BBC - Beth Rodford

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2009-10-29T16:50:30Z

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Happy campers

2009-08-20T09:26:50Z

I've spent the last week in Varese, Italy on our final training camp of the year before the World Championships in Poznan, Poland, which start on Sunday. Our preparation has been divided into three phases, the first of which is the hard work bit.

For the past few weeks since our last regatta in Lucerne we've been training hard and working on improving our technique, to gain as much boat speed as possible.
The women and lightweight teams spent two and a half weeks in Breisach, Germany where we did lots of long mileage water and erg (rowing machine) sessions - a perfect opportunity to work on all the small technical improvements that we've needed to address.

]]> During the seven week period of World Cup racing we focus on going fast during racing and working on our crew faults to get that speed. Now that we are back in full training we can look at our individual faults. It's a physically and mentally tough time but an essential one.

Breisach is a small town on the Rhine in south Germany on the boarder with France. The town itself surrounds a hill on which the cathedral and town hall can be found along with our hotel.

It's a typical old area with cobbled narrow streets leading up the hill which wouldn't normally be an issue but our mode of transport whilst in Breisach are "happy shopper" bikes, complete with limited gears, bells and the occasional basket. Climbing up the steep cobbled hill on our bikes from the river to the hotel definitely adds another training session into the day and several people opted to lock their bikes at the bottom and walk up!

During a typical day on camp we cover about 20km on the water, followed by a weights session to maintain the strength we have built up during the year, then lunch and finally another 16km water session or 18km on the ergs.

The workload is tough and the heat makes it a lot harder. The first week of camp is OK but after that it starts to catch up with you and most people can be found sleeping in any free moment they can find. Otherwise, you'll find us watching numerous DVDs or reading vast numbers of books. It's all about mentally switching off from rowing in our 'down time'.

The more popular series seem to be medical or crime dramas. CSI and House are both popular choices and it helps that there seems to be a never ending supply.

Our self-appointed crew entertainments officer, Sarah Cowburn, has managed to so far watch two full series of Greys Anatomy since we've been away and. I'm fairly sure that the book shops are making a good profit or us all as many of us have made good use of the 3-for-2 offers and have also raided the charity book shops across the Thames Valley.

Phase two is the race practice part, which saw us move to Varese. We train from Varese Rowing Club and use their 2km course on Lake Varese for our race practice.

The lake is quite large and it means that during a session you are unlikely to meet any other crews and can avoid the wash from other coaching boats. This is where it gets exciting and we put all our hard work to the test by challenging it in race situations.

Our aim is to race at about 35 strokes per minute, that's less than two seconds per stroke. That's when our technique is most likely to fall apart, hence the need to practice racing.

We do lots of races of various lengths against the other crews in the team so that we can get an idea of our race speed. We generally race the lightweight men's double or women's lightweight quad. We are all slightly different speeds but with some educated guesswork about head start gaps it generally all works out OK.

The training load here is less than in Breisach but the intensity of work has increased so recovery is still really important. We also benefit from the hot weather, which is great preparation for Poznan.

This week we fly to Poznan for phase three, a few days of tapering and adjusting to the climate and surroundings before racing starts.

We know that the crews we will be racing will be making steps to improve their boat speed and racing tactics and it's important for us to do as much as possible to make bigger steps than anyone else.

We won't be able to influence the way anyone else prepares or races. The only thing we can do is to make sure that we do all we can.

Henley win boosts new-look crew

2009-07-07T15:55:35Z

It's been a while since my last blog entry and much has happened both on and off the water, with World Cup events in Spain and Germany and a win on home water at Henley Royal Regatta.

The Banyoles World Cup at the end of May was a tough weekend of racing to start the season, with some close racing in the double scull with Katie Greves, where we finished fifth, and a successful win in the quad with Anna Bebington and Annabel Vernon.

It was good start to our World Cup season and my first senior gold medal. It also was good to finally get some racing experience in a crew sculling boat.

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The following week found us back training at home in a new quad combination.

With Anna and Annabel staying in the double, Katie and I were joined Sarah Cowburn, who is currently studying at Durham University and was the GB single sculler at the 2007 junior World Championships, and by Ro Bradbury, who has joined the squad for the first time this year while studying Maths at Cambridge.

Having not had much time together we were on a steep learning curve leading into the second World Cup in Munich, where we would be racing unknown crews from New Zealand, Germany and China.

After coming second in the race for lanes, we had a much stronger race in the final, with the crew coming together more.

We didn't quite manage to catch the Germans but managed to hold on to second place in front of New Zealand. Not bad for a new crew: a silver medal for Sarah and Ro in their first international senior regatta, and a position World Cup series leaders for all of us.

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Our next event was Henley Royal Regatta in the first week of July, a race on home water and a great opportunity for us to represent our clubs.

The River Thames at Henley gets incredibly busy during regatta week, not only with rowing boats but also the pleasure-cruisers and skiffs that accompany many of the spectators, causing the water to become increasingly difficult to row and navigate.

HRR is a unique event in the world of rowing, steeped in history and tradition; one-on-one racing (rather than six lanes) against the stream (not a still-water lake), on a course that is longer than the normal international course (2,112m instead of 2,000m) and lined on each side by wooden booms and pillars, can put fear into the most experienced of rowers.

