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SHB-EIT sports scholar Aimee Fisher

September 30, 2014

aimee fisherWell that’s the end of my first season as a full-time athlete in the Open Women’s K4 and what a fantastic experience it has been.

Our international season started in April at World Cup 1 in Milan and then World Cup 2 at Racice in the Czech Republic.  Then we came home with satisfying 5th and 7th places to prepare for the World Championships in Moscow.  After a solid training block in Auckland we flew to Portugal for three weeks training and in early July we went to Moscow.

Our World Champs started with a tough heat that didn’t include a single crew we had beaten before.  We faced falling at the first hurdle but our training showed and we managed 4th in a new Personal Best.  We were through to the semi-finals later in the day.

We needed to make the top three in our semi to progress to the A Final.  It wasn’t to be…  We had a great race and set a new PB but could only manage fifth (0.7 sec off third).  We had a rest day before our B final on Sunday and I needed every moment of that time to recover.  That night I resorted to pain killers to sleep, happy that we had taken ourselves to the very limit.

Our B Final on Sunday was a disappointment.  We didn’t find anything like our best and finished fifth behind Australia who we had beaten all season.   I haven’t dwelt too much on why we had such a poor final. We are a very new combination and I am sure that with another year of training under our belts we will qualify the boat for Rio in 2016.

And despite finishing on a disappointing note, this has been the most rewarding six months of my career.  I’m so much fitter, stronger and more professional than I was when we began this journey.  And I enjoyed the training and racing in a way that I haven’t experienced before.

I was asked what I learnt from the campaign and my answer was “a lot…but mostly courage”.

At times I have doubted whether I could be a champion because I couldn’t handle the pain that comes with racing.  So often there was something held back to get me through to the end of the race.

A defining moment for me was a K4 session with eight reps of 500 metres at VO2 pace (eight full-on races…one after the other), a horrid session where the pain seems endless.

The coach kept saying “don’t count the reps, make them count”, and halfway through something in me clicked.  I let go and attacked the session, giving it everything I had, not worrying about the reps to come.  And then I started grinning and suddenly I was on fire. Evidently when we smile we automatically produce endorphins which make pain much more bearable.

Another key I learnt was to focus on my role in the boat…the first 150 metres.  I am the power paddler in the crew and my job is to lift the boat off the line and power us up to speed (and then hang on for the last 70% of the race).

When we lined up for races all I thought about was the start… not the end or how much I was going to suffer.  Then on the start line in Racice I let myself think about the end of the race, I thought about the pain but I didn’t mind.  I just accepted that I was going to suffer and then switched my focus back to the start, my role in the boat.

Well, right now it’s a few weeks rest from training to catch up with my EIT work and then I start preparing for National competition which gets underway in October.  I can’t wait to get back racing K1 where I can test all I have gained against our World Champions, Lisa Carrington and Teneale Hatton.

I doubt that I will win a single gold medal in the next few years.   I won’t be racing my Under 23 age group (locally or overseas) and I have the privilege of racing World Champions at home.  Our plans are beyond a team boat at the Rio Olympics and about Tokyo in 2020.  For now I will make the most of World Class coaching and competition.

Thank you so much to everyone who supports me in the Bay.  The Jarrod Cunningham Trust, the  Stars Fund (and the businesses that drive it),  the Hastings RSA, Sports Hawkes Bay and EIT.  And especially Aspyre Fitness and the wonderful people there.  Owner Jaime Loughron took me under his wing when I was 15 and since then someone is always available to train me and keep me safe.  What a massive advantage this support has been.