leaving the party

As I rode the elevator with some Germans in the 8+ this morning, we bantered about the racing. They said "ya, you got ze party heat!". With 5 fast boats, it felt that way. Until the 1000m mark. Craig, my stanford coach, always talks about "leaving the party" with a move. Thats exactly what we did. Canada and Estonia were about 3 and 5 seats up on us at the start, and we clawed back even about 750 in. We then took a very powerful move across the thousand to take control, and leave the party. Charlie was whooping his war whoops, and the boat RAN. It felt easy. We then just sat on Canada, without sprinting, to win the heat by three seconds! This is why I race! It feels so good to be in control, and to have the power to move the boat. My body is tired, but my spirits are high. We had the fastest time of the day by two seconds, so we feel pretty good. We just need to carry this momentum through the semifinal and final.

a couple of highlights from the day (besides winning):
- Henrick (four seat) yelling at 1250 in, "we...(pant)...are...(pant)...the fastest...(pant).........boat in the world!". Pretty premature, immature, and ridiculous, but highly amusing nonetheless.
- Hearing Will Crothers (canada's stroke and Washington rower) yell "yeah Rob, thats it!" right before we walked through them. The amount of talking in that boat during the race blows my mind.
- drinking coca-cola which uses sugar instead of corn syrup
- trying to explain what Kinder Eggs are to a woman in the grocery store, and having her lead me to the alcohol section instead.

As I said, I am pretty happy, and it will be nice to have a day off tomorrow. However, it was only a good start to the weekend, and we need to keep bringing it for the rest of the weekend. good things.