Kathy Brown

I row competitive crew for Stockton Rowing Club. We’ve been using e-gel before practices and on long training runs or erg sessions. We also use e-gels when we back pack because we can never seem to get enough calories. Recently we competed in US Rowing’s 2011 Southwest Regional Championships at Lake Merritt in Oakland. Each race is 1000m….an all out sprint preceeded by any place from 1000 – 2000m of warm up rowing. I rowed 4 races (a womens 4+ qualifier and final, a women’s 8 and a double scull) that day, (which is a lot) and each race time got progressively faster. Each race time was a’best’ for our club. Before each race I took an e-gel. I had a about 90 minutes rest between the first and second race., and about 2.5 hours rest between the second and third race. Between the third and fourth race I literally hoped out of one boat on the take out dock and ran to the put in dock and jumped into another, taking my e-gel and water on the way. This last race involved a 2 person scull rather than a multiperson crew boat. I had to really focus in this boat because I had just raced all out in the women’s 4+ final (we rowed a 4:03 and missed third place by 2.5 seconds) and I hadn’t rowed a double scull in over a year (this was actually only my 4th time in this type of boat). To make a long story short, my partner and I took the bronze medal, rowing that boat to a 4:08 finish IN REGIONALS!!!! I train hard and am in excellent shape but racing back to back like that is very tough….I believe e-gel helped me find the strength and stamina to row that last 1000m sprint all out.