Catching up Part 1: Women’s Head of the River Race

3 March, 2012:

I have never been so motivated in my entire life. WeHORR (Women’s Head of the River Race) pushed me to my point of physical stamina, mental strength, and determination.

We got to the boat house around 8:30am for the start of what would be a ridiculously tiring day. The boys were about to get off of the water from an outing in preparation for the Supaerowing event in Toulouse the following week.

All of the girls were getting ready to go out and prepping ourselves in the changing room. We went out to the boat and then fixed our foot plates and waited for the right time to boat. Pelayo was the nicest of all of the guys and stayed to get our wellies out of the boat, which made all of the difference with our time! We ended up paddling down the river to a little bit past the start line so that we could marshall before the start of the race.

We were 180 in the draw so while we were marshaling, we were able to see around 150 crews at the start! It was a crazy experience to see all of those crews go off and an even better experience watching the 20 crews in front of us do a hairpin turn at the exact same time.

And at that point, we were building up to the start. Power strokes were on and then we were off!

I can’t even begin to tell you actually what was going on during the race because I was too focused on my stroke. It sounds incredibly cheesey, but that’s the truth. All I can remember of the 7000m race was sheer pain and Val’s voice screaming different things throughout the 24 minutes. It seemed as though every 10 strokes we were told to focus on something new. Whether it was the catch, slide, recovery, stroke length it was anything to keep our minds fresh and off of the fact that we were rowing all out for so long.

The one distinct part of the race that I do remember was the crew that started at 181 that was trying to overtake us. It was a battle for about 2 minutes of bow ball to bow ball until our crew pushed so hard that we pulled back our lead. We kept getting further and further away from the crew and that gave us an even greater amount of motivation to keep going. This happened a bit early in the race but we just kept on going.

Ultimately we finished 202 out of 287 crews which far surpassed our original goal of passing 250. We also came in 11th out of 40 in the Novice Academic category and beat 39 Intermediate crews over all! I am so incredibly proud of LSE Women’s Rowing.

The pain and suffering and overwhelming joy of rowing for 24:09.10 made up for the 9000 m row back to the boat house.

Check out the pics!

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I could write this tomorrow…

But there’s no time like the present. Many a great things have been happening over the past week and I will fill you in on what they are!

To start off, if you haven’t read my previous post about Blink-182 and how I won two tickets to any show on their European tour, you should probably check that out. That pretty much covers Thursday. Unfortunately the day came to a low point upon finding out that my Grandmother Patricia Chartrand passed away. She had been suffering from a very aggressive brain tumour and it had finally taken over. In a way, I’m glad that it came quickly so that she didn’t have to suffer through the pain but on the other hand, I wish she could have had a bit more coherent time with Grampy. Hopefully all will be well.

Friday wasn’t a very memorable day other than some lovely banter before Macroeconomics class with Caroline, Nikita and Tom. I made sure to have an early night because I was looking forward to a day of rowing on Saturday!

Which obviously brings us to Saturday. Having not been out on the water since the middle of Michaelmas term, it was pretty safe to say I was anxious to get out for some rowing. I woke up a bit early, got a little breakfast and then took the Tube from Southwark to Westminster and then to Turnham Green to meet up with the girls to take the bus to the boat house. After a while of waiting for one of the girls on our crew to show up, we decided to wait inside of the boat house instead of the in the rainy and windy exterior. Then we got the black 8+ out and the rain lifted up a bit. We have two crews set for this term. One crew is training for the Women’s Head of the River on March 3 and the other is training for a race we are doing in Toulouse, France called Supaerowing the weekend of March 9-11. I should be competing on both crews so I have two races to look forward to towards the end of Lent term! Though, if we feel we are prepared enough as the Head crew, we might be racing in the Hammersmith Head on February 19. I thought that I had a very good outing for it being only my second time on the water and I’m looking forward to rapidly improving. If you want to check out the video of our first outing as a set crew here’s the link. CLICK ME!

After our outing, Caroline and I went to Giraffe and boy is that restaurant delicious. We shared Huevos Rancheros and a Cheesebuger with Sweet Potato Fries. We are planning on going back there after our outings on Saturdays for the rest of rowing.

