Between the Buoys
Becky Wilde and Eve Stewart are Olympic, World, and European medallists. On Between the Buoys, they take you along for the highs and lows of life as a full-time athlete.
Between the Buoys
All things seat racing | Episode 7
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This week, as requested by you we're talking seat racing. Join Becky and Eve as they discussed one of the most challenging parts of the sport and offer their advice and memories from their time seat racing. As usual, there's a belter of a selection of listeners Qs to get through too!
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This week on Between the Boys we'll be talking all things seat racing. I'm Becky Wilde and I'm Eve Stewart and we're both Olympic World and European medalists for TV.
SPEAKER_02And this is our podcast about what actually goes on in our lives as TV growers. We can't tell you everything, but we can tell you a lot. Thank you, of course, to our sponsor, Rocket Coaching, for making this episode possible. Now sit back, grab a coffee, and enjoy. Okay, Eve. So this week we thought we'd talk all things sea racing. We did. And this has kind of come about, I guess, we're heading into the summer racing season. Selection is about to happen, both for us and crews across the country, and we've been asked quite a few questions about this topic, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we actually this episode thought we'd just let you guys steer it. Um, so thank you for the inspiration. Uh, as Becky said, we've got April trials coming up, which are well, it it's the sort of final trialling of the year, isn't it, in theory? And then the week after that, loads of seat racing. And I believe a lot of you guys have similar things going on. So we're gonna be talking a bit about how to manage pressure, how to mentally prepare yourself, and how to well get into it physically, I guess.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um, so the first question we were asked is um from Alice: what is your top tip for seat racing? Do you want to start with this one or shall I? Um, you go, you go. Gosh, okay. Top tip for seat racing. I think be prepared. And I think that's preparation, both in terms of like what kit you've got on, what snacks you've got for in-between seat racing, um, what strategy you're gonna use. Like, are you gonna have a race plan going into it, or are you just gonna turn up and row? Like, think about that, and then physically just like being ready, being warmed up for the first run. You don't want your first one to be the slowest one, you want to be ready, primed, ready to go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's such good advice advice, and I feel like just going off that. I know everyone like prepares for their seat racing differently, and there's not necessarily a right or wrong wrong way to do that, but I like to try like seat racing essentially is unknown. Like, you don't know how many runs you're doing, or we don't anyway, and you don't know who you're gonna get swapped with or when you're gonna get swapped. So I like to, in terms of okay, the night before, yeah, have my dinner, yeah, and then I lay out my kit for the next day. And in the winter, when potentially we're doing up to six runs in a day, or or maybe even more, that literally means I've got my my kit for my pre-row, and then I'll have eight sort of sets of outfits for like well, if something goes wrong, if you fall in, if you know X, Y, and Z happen, and I'll put them into little bags, or you could like wrap it inside your uni, and it's got you know, socks, sports bra, uni, short sleeve, long sleeve, splash jacket, yeah, headband if you want it, and I'll make these eight little pouches plus then eight sets of snacks or gels or whatever you want, and obviously eight is just a random number in this case. If you know there's four happening in a day, it would be four. Um, but just trying to take out like seat racing, those days are so stressful, aren't they? So it's like anything you can control and do before to make your life less stressful, like having enough unis is a big one, I think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that's it. I think it's controlling what you can control because there is so much out of your control on that day. So you say, yeah, just being like super prepared with everything that you can with your snacks and stuff. And I think what I actually links to that is also like your measurements, like you want to kind of do what setup you want in the boat. You don't want to get into the boat, be warming up, and suddenly realize that your feet are out of place. Um, so I think it's like yeah, being really clued up on that as well, because you want to be comfortable, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that's something that, like, you know, it doesn't need to be something stressful, but like maybe in the days prior, you know, whatever boat you're in, just making a mental note, whether that's taking a tape measure and actually measuring it out, or asking your coach to help you, or a cox or a teammate, or just any way that you can find that if you step into a different boat, you can make your step the same because there's nothing worse than getting into a boat in a seat racing swap situation, being uncomfortable, and then having to go and do your race when you know it's not your best sort of you're not set up for it well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you definitely don't want that to have the an impact on you. So I think yeah, having your tools and having all that as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I think I feel like one, and this varies a bit depending on in what boat you're seat racing. So I know at uni we sometimes would do swaps on the water where you know you pull your two boats together and you swap seats with people and then you go out. Now on the GB team, we always come on land and sort of change things. But either way, I think knowing what the race plan is. So whether that's you're in a double or a pair or a four or an eight, you know, having whoever was in that boat already, sort of just spending 30 seconds saying, Okay, this is what we're gonna focus on, these are the technical points, this is how we're gonna approach it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think, yeah, no matter how short it is, you can you still need to plan. Yeah, I think a uni, or maybe when I was on start, we seat raced once over seven, fifty metres, which is like nothing, but actually just still having yeah, still having that plan and being like really clued up with the other person is it just makes it so much easier, and you both know what you're doing, and you make it more like a race scenario in that situation, um, and just like making sure you're on the same page, the same as if you've not rode with them before. Okay, what are we gonna do to make this sync up really quickly? Like just yeah, trying to get that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, just trying to make that as clear as possible. Like essentially, the whole situation of seat racing is unclear, yeah. Everything is vague and it's stressful having that level of uncertainty. So just making it as making some things as clear as possible. Yeah. Also, I'm just realizing for some context, if people are listening to this, which I think some are who don't know about rowing. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02You should probably explain what seat racing is. What is seat racing? Seat racing, okay. So seat racing is quite literally swapping seats, it's trying to find different combinations that work. So you'll quite literally swap seats with someone in a different boat and see how well that combination goes against each other.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, or or in comparison to another crew. So you'll do, let's say, of crew A and crew B, whether it's side by side or in time trial format, they'll do a run of whatever distance that run is timed, and it's specifically about the difference in time between crew A and crew B. Because obviously weather conditions can change and blah blah blah. That's true. Then you swap athletes and you time it again, and you see if that time between the crews has got bigger or smaller. Yeah, you're much better at explaining it than me.
