2018 Perago Trust grant recipient William Thompson provides an update on his training and competition goals heading into the World Junior Rowing Championships:
Dear Perago,
I am writing today to update you on how my training and preparation for World Junior Rowing Championships.
We came into Camp on the 3rd of June and since then we have been busy training twice a day and completing school work in between these sessions in Cambridge.
During the last weekend of June/ start of July we competed in a mini regatta run by Rowing NZ to get some racing experience. We raced against the NZ under 23 team. This gave us an indication of where we were and what we needed to work on leading into World Junior Champs.
From then we have continued training and completing school work.
One obstacle we have had to deal with is the heavy fog in Cambridge. Due to not being able to see through fog we can not get out on the water until it has cleared. Therefore many morning trainings have been moved indoors onto the erg or watt bike which is not ideal but still keeps us in a good physical condition.
This is the final week of training at Lake Karapiro before we depart for Prague, Czech Republic on Sunday at 8.30 pm. This training week is amongst one of the hardest weeks of my life due to the fact that the coaches want us shattered by the end of the week to show we have worked hard and made maximum gains before jumping on a plane.
We fly to Dubai from Auckland on Sunday which takes 17 hours, we then spend another fie hours on a plane from Dubai to Prague. After this journey we will settle into our hotel in Prague and start acclimatising to The European clock and weather. Our race course is in Racice, a small town 30 minutes out of Prague.
We spend 10 days in Prague before we begin racing at the World Champs. Within these 10 days we train on a 2 kilometre long lake (length of the race) rowing up and down based off the program our coach has set. We spend the rest of our time hanging at our hotel making sure we are on top of our game (hygiene, nutrition etc). We get one afternoon to tour Prague but due to our main focus, which is world champs, we do not spend anymore time touring before the regatta.
So far, I have really enjoyed the campaign. I have made life long friends and have been pushed hard to reach my targets. Without financial support I would not have been able to have this opportunity. The other three boys I row with in the junior mens quad are great people and we have made a strong bond which helps when we come to racing. We will be racing approximately 26 other countries in our event which will provide very tough racing but we have set high standards we hope to push for and try achieve.
I will keep you up to date and will email again once we have reached our final destination of the campaign and how everything Is going.
Thank you,
Will Thompson