to. My email address is Teshirow@aol.com. I will be thrilled to receive anything! There is not too much to do here. There is a pool hall, and some stores. The are quite a lot of sports stores here and a lot to discover still. Okay, well that's about it. Bye. Monday, August 5, 2002; Trakai, Lithuania We are now coming close to race day. We race in 2 days, so Wednesday at around 4:30. There are 10 boats in our category. So, it will be two heats of 5... the winner will advance directly to finals. Then, everyone else will row in the repechage. Then, the top two boats from each rep. will advance to finals. So, there will be six boats in the final. We have gone over our race plan, and have gone through a visualization. We are ready. We have opening ceremonies tonight. It is being held in the Trakai Castle. I do not know exactly what goes on there, but we'll see. We did test starts today with the lights and the starter. It was okay, nothing we cannot adjust to. Our starts are not too good, but getting better. We are more strong in the base of the race. We did two 250m peices off the start, which were all right. Then, we did a 500m piece as if it was the final 500m. It felt strong, but a little rushed. We are tapering, so that was our whole workout. We are only doing one 500m piece. Then, we will be ready to race. Now, all the teams are here. The Lithuanians are really nice and talk to us all the time. Everyone else seems to just keep to themselves. There is a Russian eight who rows in a bowloader eight without a cox box. It is so bad. The coxswain is so loud. Well, I will update everyone in a couple of days how the race went. We have a week left here. See you all soon! Saturday, August 10, 2002 So, on Monday night we left our hotel at 7:00 pm and went to the Trakai Castle. We walked into the center of a huge opening in the castle, and everyone was segregated into their nations. Then, people were running up and down the center with their flags, chanting their country's name. We did the same. It was quite intense. People were rubbing their flags on each other. Then they had this dramatic sword fighting going on. Important people came up and talked in Lithuanian and English. But, we couldn't hear it since the Romanians were in front of us goofing off. One by one each country was announced with their flag, until they went through all 40 something countries. Then, fireworks went off. And then, music started. Everyone was jumping around dancing. Liz, Abby, and I all joined the French team in dancing in a huge circle. Everyone was bumping into everyone. It was crazy. Then suddenly the music stopped and we all left. We went back to our hotel and rehearsed our race plans and went to bed. The next morning we woke up at a casual time of 9:00 am. We mainly hung around the hotel doing nothing. We stretched and ate though. Then, around 2:00 pm we left for the race course. We had a little down time, then warmed up and stretched for about a half hour like usual. Next, we weighed our boat. Then we went out on the water. Our warm-up was a little different because of the heavy boat traffic. After some steady state and some tens, we did a couple starts and headed to the line. We were extremely early and sat at the catch position squared and buried for 5 minutes straight. Ugh... then, he called two minutes, polled the crews.... United States, Germany, Belarus, Romania. Then, he said "attention." The red light came on. We secured our blades in the water. The green light came on with a beep. We started. From the start we were down on every boat, and continue to let them walk through us. We tried to get it back many times, but the other teams walked and walked and walked. We stayed last to the end. We finished fourth, sending us to reps. This was just like our time trial four weeks ago. Same time, same feel. We were put against the crews with the best reputations. All of those crews medaled last year. We needed to make finals. We were not at all satisfied. That night we discussed a new plan of action. We were going to race it like a 1500m piece, and hold on at the end. We also decided to take a 300m-700m in push. We decided that we need to get our bow into position in this part of the race. We thought of it as flying without dying. We woke up again at a lazy 9:00 am, but this time, we got out of the hotel, and took a walk to the internet cafe and to some stores to wake our bodies up. We all heard about how one girl in our eight was up late the night before til 12:30 am. I was outraged. I thought it was unfair to the team, to take the night before what was going to be one of the biggest races and not get rest. I did not say anything to her because at the time I felt we needed to stay together, not get upset at each other. With this at the back of my mind, I had a hard time concentrating on the race, but I forced myself to. We left a little earlier to stretch more, and not feel so rushed. We left the dock and did our proper warmup. We got to the start, waited until the 2 minute warning and then sat ready. the crews were polled again. United States, Belarus, Lithuania, New Zealand - 2 to qualify. We started. We were down on Belarus, but not by that much. We got right into it and walked on Lithuania. We were now in the final, we just had to hold on. Kate, the cox had the 7 seat, and we were still walking. We got the the thousand meter mark, we were on their four seat. Still walking. We knew we had it. We finished. We are going to FINALS!!! Thank god. It was an overall shakey race, but powerful as hell. (Ian's note: The winner of the rep., Belarus, was later disqualified for having an underwieght boat. The US was declared the race winner and Lithuania moved into the second qualifying spot). I really have to be going. Tell you more later. We race at 4:55 today. We are going for a medal. bye. Saturday, August 10, 2002 Hey everyone. I think this may be the final entry. So, today was the last day of racing. The day started with petite finals (places 7 - 12), where the US women's coxless four placed second (8th overall). And then, the grand finals came in the afternoon. The pair placed 5th overall. And my boat, the eight would be the second to last race of the day. We woke up around nine, ate breakfast, then lunch, then left the hotel at 1:30 pm. We got to the race course to see the pair finish. Then, we warmed up and stretched. Next we weighed our boat. We had a visualization in the gym we were stretching in, then went out. We got on the water, and conditions were horrible. There was a bad head/cross wind. But, this was the same conditions we had battled with all summer at the Olympic Training Center. We warmed up the same as usual, and headed to the starting line. The crews were called, Lithuania... United States... Russia...Romania.... Germany....Czech Republic. We started. From the start we were in last, we then moved on Czech, and then Russia caught a crab at about 1000m in. They lurched really far back and decided not to finish the race. With 500m to go we were in 4th place holding steady. This was not good enough. We wanted a medal. Then, with 250m to go we walked from two seats down on Lithuania to about 8 seats up. It was incredible. Then, we went to the winners dock and watched the guys eight race, who also got third. Then they put us on a red carpet and announced our names and put our medals around our necks. They are nice. The medals are bronze, of course, with the FISA oars on the front, and on the back it has writing in Lithuanian, that basically says, CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD. It is pretty sweet. Next our flag was raised along with Romania's and Germany's. I almost cried. It was so nice. Tons of pictures were taken. Then off to our dock. We docked, gave Robbie some high fives, and took the boat in. After that we went to trade all our gear before the Worlds party started. It was fun, but there was not enough food. We were starving. Well, we got back at the hotel at 10 pm and showered and went out to eat. Then some of the team went to clubs, but I am exhausted, so I decided to write this. Well, a great end to a good summer. See you really soon.