SPEAKER_02It's all about the data. It's all about the data. And it is probably the most complicated part of selection, really, I think. Like trying to explain this to someone who's not in the team and not in their own world, it's a bit it's hard.
SPEAKER_01It is hard. It's basically the a one way that obviously if you're in an A or a four, it's hard to figure out what an individual is doing, like what they're contributing to a boat, and it's essentially a way of finding out whether individual A or individual B can contribute more to a crew. It's who who's moving the boat the back. Who is moving boat crew? Um so yeah, just to uh brief, we should maybe start it with that. But anyway.
SPEAKER_02Sorry. Bear with us. Bear with us. Um okay, do you have any, I don't know, funny stories about seat racing?
SPEAKER_01I don't know if anything about seat racing is not funny to be honest.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh this hasn't happened to me, but and I guess it's thanks to preparation. I just remember at Leander, I'm not sure if you were in this pairs matrix, but um I was Amelia was, and it was um deep winter, like honestly, like freezing cold at Dawny. I think I was in my single, so the scullars weren't swapping around, but the pairs were doing a matrix, and Amelia and her partner pushed off the dock. One of them hadn't done the gate up, and they flipped the boat. The matrix had to be paused very briefly whilst they went and got some warm kit on and then restarted. Um and I just remember thinking, oh god, as if they have to continue.
SPEAKER_01I know it was one of those days where you're like, surely we're not gonna keep going out. It was like minus one January, maybe. And what an add-on to that story is that I think it was Juliet Perry and Susie Deere, also in The Matrix. They'd actually pushed off earlier, so I was still in the dock, saw them, these guys fall in and was like, oh well, we're gonna be a bit delayed. Juliet and Susie were in fact already like a K into the lake, so didn't see it happen. They got told sort of 20 minutes later, by which point I think at Dawny there's like a little like tunnel almost in and out off the course. They had pulled into here to find some shelter from like the wind and the weather, and we just sat there in this sort of under this bridge, just waiting for 45 minutes. So stuff like that happens, and it's again, it's you can't control that. I mean, you can maybe do up, make sure you do up your gate when you push off the dock, but yeah, mistakes happen.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and like Eve said, have your extra kit ready, yeah, have spares. If it's raining, make sure you're wearing a splash jacket. Like at least it's not freezing cold this time of year. But yeah, just making sure you keep warm you can.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think just with that, if you sort of think about, you know, we've talked a lot about fueling on our podcast. I think making sure that the evening before, you know, the lunch, the day before, the breakfast, and then during the day of seat racing, it can be really hard to eat enough, right? Because you're nervous the whole day. Yeah, yeah, and you maybe don't whether you're doing it as a whole session on the water and you're on the water for hours, that's how we did it at uni, or whether you're coming on land and then doing swaps, it's so important to keep eating, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yes, just little snacks here and there: a gel, a banana, some sweets, just keep it topped up because you don't want to get to the second, last run, or the last run and feel like you've got nothing left. You still want to be able to fire.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and keeping hydrated as well. Like, I've definitely in my early days of seat racing where I didn't really know anything about fueling, I've done it all on empty, and it you're just not making your life easier by doing that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's true. Seven some electrolytes, get some kaiju. Yeah. I would say not sponsored, but actually. Um, but we're gonna pause now for a message from our sponsor, Rocket Coaching. Between the Boys is proudly sponsored by Rocket Coaching, a UK-based performance coaching and development practice led by Ian Howe.
