Indiana University Athletics
Spring Break Rowing Diary: Monica Idstein
3/14/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Rowing
March 14, 2007
As Indiana's rowing team takes part in its annual Spring Break training trip in Clemson, S.C., select members of the team will be checking in with IUHOOSIERS.com to relay how the trip is going. The team will train in Clemson from March 10-16, and will race Clemson, Marist and Purdue on Saturday, March 17. Tuesday's journal entry comes courtesy of freshman coxswain Monica Idstein.
This morning in Clemson was rather chilly. We started off morning practice with adjusting everyone's finish angles in the two eights we took out. This will ensure that as a boat everyone is finishing each stroke at the same time. After this, we did a quick warm-up that went very well. We started off with a 10-minute piece of drills that I, being a coxswain, got to call. I chose to focus my drills on "body set." I asked the varsity coxswains for ideas for on drills and they were very helpful. The boat responded well to the drills and this was great to see.
Our next pieces all used different stroke ratings to see how the boat would respond. The main goal of the practice was based around finding our base cadence, or the speed that our boat will go during the upcoming races. Being the coxswain is very exciting in these practices, because you get to push the boat faster than they think they can go.
Today I was very pleased with my boat. Everyone rowed well and efficiently all through the high stroke ratings. We still have some work to do to make the boat even more set, so that we can go faster.
This afternoon we had off from practice. It was nice to get a break, especially for the blistered hands of many of the rowers! Many of us took advantage of this time to catch some sun and swim at the hotel. Luckily, the weather warmed up for us! Others caught up on some sleep and went shopping at CVS. It was relaxing and fun and I am sure we will be more than ready to go tomorrow! We're all excited and ready for our first race of the spring!
