NESurfski Downwinder

Hi guys,

Great day of racing today with my old training group of New England Surfski paddlers. Today was the annual end of the season Downwinder.  If you’re paddling in New England, you have to check out this series http://www.newenglandsurfski.com/ I was pumped this race happened during my end of the season 2 week break at home. So I went out and met up with the group today for one of the most epic New England races I’ve ever paddled.

Usually this race happens in Maine (Kittery-York), but this year, wind and swells were coming from the east northeast demanding a coastline that could match this angle. 24h in advanced, a Facebook blast went out announcing the course had been changed to the always-choppy Gloucester to Beverly (Massachusetts) coastline, about 10 miles. This stretch would promise a better downwind experience.

And man, it was a downwinder. We got a relatively protected start in the bay at Gloucester; then quickly hit confused waves as we rounded the corner and headed southwest towards Beverly. At first, we had wind chop heading in our direction while the ground swells were coming at us mostly from the side. This turned into a game of reading the small bumps through the big rollers if you hoped to get any rides/help from the water.

About a half hour into the race, everything adjusted to our direction. We had wind chop on top of ground swells and current all heading in our directions. The water was big and powerful with swells at 6-8 feet. So for this stretch, it was all about string together as many rides as possible while watching out for the occasional rogue wave. This is one of those classic examples of New England coast: islands and peninsulas everywhere. This topography caused us to occasionally get hit by an unexpected rebound wave heading in a weird direction. Consequently, this course required a lot of focus.

The field became quite spread out in the rough stretch until we eventually ducked behind a few islands and the course mellowed out a bit. The last 1/3 of the race felt like a flat grind, or maybe this was just by comparison with the first stretch of the race. A few daring paddlers took the wide course around the islands giving them a longer stretch of rides but also a slightly longer course.

I tried my best to keep a steady rhythm for the flat bit as I headed towards the finish line. At the very end, we had a run up the beach finish: the traditional end to the NESurfski downwinder. It was an all around great race, complete with tons of surf and rides. We had 23 competitors in total which is an awesome showing. I was pumped to see how much the series has grown in the 2 years since I’ve moved away to Georgia. Thanks to the guys for putting on such an awesome event and for welcoming me back so kindly. It was really great to be racing back home again!

Marathon World Champs '13, Copenhagen

Hi guys,

Just got back from my awesome Eurotrip. In the last week of my trip, I raced in Marathon World Championships in Denmark.  This one was a crazy ride. I got to the course about 5 days early and got my boat all situated. No problems there. Then I raced on Saturday. This year I was in the big-bad senior women's class because I'm 24 and too old for the U23 class. But hey, go big or go home.

Everyone says in marathon kayaking, it's all about the start. At this level, EVERYONE can go hard for 2h.  The start is where you find your pack and therefore, your section on the finish list. It just comes down to staying with your girls, and out sprinting them at the finish... provided nothing catastrophic happens. Lucky for me, I'd been training for sprint all summer, so I felt confident about my start. 

I was positioned at the start line just to the right of one of the top Italian girls. She was sure to come in top 10, so I was thinking as long as I could stick with her, I'd be set. 2 places down on my right was also Emilie Fournel, Canada's Olympic 200m K1 woman. She'd have an insane start for sure. Here's what happened:

The starter yells readygo (it comes out as one word), and we're off. I keep my cool. In reality, marathon starts are not like traditional sprints at all. You go stupid hard, of course, but it takes way more smarts and there are way more factors than the typical sprint-down-a-safe-straight-line-of-buoys. I do what I know best and immediately start latching onto any wake going my direction. It works. I have an amazing start, and I'm really proud of it. About 2k into the first lap, I find myself in the middle of the field with a small group of a Russian woman, a Czech woman, and me. I'm attached to the Russian woman's left side wake and refuse to let go as we head towards the first portage. All of a sudden, my boat takes a huge U-turn towards the Russian boat. "What is going on?"

Stuck in a moment of panic, I do the best I can to control my boat. I look down to see my left rudder cable has split in 2. I am one of those catastrophic cases; it's a pretty heart breaking moment. The rest of the field passes me as my thoughts race, and I try to figure out what to do next. It's still so early in the race. I stomp down on the remaining pieces of my rudder cables with my heels.  As a result, my knees are in my chest, but this gives me enough control of my boat to slowly paddle somewhat straight into the dock of the portage.