Which brings me to Sunday! And Sunday was a busy day. I woke up to do some work for Monday (hell day) and then made my way over to Hillsong London. Welcome Home. I love Hillsong London with such a passion. This week was my first week serving on the One27 team to make the packs with service information and provision envelopes with pens that go on the seats. Because we have Church in the Dominion Theatre that is usually host to the musical We Will Rock You, it poses a challenge to balance the packs on the arms of the theatre chairs, but I managed to catch the hang of it. After a couple of hours of serving it was time for the 18:00 service, which is widely known as the Young Adults populated service. I was so excited for this week because Pastor Brian Houston, the Head Pastor over all of Hillsong Church who generally lives in Sydney, Australia, was in London to speak to us! It was a great message, great worship, great people. Everything about Hillsong is amazing. If you’re looking for a Church to go to in London, Hillsong is definitely the place to be. If you’re not in London (as I assume most of you aren’t) Hillsong Sydney does a live feed and there are many podcasts that you can find on iTunes. So much love. I’m also really looking forward to Colour Conference in the end of April for the Sisterhood of the Church.

And now it is Monday; the most extravagant day of them all! I started the day off perfectly with scrambled eggs on toast and a cup of joe from Frank’s, which is around the corner from Bankside. I brought last week’s copy of The Economist with me and had a nice 20 minute breakfast session before heading over to Peacock Theatre for Macroeconomics lecture. I was early today, it was very interesting. After lecture, I had a meeting with the other heads of Women’s Rowing to make sure that we were all on the same page with racing and the running of the club. It was very productive. Then, I didn’t have my Research Methods lecture because my professor was ill! (Get well soon Jordi!) Class for Microeconomics followed and then I had lunch with Nikita in the 4th Floor Restaurant where we had Chinese food to celebrate the Chinese New Year! I will most likely go to some of the Chinese New Year festivities in Trafalgar Square this weekend if I have some spare time. After hanging out with Wisconsin (John) for a bit and returning some books from the Library I made my way to Old Gym to record the men’s Erg session times. 3 x 2000m! Some of them rowed in their racing onesies which is always entertaining. Jean pulled a 6:50.1 which was rather impressive for the Novice team. After my ritual of £3 Subway meals, I came back home to go to the gym and do our scheduled Erg session for the day which was titled by Vicky as the 30 minute “Ball-breaker”. And what a treat that was! The pain will be felt tomorrow from 3 sets of 4 minutes at a rate of 20 strokes per minute, 3 minutes rate 24, 2 minutes rate 26 and 1 minute rate 28. All for training and improvement. It will be worth it. It WILL be worth it. Especially when we race in the 7000m Head of the River.

I just realised that I didn’t even get to the best part of today. How silly of me to forget. I filled out an application a couple of weeks ago to be a part of a program called the Global Poverty Ambassadors of 2012. Many of you who know me personally know that I am a big supporter of non-profit organisations focused on human rights and the eradication of poverty. I have been campaigning for the ONE Campaign and Invisible Children for several years and continue to help out where I can. The Global Poverty Project, in conjunction with The Co-Operative, is an educational and campaigning organisation that activates citizens to be a part of the global movement to end extreme poverty. I found out this afternoon that I was selected to be a Global Poverty Ambassador! I will be training to deliver the 1.4 Billion Reasons presentation to places in my community and elsewhere. Expect a vlog with the presentation! Not only will I be able to take a step up in my campaigning to fight global poverty, but I will be attending the launch of the Global Poverty Ambassadors at the LSE on Wednesday. You might ask, why is this so exciting? Bill Gates has chosen the launch of the Global Poverty Ambassadors to deliver his Annual Letter! I am incredibly thrilled to be a part of this momentous occasion and you can be a part of it to! Of course, the launch itself is closed to members of the general public, but there will be a live stream of Mr. Gates’ presentation of the Annual Letter and the launch of the Global Poverty Ambassadors! You can watch it HERE on Wednesday January 25 at 13:30-14:30. For you east-coasters that would be 8:30-9:30. It will be an event that you do not want to miss. I assure you I will have an update immediately following the presentation. There are 75 Ambassadors in the first group for the year!

As for tomorrow, because I decided to write this and prolong going to bed (it’s now 2:00am), I will get close to 8 hours of sleep and wake up at 10. Being the lucky duck that I am, I don’t have class or lecture on Tuesday so I don’t have to worry about anything! But because I am in training I am going to go for a run in the morning and then head to Uni to go to Rowing circuits and then get some work done. I’m also going to start a new page on my blog titled, Things I Love About London. Does that sound cheesy? Maybe so, but it’s not going to be your average work of fancy for architecture and such. Stay tuned.

I have included several links throughout this post that can give you more information to the organisations that I am a part of or events that I am taking place in.

That’s all for now!
Update on Wednesday, FOR SURE.

I’m a happy camper.–Kerry