Rower battles back, places third at Nationals

BY SABRINA BYRNES

Sudbury's Katya Herman placed third at the Rowing Canada National Rowing Championships recently after rebuilding her training from scratch after she was sent to the operating room in early spring.

The diagnosis: appendicitis.

After a solid winter of training, Herman had to have an appendectomy at the beginning of May. All her winter training gone, in an instant. Four pounds of muscle gone, as her body tried to recover. Ten weeks minimum, she was told, before she could even think about competing again.

Herman wouldn't hear of it.

"I knew that US Nationals was eight weeks from my operating date and I said 'no, I'm going to race US Nationals,'" Herman said, even though the doctors told her that might not happen.

"I was determined to do it."

Determination is in her blood. Especially when two years prior, she was told she may never row competitively again after she had a severe back injury with herniated and bulging discs. After a solid dose of physio, she got back on her feet and proved them wrong, which she has done again.

Herman did make it the US Nationals, which were held in Princeton, New Jersey, after being in her boat for only three and a half weeks after her surgery.

"I was just determined to race and do as well as I could under the circumstances, just to get myself back out there," she said.

Herman placed sixth, which she said she was pleased with considering her situation.

She tried to keep herself moving right out of the hospital. She started slowly by sitting on a bike and moving the pedals with her feet, to sitting on the rowing machine and just moving her arms without getting her legs and back involved. Little steps to get the blood moving.

The pain had subsided a few weeks after her surgery, but she was hit with random waves of exhaustion that she had to work through.

After the US Nationals, the determined rower raced the season in Ontario, competing at different regattas, followed by the Provincial Regatta and the Ontario Championships, in which she placed second in both the light and heavyweight single. Herman placed third at the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta in August, and then prepared for the Nationals the last weekend of September.

Since her surgery, Herman had to start her training all over again. She said your winter training is your base, and she had a lost all of that.

"The saying is, 'races in the summer are won in the winter,'" Herman said.

"At the National championships I think I surprised myself and other people. I went in feeling good."

The first race at the Nationals was a time-trial, where the top ten would go onto the semi-finals. Herman won the time-trial.

The top three of two semi-final races would go onto the finals.

Herman won her semi-final and had the best time out of both of the semi-finals.

At this point, Herman said she was thinking that she just had to go for it.

"I went in with the thought that I'm just going to take the risk and blast out of the gates and make them chase me," she said.

"I went out super hard, kind of uncharacteristically," she said. Herman was first off the start, but had dropped to third by the halfway mark.

"Overall it was still an awesome race."

Herman said Lindsay Jennerich, who won the gold in the race, is a two-time gold medalist winner at the world cups this past summer and she was the spare for the Olympic lightweight double, which won bronze. "She ain't no slow poke," Herman said laughing. "She's absolutely world class."

Herman said she and Jennerich had been friends for a long time and used to train together.

"To share the podium with her was extra special, and to earn her respect again as a competitor," she said.

Herman has been rowing for 18 years and is a currently a student at Queen's University, earning her PhD in Physical Activity and Obesity Epidemiology.

She helped start the Sudbury Rowing Club in 1991, and has been coming home for the past four years, helping to coach at the end of each summer.

This summer, since she was still training, she coached about three mornings a week while getting herself out on the water twice a day.

"I attribute a lot of my success at the National Rowing Championships to having made that decision to do my training in Sudbury," she said.

"People at the Sudbury Rowing Club are absolutely amazing. They were completely welcoming and went out of their way to make sure I was at home and had everything I needed."

Herman said Lake Ramsey is a "very happy, relaxed, stress-free environment to train in."

While Herman rows for Queen's in the fall and the Kingston Rowing Club in the summer, Sudbury is still home to her and she said she looks forward to coming home at the end of each summer to help coach.

Herman's next goal that she has her eye on is the Head of the Charles Regatta, which takes place in Boston, Oct. 18 and 19.