SPEAKER_01Rocket Coaching works with leaders and teams across organisations of all sizes, helping unlock true potential and deliver lasting world-class performance through a values-led human approach.
SPEAKER_02With decades of experience in sales, leadership, coaching, and human performance, Rocket delivers sustainable transformation for organizations.
SPEAKER_01Helping people perform at their best, not just in business, but in life.
SPEAKER_02Discover more at rocketcoach.co.uk.
SPEAKER_01Well, moving on from seat racing, but keeping with the general theme of chaos and scratch crews to a certain extent, we've got a great question from Lily, which was any any advice on how to feel prepared for races when you have not had much water time or time in your lineup?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's a really good question. Um I think I kind of look at it as you all want to be on the same page. So, regardless of how much time you've had on the water, you can still get that speed from just being clued up on what the plan is, what your technical points are, and how you're going to approach a race. And I think that really counts for a lot. It's just making sure all of you, whether that's a quad, an eight, a pair, know what you're going to do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I totally agree. And you know, ultimately there will be races where either maybe you've been put together really last minute or someone's gotten ill or injured and you've had to change things. Like, we can't control those those elements. But I think Becky, you're a hundred percent right. It's just having a clear plan. You can you're always in control of having a clear plan. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, as we all know in rowing, as long as even just like thinking about the same technical point can bring a few splits here or there. So definitely it's and well, I'm just sort of as I'm speaking, I'm also thinking this is where I think that training that you do as a whole squad in the winter is so important because if you have the sort of knowledge and belief that you've all done it together and you've worked really hard, you know, whether that's on a bike or a no, it doesn't really matter. You then also have that sort of trust in your squad that even if one or two people aren't the people you normally rode with, if you've been attacking all the same sessions together and you know being coached on the same technical points and believe in the same thing, it you should be able to change people in and out and still go fast.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think you can still make huge improvements in a short amount of time, like even if you've got a week leading up to the race. I so in Paris year, um Matilda and I basically had 10 days between Europeans and FOQR. Oh my god, I remember this. It's actually listen to this because this is crazy. So technically there was three weeks, but it ended up being 10 days because I had to have time out for wrist injury. Um, and when you factor in travel and taper, we honestly had 10 days to turn around a seventh place at Europeans to making the top two spots at FAQR. But we just decided that those 10 days we were gonna leave no stone unturned, and it was just like a mantra of no regrets. We were gonna get better by half percent every day, whether that was mentally, physically, or technically. And we did because we had full trust in the programme. We knew that if we completed the program, we would get faster. Mentally, we worked so hard on like our race plan, we knew it inside out, back to front, and had like strategies for dealing with nerves, and then technically, it was all those little things, it was like the small margins that we could really like tidy up on, and we did turn ourselves around in 10 days, and that was the hardest thing that we did that season. But I mean, it got us to the Olympics, and yeah, if you can do it in 10 days, then I think you're gonna achieve a lot. So I would definitely yeah, take some motivation from that. You can make some huge improvements in a very small amount of time.
SPEAKER_01I agree. I I mean it's I don't really have anything to say on that. I think that yeah, replay that if you need if you need to sort of take a key bits away from that. Get a notebook out, yeah. Um, on to the next question, and this again ties into it. What is best to do on race day?
SPEAKER_02Oh, um, okay, race day. I guess if I was to give a tip, top tip, it would literally be preparation again. It would be like making sure that you have everything that you can control in your control. Actually, I think Helen Glover said this to us in a speech before Paris. She was like, expect three things to go wrong on race day. Like three things will be out of your control. Um, and they'll just happen and you just have to deal with it. And I actually can definitely at the Olympics and probably at Worlds as well. We had things that happen to us, whether that was boating late or uh forgetting a gel or something like that, and it's like, okay, well, deal with it, move on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, agree. And I think on that, what really helps me for you know, in the question, what is best to do on race day? The answer is essentially not to do anything different. Yes. Like, again, in the Olympic year, we had this sort of morning routine, and I'm not talking about like your skincare and your hair, although that was also probably very similar. Um, but you know, sort of when when you get up on a race day, what you eat for breakfast to a certain extent, you know, you sometimes can't control that when you're traveling, but you can keep it close enough, or whether you bring a bag of oats in in your in your bag. Um, but sort of getting up the same amount of time before a race, within reason again, don't wake up at 3am if you're racing at 7, but getting up at the same time, doing the same thing if you do a pre-paddle, just like making it second nature so that when it comes to that really important finals day, or you know, Henley final, whatever it is that you're training for at the end of the season, nothing has been left a chance, and you're not doing anything for the first time. Like get your first times out of the way in all the races you do at the beginning, figure out what works and then build on that. But by the time you get to that all-important race, you don't nothing should be left a chance. That is so important, so true, definitely. Um, then finally, and this is a bit of a broader question. We've not won many races as a boat club, but we do work really hard. What techniques do you have to keep motivation high?