I sprint my boat up to the grassy part of shore, throw my footboard out of the boat, and inspect the damage. I attach the two lose pieces of rudder cable back together, look around, and mentally do the 'do I quit? Do I keep going?' thing. At this point I'm very much in last, but I toss my boat on my shoulder and keep going. I figured I'd debate the stop/keep going thing in my head while I'm moving. It's so early in the race, I'm pretty frantic about how unlucky the situation has turned out.

I calm myself and start catching a girl ahead of me. I storm pass her angrily and head up to the next. My confidence is high and I'm willing to make the best of the situation. Then the cable comes apart again some where in lap 4 (of 6). It breaks my spirits; a chase boat has to come save me because I'm in the middle of the course. They fix it for me, and I head around the buoy turn and up to the next portage. I yell for duck tape and wrap the hell out of that cable in the grass of the portage. At this point I'm way out the back, but still unfamiliar with how to quit. I can't help but keep trudging on. I finish. Without enough time left in the race to climb the ranks again.

There are a few things I took from this adventure which make me glad I never just called it quits. 1 EXPEIRENCE. As all of my surfski buddies know, distance paddling is entirely about experience, and so, I think it's best to take advantage of any opportunity to be out there. Racing. Even if your results wont show your fight. 2. MENTAL STRENGTH/SANITY. In a long race like this, anything can happen.

So often at races we see paddlers leave the race for the smallest of reasons: they fall back a bit, realize they wont podium, and quit. In the men's race later the same day as mine, I saw the lead guy of the front pack hit paddles with the man on his left and get pitched out of boat. Even watching from shore, it felt like a painfully slow wait for the chase boat to come pick him up.  He was first; he had a solid shot at the gold. They helped him back into his boat, and he stormed off with more fire than I've ever seen in a racer. He made it back from DFL (30th) to 11th. Respect! That takes huge guts, focus, determination: mental strength. Watching his race, I felt justified for finishing mine. He's probably my favorite racer of World Champs. No quitties; never.

I hope that my results this year, keep me subtle for next year. Battling these uncontrollable gave me a personal look at my own strength. I'll come out with fire next year; I know it because I already feel it. And they won't see it coming.

Magdeburg Water Bridge

On to Germany

Training in Germany now. I'm back in Magdeburg, Germany where I spent 3 weeks training lasts summer. This time I am here with only one of my teammates. Magdeburg is one hell of a club. As proven by past world championships, Germany is a top paddling nation. Within Germany, there are 2 top clubs: Magdeburg and Potsdam [this info could possibly be from a biased source]. They are interestingly relatively close in proximity and are classic rivals. Together, the two teams raise a huge percentage of the German national team athletes. Thus, this seems to be an awesome place to train; even their junior athletes are monsters on the water. 

I'll continue to train here until marathon world champs in two weeks. Now ahead of me, I have a lot of long distance paddling and running. I spent all summer training for sprint; so these next two weeks are really important for screwing my head on straight, back into marathon mode. This seems like the perfect place to do it. 

I'll do more adventuring on the weekends. Magdeburg is the home of the only water bridge in existence - a water bridge being a bridge carrying water over a body of water. So it's a river over a river... I don't see why it was such an issue to have a simple 4 way intersection on one body of water, but I guess they really wanted to build a canal in mid air. Regardless, I'm excited to see it! I'll take pictures. Here are a few in the meantime (green cheese):

The language Barrier

So I'm training with the Romanian girls; they know pretty much no English. Fun things I've learned from the experience:

1. Language barriers are just an excuse to constantly play a big game of charades.

2. 'No' is 'no' in every language. 

Learning to do Speed Work

Still here training with the Romanian girls. We've been focusing a lot on speed work. So doing a lot of 50m - 200m sprints with lots of rest between pieces. Ill admit this is not my forte, and not the type of training I was born into.  Coming from the Surfski background I've always had a knack for working hard for long miles and long hour until I feel total spent. 

So now, I'm trying to figure out this new style of training: speed work. Given my past training style, i never feel satisfied with a workout unless I feel that worn-down internal exhaustion. But with speed work, I feel a new kind of tired. It's a torn muscle, dead in the moment, but can go about your day-cardio wise, type of exhaustion. I'm learning to feel that, and even more importantly, I'm learning to push myself to this new kind of exhaustion. It's weird. I don't like it yet, because I haven't fully figured it out. But I know that's where my weakness is with this flatwater sprint racing; so I'm willing to work on it.

