A Day in the Life of Sam Lynch

2001 world champion in the lightweight men’s single scull – Ireland’s Sam Lynch – reports on his typical day combining medical studies and a tough training regime.

“I am not a full time rower and, like many others, balance training with full time study. This means that for the 35 weeks of term life is a sprint with each minute accounted for.

Each weekday morning I do a ninety-minute steady state session. Twice a week this involves running to university, a bag full of books and dry clothes on my back. The other three mornings I drive to the club for either rowing or erg. These mornings normally start at 6.20 and involve two minutes of cursing at the clock followed by a five minute dash around the house before setting off safe in the knowledge that the other people in the house are wide awake at least an hour before they need to be.

By 6.50 the session has started. Ireland, wind swept as it is, is not very conducive to rowing in January and February so most of these sessions have been done on the Row Perfect erg. At about 7.30 my brain kicks into life and I spend the second half of the session planning the day.

By 8.50 I am showered and in college sitting down to breakfast, made so much more pleasurable for training on an empty stomach. 9.05 usually finds me sneaking into the back of the anatomy lecture hoping we do not have the head of the department who, despite being the national team doctor, refuses to accept training for the worlds as a valid excuse for my lateness.

The next nine hours are spent in lectures, labs or the library and, apart from a twenty-minute lull around midday when I can’t keep my eyes open. The day flies and 18.30 finds me back at the club for my second session.

Three days a week I do weights, one strength session and two endurance sessions. The other two days I do intervals on the erg. Standard sessions include 15 times 500m with one-minute recovery, 4 times 5 minutes with 3 minutes recovery or 5 times 8 minutes with 2 minutes recovery. Regardless of the interval the session is always hard. I do them with Niall O Toole (world champion in the lightweight men’s single in 1991) and after each session there is a winner and a loser. Heart rate monitors are only used here to record how high the heart rate went.

By 21hrs I am back at home making dinner and apologising again for waking everyone. Depending on the proximity of exams another hour with the books is sometimes needed but, more often than not, the TV wins. By 22.15 I am in bed looking forward to another day. The weekends are a little more relaxed. I travel to Blessington Lake 30 km outside Dublin where I do two sessions in the boat each day, weather permitting.

I have tried full time training, once in 1996 and the second time in 2000, and can honestly say I prefer my life as it is now. I have two lives with responsibilities and friends unique to each. This means that I always have to focus on what is at hand rather than thinking, talking, obsessing about rowing all the time. The time I spend training is more pleasurable now and I appreciate the summer months much more, when all I do is row.”