SPEAKER_02I think it's very important to see how far you've come. Like you can definitely see improvements. You might not be winning, but you can definitely see your techniques probably changed. You guys will have got faster no matter what. So I think it's like taking heart from those improvements. And I would say keeping motivation high, enjoyment is really key to that, and definitely something that I have to make sure I'm doing is if I'm not feeling motivated, I'm like, well, what enjoyment can I bring in? What can I go back to? So I think just keep enjoying the sport because I do think a happy boat is a fast boat.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I agree. And I like when I was at the University of Iowa, we had some amazing races where you know we'd upset Princeton or Yale or Michigan, and that was like the ultimate high. But we also had races where we didn't do that, you know, we weren't a team that was like coming first to NCAAs, but that didn't really matter because we'd set sort of you know that thing of setting small and achievable goals, because then you can leave, even if you haven't won the race, being like, Well, our goal was to do this and we did that, so yay us, let's get some ice cream, yeah. Um, and just you know, if you're a crew that's not always winning, and your goal is to just go out, do something completely different, and win the race, it's probably not realistic, and it will leave you feeling deflated. So I'd say, as a crew or as a club, or whatever, you know, whatever group of people you're around, set a goal that's achievable and just start chipping away at it.
SPEAKER_02Definitely, yeah. Small goals, chip away, and I think that really helps rotation. Okay, our next question is from Olivia. And this is actually a very funny one. Kiss, marry, kill, 5k, 30 rate 20, or 2k.
SPEAKER_01Well, straight away I'm killing the 5k. See you later. No chance. Don't like that. Um I might marry the 30 rate 20 and kiss the 2K. We're so different. But I don't know. Because the 30 rate 20 just isn't that easy, you know? And it's you can just do it, it doesn't really matter. Often, like some days you're good, some days you're bad. You can take the big chunks off it. And I like when I stop growing one day, there's a chance that if I want to get a good session in for 30 minutes, get good banks for your buck, you might do a 30 rate 20. I can tell you for free, I will not be doing a 5k or a 2k. So that's why I think a 2K, you know, it comes around every now and then, you give it a little kiss, and then you see it again next year. I don't know if I'll do any of them. No, I don't think so. Not necessarily either. But I'm just saying if there was a gun to my hands.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I think I'd I'd kill the 30 rate 20. Like I say, I just hate them, and you can't make them quicker. I'd kiss the 5k and I'd bury the 2K. No. It's over fastest.
SPEAKER_01No, no, no. Well, we can agree to display. Yeah, we're just different. And that's okay. Right, and then a final question from Ryan: How do you guys not feel so fatigued? I'm a rower and I always feel trashed.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. Um, I mean, I do often feel trashed. Um, I think I think it's important to remember that uh our state like we this is our full-time job, so like we also do not have other jobs outside of this that are making us extra fatigued. So we do have time to lie down in between sessions and at the end of the day. Um, for me, I notice when I'm really fatigued, I've maybe slipped up on my fueling. Um, I can definitely come in on a day, feel like I'm fine, crack on with a session, and then feel like I'm dying halfway through. And I'm then like, okay, well, did I eat enough for breakfast? Did I eat enough the day before? Have I stepped up on that? And that for me is key to not getting too tired.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I totally agree. I think you know, if you're feeling training benefit and you're trying to get fitter, you're gonna have to be tired at some stage. That's just part of it. But it's sort of starting to learn what's within your okay range if tired. You know, if you're we I like to send them say, like, I feel like I'm about to fall off a cliff. Yeah. That's generally when you've gone over the red line and you probably need to reel it in or, you know, spend some more time sleeping, eating, whatever, doing some recovery. But it's it's such a hard question to answer because there's not there's not a black and white answer, but it's just kind of learning. Your own boundaries and learning when you can push them, and if you want to push them, how you can do that, and that ties into the fueling, I think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And I think as well, just outside of sessions, just making sure you're looking after yourself. Like if that means lying horizontal for a few hours every day, then great, do that. Um, that's something I definitely need to be better at, is just like really chilling out. Um, so I think it's just conserving conserving your energy where you can.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, totally agree.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, and that's probably it for what we've got time for today. But just want to reiterate that we do appreciate all the lovely, lovely messages that you guys send in. So please keep doing that because your questions are great and it's just really nice to hear how many of you enjoy listening to the podcast.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we really appreciate all the support. Um, and yeah, it's been great so far, so thanks.
SPEAKER_01It has. We will see you next time for a closer look into what the international racing season has in store for the GB team this year.
SPEAKER_00We're back for season two, so come join us for all the latest news, interviews, and opinions from the world of Australian rowing.