Nationals and off to Europe

Hi guys,

We had a great time at Nationals Champs in Oklahoma City (OKC) this year. It was kind of a unique year. The first day of racing went smoothly. My boat-mates and I took 3rd in the K2 500m race, and 2nd in the K4 race. Then a huge hail/thunderstorm ripped through OKC later that night. The next day was the K1 races, but the storm destroyed the course and specifically the super-expensive, brand new start gates (these are little boots that hold the front of your boat until the start official says go). They're estimating it at about $400,000 dollars in damage. Crazy how that can happen over night. It's too bad for OKC; what a terrible thing to happen in the middle of Nationals. We kind of took the 2nd day easy; my team just when out for a technical practice. OKC was able to get a few lines of buoys together for day 3: 200m day. These races went off pretty well even without start gates. It was a quick fix, good enough to race, but all of the 2nd day sprint races had to be cancelled. 

The day after Nationals, I flew out to Romania: that was last Sunday. I came out here with two of my men's C1 training buddies. We're all having an awesome time out here. We started paddling Tuesday and did some easy technical paddles the first day just to get our feeling back in the boat after a long plane ride. I'm paddling a K1 decked out in the Romanian flag pattern: blue hull, yellow stripe, red deck.  It's pretty cool. 

Yesterday I started practicing with the Romanian national team girls. Man, they are fast. I could get really good with a year paddling here. The thing I love best about the Romanian style of training: they care purely about how hard you work.  They don't have perfect technique (interestingly), but it's all about how hard you push on the water and in the weight room. I like that attitude. 

Off to Nationals and Europe

Hi guys,

Always great to get a nice little weekend in at home. I drove back for the weekend to drop off my car and epic V12 Surfski before a long trip around the world. It's so fun to go back to the water i grew up on and paddle around in my favorite boat: my surfski. Those conditions (V12 on Penobscot Bay, Maine) truly feel like home to me. Man, nothing is better than that!

Tomorrow I'll be flying out to Oklahoma City to race in the National Sprint Champs later next week. Then, I fly out for 2 months in Europe.  I'll go  to Romania for the first 2 weeks for some crazy training there.  Ill be training with the Romanian national team women as well as the Mexican women (who love to train with the Romanians).  After that I'll head off for 3 weeks of training in Germany. Here, I'll switch gears to more long distance paddling as I get ready for World Marathon Champs happening in Copenhagen. Ill take the train up with one of my teammates from Germany to Denmark for that. It should be quite a fun paddling tour.  I'm incredibly thankful for the opportunity to do all of this. I'm hoping I can grow as a paddler from all the international experience. I hope to have a good race at marathons this year. I'm 24 so this is the first time I race in the big bad senior women's class (I'm moving up from the under23 group).

Hope everyone's having a great summer and getting plenty of time out on the water,

Alex

The Journey

Someone I love once told me to 'enjoy the journey.' These are my trophies. 

PaddleBender, Dreher Island State Park, SC

We had a very fun race this past weekend at PaddleBender.  It was a hot and sunny day, relatively flat on the water, but fun nun the less. I love any excuse to hop into my surfski even for just a quick 8 mile race.  It was great to see all of the Southeast surfski regulars again, as well as the guys from Epic Kayaks.  They're awesome guys and are always super helpful with any surfski related question. I was happy to take home the first place women's trophy and to finish 2nd over all.  Thanks to John for putting on another great race!

Marathon Kayak Team Trails, Texas

Hi guys,

I just got back from the USA Marathon Kayak Team Trials in Sugar Land, TX.  It was an awesome course; we were doing laps on Brooks Lake.  I did 6 laps, with 6 portages.  The lake had low bridges, fountains, a no-dock portage, and narrow buoy turns: a very entertaining course.  The hardest part was by far the heat; this early in the year, I was not prepared for the climate of Texas. My start heat consisted of the junior men kayaks, U23 men kayaks, and the one canoer racing, my teammate Ian Ross.  I stole as many wakes from the boys around me as I could.

Unfortunately, I was the only women racing the senior class this year.  We also didn’t have anyone trying out for the junior or U23 women’s slots.  We have to get more women out there racing for our sport.  But because of this, for me it was a race against the clock; I had a time standard I had to beat.  I had to maintain a 10.8 km/h pace for the 6 laps/25.6km of race, and I was very happy to see that at the end of the race, my time was 2:14:32 making my average pace, 11.4 km/h. This put me about 8 minutes faster than my time standard; a very comfortable result to sit on as I wait for the official team announcements from the Marathon committee.  I think my time should be plenty fast enough to send me off to the World Champs in September.

This year Worlds will be in Copenhagen Denmark, which I’d love to go visit mostly because I’m a little obsessed with Vikings.  Hello Scandinavia! I’ve gone to marathon worlds the past two years, but this is the first time I’d get to do the big bad senior women’s solo race.  There is no race more prestigious for marathon women than this race in this class.

