Justin Stangel's race report

Justin was kind enough to send us an update on the racing so far and his plans for this afternoon.

It as has been a rough two months with work (about 40hrs a week) and training (plenty, trust me) so I haven't been able to keep in touch with friends/family/alums as much as I would like.

This morning was a lot different conditions from what we saw yesterday. After going from survival mode in the time trial and keeping it clean in a building tail, we had a slight cross headwind this morning and flat water. With only 10 boats it was two heats of 5 seeded from yesterdays time trial, top 3 go to the A final tonight. With a most of the crews coming from OKC, where I am currently training, we all kind of knew how each other likes to go down but still racing is racing... never underestimate your opponent.

We had a good clean start and got into a good rhythm early after the shift to race pace. From about 500 down we had about 1/2 to 3/4 length lead on the field and at 1000 we took a move to open a little water between us and 2nd and 3rd. From this point it was all about efficiency in the rowing that we really focus on the whole race, but with this being the heat it was about getting the final quickly but trying not to over exert yourself. Tom and I were both happy with the race and how its sets us up for tonight. The final goes off at 5:48 EDT tonight and can be watched live here: http://rowing.teamusa.org/live

The final tonight we definitely be tight from what the heats looked like, all the qualifying crews had a good margin over 4th and were all bunched together.

From here we are just staying off our feet and coming up with our game plan and getting ready to execute it. Conditions should be similar with a cross headwind but it is supposed to shift from NE to SE and will probably be nice and wet. After training in OKC wind does not effect us and we have trained in all conditions so nothing is new. I am really looking forward to some good hard racing tonight and excited to see all the hours of training come through.

Thats about it for now, good luck to all Cuse crews today I will try to keep up with results as best I can but will definitely check once I am done.

Was hoping to try and make it up tomorrow morning but I understand the move. Great to see the Goes Cup and the Stagg Trophy!! The Navy/Cornell duel was always the best of the duel season and I am excited to see it back in the Orange boathouse.