Oct. 16, 2002

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 seventh of the 2002-03 school year, is by Meredith McIver, a junior from Cincinnati.

Hello Carolina Rowing Fans!

The week of fall break is always a tough one at Carolina, with tons of midterms and preparations for the coming weekend making it hard to stay focused. But the Carolina rowing team definitely did not let this short, three-day week, hinder its training performance. It was a tough week for Carolina rowing and Coach Haney stressed the importance of being able to perform under any circumstances, so she scheduled our second 6K for Wednesday afternoon.

We started off the week with a return to our morning conditioning on Monday, after a week off from AM conditioning. Coach Haney wanted to see what kind of splits we could pull on a steady-state piece so she gave us a 40-minute steady-state piece. Steady state is basically an aerobic workout in which you try to maintain a certain split for a longer period of time. Coach Haney likes to say, "You should have enough breath to be able to talk, but be too out of breath to sing." She used our average splits from the 40-minute steady state as an indication of what we should be pulling when we do steady-state pieces.

Monday afternoon we were back on the water, continuing our focus on rowing efficiently in fours in order to increase speed in the eights. Rowing well in fours is definitely more difficult than in eights, since bigger boats are easier to keep set. Then, on Tuesday afternoon we were rained out and returned to the erg room for another fatiguing erg workout (of course, trying to bring down our steady-state splits), the afternoon before our 6K! But as Tuesday's practice ended and we got together for a hands in, Coach Haney reminded us how important it is to be able to perform at all times, especially under stress and fatigue, so we went home to hit the books and rest up for our second 6K of the season.

The novices took their first 6K test at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday and boy, were they impressive! They are right on our tails, with their average time a whole minute and a half faster than last year's novices. We are extremely excited to see them use this speed to kick some butt on the water! The varsity pulled through with solid performances, adding five personal bests. Most impressive was senior Mollie Silver, who had three midterms on Wednesday, while also managing to drop over 18 seconds off her previous best time!

As we cleaned off the ergs Wednesday afternoon after the 6K, Coach Haney announced, with a smile, that we were officially released on fall break. Of course, she didn't forget to mention that she had emailed us our workouts for over fall break. "You girls definitely deserve this break, but we don't want to lose our fitness and come back slow!" she told us as we left for our well-deserved long weekend.

Well, I'm sure my gym in Cincinnati will be glad to have me back!

Yours in Carolina Blue,

Meredith