 

Hitting the Beach

What's the first thing you should do with a few days off? Hit the beach, obviously. I broke out my EPIC V12 and took a quick road trip out to Charleston, SC during my break after trials.  Cloudy weather; beautiful waves.  Charleston was getting hit with some thunderstorms and rough winds leading to decent sized swells traveling North-South along the beach of Isle of Palms, my favorite coast line in Charleston.  After a long and grueling winter of training on flat water and in a cold weight room, there is nothing more freeing than hitting the beach with my ski.  It truly feels like home again.

It's funny how everything happens on a bigger scale in the ocean.  The waves are bigger; the boats are bigger; the water's wider; the paddles are longer; my smile is bigger.  I swear I put in more effort on that paddle in the ocean than any flat water workout, without even noticing it.  I played, surfed, sprinted for waves, and found myself back at the beach hours later completely exhausted- yet, more level-headed.  There is something very peaceful about chancing a wave versus chasing an competitor.  The ocean is my happy place. 

I spent hours doing laps in the waves that day.  On my last half hour, in the middle of a big ride, I looked around to see I was in the middle of a big pod of dolphins doing the same thing I was: surfing.   I was very thankful for the trip.  It cleared my head and rebooted my body for another few months of tough flatwater training.  I think it's crucially important to have an reset button for when life gets mentally tiring.  I call mine: a 4h road trip to the beach.

 

 

USA Sprint Team Trials

Ok, we just got back from trials this past week.  There were a few extra big names returning to the game this year.  A few athletes took off the Olympic year (last summer) for school or surgery or what not.  Olympic year is kind of a low key season for athlete’s below the Olympic level; so if needed, athletes are more likely to take this year as a reflection/recuperation year.  The field for senior women was looking a bit deeper than in the past. We even had more athletes then the men’s events (which still isn’t that many compared to other nations, but you know what I mean).  I’m happy to say I was 4^th in the 500m K1 race. 

It would have been nice to come in top 3, but I could tell that a lot of my training this winter was focused on building-the-base to carry me throughout the summer months.  Unfortunately, I feel like I might have started speed work too late and too close to trials.  That might have been a disadvantage for me, but live and learn! I have high hopes that as we develop more speed-work throughout the summer, my times could seriously improve.  Coming from my surfski/marathon background, I always feel like I have a solid base.  It’s those short little 200m races that I now have to focus on.  I’m hoping to put most of my focus on the 200m throughout summer, figuring that, at the very least, I can meet in the middle with a killer 500m time.  We’ll see what happens.  Unfortunately, women don't race the 1000m; so bummed about that.

Being relatively new to sprinting, I learn a lot from every regatta in which I’m lucky enough to participate.  It’s been quite a journey discovering all of the little innuendos of this bizarrely unique sport of sprint kayaking.  I’m excited for what the summer has in store for me.  If it’s anything like last summer, it will be a lot of heavy training, and if I’m lucky, crazy improvements.  Next up for me:  USA Marathon World team try-outs in Texas, May 18th.  After that, a bunch of training and a surfski race or two as part of the Southeast Point Series.  Way more to come!

 

One Week to Trials

Ok, we're officially at one week to trials. Ill be driving out to Oklahoma next Monday with my teammate and housemate Ian Ross. We'll meet up wit the rest of the team (who's mostly flying) once we're out there. I've been tapering pretty seriously for the past week and a half already. I felt aggressively over trained with about 3 weeks to prep for trials. I was tired constantly, I had a high resting heart rate, I dreaded practices, my times had severely gotten worse, and I had lost all my fire. As terrible as I felt at the time, I was happy about it. It was a sign that I had done all I could to prep for the season, and I had hit a wall with just enough time to rest it off and recover for the first big race. All good training comes with highs and lows, and it was time for me to be smart about training and force a high for trials. I'm pretty sure the final kicker was a crazy weights workout I had done the week before. I did 500 reps of bench or bench pull each day with my 30 rep max weight (50kg). It was a crazy couple rainy days of weights that required more recovery time then I had realized.

Anyway, for the past 2 weeks or so I've cut out a lot of extra weights and runs. I now run only to warm up and lift to maintain or pump up the muscles a little before a paddle. A lot of European teams are huge on the pre-paddle weights. They love doing a few quick power sets to get the blood moving before hitting the water. It's a great warm up strategy.

