March 26, 2004

Throughout the season, members of the UNC rowing team will provide TarHeelBlue.com readers with an inside look at the Carolina program and the experience of being a varsity athlete at North Carolina. This installment, the 13th of the 2003-04 school year, is by Terry McCloskey, a junior from Charlotte.

The temperature has increased, the sun is shining, people are running to the boathouse...it can only mean one thing...SPRING SEASON IS HERE! As the rest of the students on campus begin to work on their tans, we begin working on shorter sprint pieces. We raced Clemson two Saturdays ago and came away with many things to work on. Our race was not exactly what we had hoped for but it made us eager to fix what went wrong so that the rest of our season can be a success! We spent most of last week continuing to decrease our fatigue levels from Spring Break training. We did some long, steady-state pieces in our set lineups so that we could all really gel as boats. We also took a 2K erg test on Wednesday. It was not our best test, but a few people set personal records, and everyone else was within a couple of seconds from their personal bests.

Our coaches have spent the past week getting ready for our one "home" race of the season. It will be on Lake Wheeler, and we will be racing Georgetown and Indiana. Last year we were just a few seconds behind Georgetown when we raced them so it should be a very close, good day of racing. The coaches have been putting in a buoy line at Lake Wheeler and had surveyors come in to help them. The surveyors were very excited because they had never done anything like this, so it should be a learning experience. This will be the first time that Carolina Rowing has hosted a 2,000-meter race.

On Thursday, we did our four 500s of the race, something we do every Thursday before a race. This is where you split the 2,000 meters into four 500-meter pieces and do each piece focusing on that section of the race (i.e. the start, second 500, third 500, and the sprint. Our coaches add the times of our 500s together to give us a time over 2,000 meters and the goal is to continue to get a faster time before each race. In both the varsity eight and second varsity eight, we posted the fastest times for us, ever! On Friday, we did our pre-race row over at Lake Wheeler and then we went to the Holiday Inn for our team dinner. They fed us lots of carbs to give us fuel for Saturday's racing.

I sit here with a full stomach, and a preparedness for a great day of racing. We race bright and early tomorrow morning. As spring season gets into full swing, juggling traveling and schoolwork can be difficult. But this is the fun part; this is what we all look forward to. This is when it all comes together, when all our hard work pays off. And I, for one, can't wait! Each and every one of us will go to bed tonight and dream of having great races and coming across the finish line first. Stay tuned next week for Julie's thoughts on our races.

From Coxswain to Bow,

Terry McCloskey