The waiting is the hardest part....

That Tom Petty song is really the truth. We are in the final stages of selecting the team. Since I've come back to rowing last June (2007), I realized I had exactly 12 months until the Olympic team would be selected. I've made it through 11 of those 12 months, and the last one is without question going to be the toughest. We've got 8 guys in contention for the four that's going to race in China. The 8 guys we had in the fall and winter have changed slightly in terms of personnel, and we are all a lot better than we were... we all have our own strengths and weaknesses, and it's unfortunately not entirely clear yet what the best combination of four guys is going to be. So we are going and racing - a lot. And making line-up changes - a lot. Bottom line is we have to all bring our 'A' game everday. One bad day won't eliminate anyone, as we've all got a solid record from various points of the year - but a series of bad days right now would be pretty tough to recover from by the naming date, June 25, just over a month away.

We actually have a group going to Switzerland on Saturday - it's not the final group, but four guys are going to race at the World Cup to get us a data point. We are not primed to have our top performance at this race, but that's all part of the plan as we get ready to peak in August. But here's the kicker - we leave in four days and we don't actually know who is going yet. We were supposed to find out tomorrow, Wednesday, but it sounds like that won't be finalized. So we may not know until Friday....

Suffice to say there is a lot of uncertainty, but you learn to live with it and do your best everyday. I tell myself it builds character.

So my HUGE acquisition today was a few new belts. Since I am 'at weight', meaning I'm about 20 pounds lighter than I was in grad school a year ago, my clothes don't fit me anymore. I finally realized how annoying it was to walk around having to yank my jeans back up my waist constantly and that it wasn't really a good look to seem like you are wearing your older brother's clothes. So I picked up a few smaller belts and amazingly, my pants are staying up! It makes such a big difference after almost six months of being too preoccupied to address sagging clothing... Also, I broke down and bought a pair of jeans that I'll never fit into after I'm done training (waist 30), but it's satisfying to know that don't have to walk around looking like a clown in my clothes just because I'm training... really, I think this is most excited I've been in weeks - and I know that's really sad.

All right, going to try to head to bed - but it's going to be really tough tonight because we just had a racing workout this evening. It sucks having the hard workouts at night because we get so amped up and have so many endorphins flowing that it's really hard to get to sleep... so I'm preparing myself for tossing and turning until at least midnight, and might have to watch some pointless TV shows as I'm letting my brain settle in from a brutal session (for those of you who know your rowing, it was 2 * (3*750) w/2 minutes rest at 36 SPM, 5 min rest between sets).