The regatta is a straightforward knockout event with the fastest crew progressing to the next day of racing.

The women's quad event, the Princess Grace, is limited to eight crews and this year had crews from China and New Zealand competing.

In the final we came up against New Zealand, the same crew we had raced in Munich.

They got ahead on the start as we struggled in the rough and windy conditions, but a slight change in the wind and a surge from us moved us through and into the lead approaching halfway, where we stayed to the finish.

Racing on home water in front of friends and family was great. It's a reminder of why we train so hard and commit so much time to rowing. It was fantastic to be able to race in my club kit and get my first Henley win for Gloucester Rowing Club.

But there is no rest after racing! This week we are in Lucerne for the last World Cup regatta of the season. The crew will stay the same for now and we can start the regatta with some very good racing behind us.

We'll meet some more unknown crews from the United States, Turkey and Belarus, along with crews from Germany, New Zealand and Italy.

With up to three races this weekend, it's going to be tough to recover from Henley but we are ready. I'm sure that there will be lots of close racing to end the Word Cup series and lead us into our summer training camps and eventually to the World Championships in August.

Watch Beth in action at the third World Cup regatta in Lucerne, live on the red button and BBC Sport website on Sunday, with highlights on BBC Two on Monday, 1300-1400 BST.

Two oars instead of one

2009-05-29T08:22:58Z

Hello and welcome to my first blog. For those of you who don't know anything about me, I'm part of the British rowing team and have been selected to compete in this year's World Cup series.

I went to the Beijing Olympics in the women's eight, where we finished fifth. I'm 26 and currently living in Reading although I'm originally from Gloucester, which is where I learnt to row.

After Beijing there were a lot of decisions to be made. I already knew that I wanted to continue on to London 2012 but how?

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For the past six years I'd been part of the sweep squad. This meant that I rowed with just one oar; in a pair, four or eight. For the last few years sculling has been ranked above sweep in the women's squad.

The main question for me, was did I want to stay in the sweep group or try to step up to the sculling group? I decided to embark on a new challenge for this Olympiad and try to make that change and adapt to sculling.

Our winter of hard training started at the beginning of November, with most of the time being spent at our squad training base in Caversham, Berkshire or on the river at Marlow, Buckinghamshire.

As always the start of the new training year was tough, this year especially so as we all took longer than normal off training after the Olympics.

We suffered a bit with the cold weather and managed to collect a few snow-related injuries earlier this year.

We did manage to get a bit of sun, though, when the women and lightweight teams went on training camp in Australia.

We managed to time our arrival with the start of a heat wave, and with temperatures hitting 40C, spent three weeks dragging ourselves up the black mountains on our bikes and suffering with the heat of the gym for our long sessions on the rowing machines.

Team morale was kept high with the occasional game of beach volleyball, a bit of surfing and a few kangaroo sightings, alongside the banter, which is always present.

The trials process for the GB squad for 2009 started back in December where I surprised myself with a win in the single scull, a result that I repeated in February at the second long distance trials in Boston, Lincolnshire.

Our last set of trials took place in April in Hazewinkel, Belgium, where we raced 2km (our summer racing distance). The racing is done in singles and pairs and this keeps the standard of competition very high and it's a strange combination of supporting our training partners but also wanting to win.

Katherine Grainger, who will race in the single scull this season, won the women's title. I finished fifth in a bit of a scrap for the line with Sarah Winckless, which put me in a good position to be selected for the sculling group.

Each year the international racing season starts with a World Cup series of three weekends spread over a seven week period.

The first regatta will take place this weekend in Banyoles, Spain. I'm racing in both a double scull, with Katie Greves, and a quad where we're joined by GB's other double of Annabel Vernon, who won silver in the quad in Beijing, and Anna Bebington, who was in the bronze medal-winning double.

Katie and I have been racing together in the women's eight for the past four years. Before that, we were in the GB junior women's four in 1999.

Racing in two events at the same regatta - or "doubling up" - is always a tricky decision. If all goes to plan then our finals will be only two hours apart, a quick turn-around.

That's not the only challenge, though. Training in two boat types requires lots of organisation and patience. We need to make sure that we give enough attention to each boat and that we do the right preparation for each one.

Sometimes that involves starting a training session in the doubles and then all coming together to finish the session in the quad. We'll be racing against each other and then two hours later we'll be racing with each other.

Banyoles will be my first international sculling race and I'm really looking forward to it. The entries this year are quite small with 10 boats in the doubles event and only three in the quad event.

In the doubles we'll be racing two crews from Denmark who recently competed at Essen International Regatta where they finished second and fifth.

In quad, which will be our last race, we'll be racing crews from Italy and the Netherlands. At this time in the season it is difficult to say what results we will be happy with because we don't know how fast the other crews are going.

After Banyoles it'll be back to hard training for a couple of weeks before the next World Cup regatta in Munich, June 19-21, and then the last regatta in Lucerne in July.

Our main event this year will be the World Championships in Poland which take place over the last week of August.

The World Cup regattas are a good way to see how everyone else is performing and which boat types they are focusing on. They are also a good way for us to get some competitive race practice.

Ultimately we are all looking forward to 2012 and every race brings us closer to racing on home water, although it's still a long way off!

Watch Beth in action at the Banyoles World Cup event on Sunday on iPlayer (available until 8 June).