I’ve been in Maine at the Northeast Rowing Center this week and won’t be home until Sunday afternoon (after which point I plan on passing out for several hours) so if you’ve emailed me this week I probably won’t have time, energy, or good enough WiFi to reply until Sunday night/Monday.

So I’ve been spending most of the summer going through pretty much every rowing-related bookmark, PDF, etc. that I have on my laptop so I can crank out some posts and get them queued to go up throughout the year. Several of you guys emailed me with some really awesome ideas that I plan on including so be on the lookout sometime over the next week for a follow-up email from me about that. If anyone else has ideas, suggestions, etc. for stuff to post about, definitely send me an email. My list of ideas can never be too long.

Starting next week, I’m going to be alternating when I post the FBF posts and these playlist posts. Both can be time-consuming to put together so hopefully spacing them out will make things a little simpler. The FBF posts will now have two weeks worth of old posts in them instead of one so they’ll be a little longer but since that seems to be a popular series I’m hoping no one minds the increase in length. Feel free to let me know what you think though.

I know a lot of people are racing at Club Nats today and this weekend so good luck! Hopefully the wind on Harsha is tamer for you guys than when I raced there – or at the very least, it’s a tailwind.

Did you see yesterday morning’s post? I got a couple follow-up emails and messages about this but I’m curious – is this something you’ve experienced or seen happening on your team?

If you’ve sent me an email or asked a question within the last week (or two…), keep an eye on your inbox this weekend. I’m determined to get everything posted and replied to by Sunday night. Have a good 4th of July!

Did you see the new recordings post that went up yesterday? There are three really awesome ones in there, including one from our repechage at IRAs. I also posted a couple new questions on Tuesday, one of which asks a really good question about eliminating rush on the recovery and finding a sustainable rhythm while still maintaining the appropriate pressure.

Also, because it’s summer, just a reminder that now’s the ideal time to take a week or so off from training and just relax, re-evaluate where you’re at with rowing (if necessary), etc. I’ve been getting some panic-y emails lately from both rowers and coxswains so I just wanted to remind everyone that your mental health is just as important whatever other training you’re doing right now so don’t neglect it. Where the mind goes the body follows.

New recordings post (and the first one in awhile!) will go up next week so keep an eye out for that. I’ve already got a couple recordings lined up but if you’ve come across any good ones (high school or college) this year feel free to send them to me and I’ll include them in either July or August’s post.

Everybody that’s racing at Youth Nats this weekend – good luck!

I didn’t anticipate how little time I’d have this year, especially this spring, to actually create content for the blog and instead of actually writing stuff I feel like I just collected ideas but never got around to actually doing anything with them. I want to spend the next several weeks just writing but I don’t want to post it all right away because I feel like I’ll end up in the same position next year as I was this past year, where it’s a Monday or Wednesday night and I’m freaking out trying to figure out what I’m going to post the next day. That was really frustrating, not just because I hate doing things last minute but also because I feel like the quality of the blog went down a bit because of it. Anyways, my goal is to get as many posts done and scheduled for next year as I can so I probably won’t be posting much outside of answering questions on here and via email.