I built this on the five hundred metres nobody warned me about
Rowing looks simple from the bank: eight people, one rhythm, a finish line that doesn’t move. From the boat it is almost entirely about what happens when your body wants to stop and the race isn’t over — and nobody tells you that part in juniors, when everything is still about technique and effort and getting picked.
I found out properly in my first Olympic final, somewhere around the five-hundred-metre mark, when the plan I had rehearsed for years quietly stopped being useful and something much older took over. I have spent the years since trying to understand what that something is, and how to build it into a team on purpose, long before race day.
I am not a motivational speaker, and I do not tell rooms that pain is character-building. What I offer is more specific: what actually happens in the last five hundred metres of anything hard, and how to train for it in advance.
- Former Olympic-level rower (fictional games, not named)
- Team-performance consultant
- Speaks to sports, corporate and school teams on request
Selected for a national squad in her teens, and moved away from home to train full time.
A first Olympic final, and the five hundred metres that became the spine of this book.
Stepped back from competitive rowing to work with teams instead of just crews.
Catch — the handbook that came out of years of coaching other people’s teams.
The Last 500, and a full slate of keynotes for teams in their own last five hundred metres.