Rep n' Roar

My second trip down the course went a bit better than the first. As an athlete, you can't ask for much more than to improve your performances as you progress through your career, so to have made a substantial change from our heat to the rep feels great as we head to the Final.
As I reported back after the heat, Ellen and I were a little disappointed with how we raced. There were things that we identified immediately as being weaknesses that we wanted to eliminate for the repechage in order to have the best possible chance to qualify for the final. The focus we added to our off day and the work that we did paid off and the changes stuck. We had a great piece in the rep and even though it still wasn't perfect, we feel good about having made positive change, and about our abilities to continue to do so for the Final.
And let's be honest: we're going to need to have our best race in order to achieve the result we want in our Olympic Final. We are lining up against the five other fastest crews in the world, all of whom are very tough. It is my personal opinion that to count any one of the six boats in the race out of the medal hunt would be an enormous error in judgment. From Munich to Lucerne to Poland, all six of us have gone back and forth with good performances and bad; so-and-so beating what's-her-face and then coming back the next regatta only to get dusted. So who knows? I think our final is going to be a really great race all around for all three medal positions. I certainly don't count us out, and I certainly don't underestimate the abilities of the other women in my event, all of whom have had great showings this season and all of whom seem to have a trick or two up their sleeves.
As a not-unrelated aside, I will finally put out there that no United States open women's double has ever won an Olympic medal. That, and the highest a US double has ever placed at a World Championship event is third. Thanks to Ellen's pre-Beijing research, we have kept this trivia mostly to ourselves to this point. But coming into the Final it is difficult to ignore that we have a very unique opportunity before us, and you can bet that we are going to do all that we can to seize it.
Finally, two more things before I head to lunch:

First: despite the stink about socks having to match for racing (can TV viewers at home even see socks from the aerial camera??), I haven't been able to keep mine on for a whole practice lately because of the shoes in our boat. If you catch us at the starting line before our race and see me peeling off my socks, know that it's not superstition, it's necessity.

Second: My sincere thanks to both USRowing and the USOC for taking the time to give us brief but useful media training. I am proud that my USA crewmates have presented themselves in a dignified and controlled manner when addressing the press and have been able to keep their disrespectful and blatantly rude comments about other crews to themselves.

See you out there,

--MK