With paddles, we're still doing a lot of pieces per workout: 8-20 pieces of a various distance or amount of time. For example: 10x 300m or 20x 2mins on. These workouts are great for endurance building, but as I began my early taper, I had to focus on building intensity over building endurance. So, in order to make these workouts a bit more intensity-friendly I started doing a lot of "picking my pieces." I would do every other piece of the workout hard with high intensity and in between these, focus more on technique and race plan. I'd stay mentally in the game on all pieces, but alternate steady/hard.

Last week was a pretty rough low-point for me. It's hard to get pumped for practice when you feel tired and weak constantly. I was mentally struggling. But I've heard in rumor that "the days you struggle the most are also the days you improve the most." So that kept me going, as well as the thought that I was beginning my taper and it was all uphill from there.

It's crazy how a few rest days can completely turn you around. The lighter work load from last week had a huge impact on this week. I remember vividly waking up Monday and realizing that my fire was back. I hopped out of bed before the sun came up and knew I was ready to go. I could feel my uphill climb in effect.

This week has been a lot of intensity work. We'll have time trials on Saturday: 1000m, 500m, and 200m. At trials women will only race the 500m and 200m. Thus far my times on Saturday time trials had been slow, but I'm looking forward to seeing where my times are after a solid taper.

One Month to Trials

Hi guys,

Here I am just one month out from my first sprint regatta of the year. Interestingly, this first one is also the biggest one, at least in my eyes. It's tryouts for the national sprint team. Last summer I was fortunate enough to make incredible gains in just a few months of very intense training, most of which i had the pleasure of doing overseas. But as a smart man once told me, 'the year you see results is the year after you train hard' (credit Drew Story). This leaves huge implications for the upcoming season.

Thus far this winter, I've been working out an average of 5 hours a day, 6 days a week. We start at 6am with a half hour run, followed by an hour lift, and an hour of technical steady-paced paddling. After that, it's breakfast, nap, work or hang time, and then afternoon practice. In the afternoons it's an hour of intensity work on the water (sprints or intervals of some kind), followed by another half hour of running or lifting, depending on the day.

It's been an unusually long winter in Georgia, as I notice was true for most of the nation. During days/weeks of rough weather, I put more of an emphasis on weights. It's easy to lift in any weather, and strength can have a dramatic affect on speed. I did a lot of bench and bench pull: alternating push and pull muscle group days. I'm happy with where my weights are as I enter the last stretch to trials. These days I'm doing workouts consisting of 6 sets of 30 reps on bench press (or bench pull) with 50kg or 110lbs. I've been focusing on higher rep (30rep) stuff to stimulate the feel of a sprint while in the weight room.

Long monotonous months of winter training can tell you a lot about your mind and body. With this much work per day, paddling has truly become a life style for me. I find myself reading a lot on sports psychology or nutrition. I highly recommend the book "the Talent Code" by Daniel Coyle. It revolutionized the way I look at practices. Seriously, it's an excellent read.

I also feel myself going through intense highs and lows week to week. If you are pushing at your physical max (and being honest with yourself on this point), your body will need rest time. I'm very strict about taking Sundays off, but sometimes I require even more down time. I've found that I go through cycles. I have days where I feel an unreal amounts of energy; followed by days where I'm strong as hell but more composed; then days where I go down in weights; and eventually I enter a state of constant fatigue, food cravings, and exhaustion. These times call for a nice little break (3-7 days) of mornings off and maybe just a little afternoon paddle to loosen up: just enough to reboot and start the cycle over again. Progress is never a steady sloping line; it's a graph resembling a heart beat electrocardiograph: highs and lows. Actually because of this, the German team has adopted a 4 week training schedule of extremely intense training 6 days a week for 3 weeks, with the last week completely off. These guys might have it right.

As I get closer to trials, I'll begin my taper. I was reading a study earlier today on the philosophies of tapering. There is a lot of research out there on tapering for swimmers which is cool because, ya know, it seems like they've got a lot I common with us. This study said with a good 2 week taper in which the athlete drops 60-80% of workout volume while maintaining workout intensity, swimmers were about to improve times 4-8%! Once I did the math, I realized that means a solid taper could improve a 500m sprint time 5-10 seconds. That's unreal. Man, I hope that can work for me.

Birthdays

Feb 6, 2010 - I enjoyed the most epic birthday party I've ever had the pleasure of receiving.

Feb 6, 2011 - I finished the first draft of my honors thesis and later graduated with honors from Bowdoin College.

Feb 6, 2012 - I woke up at 4:00am to run my first marathon (26.2 miles) before work.

Feb 6, 2013 - I took a 5 hour road trip to be with the one thing missing in my life: the ocean.

If there is ever a day to live epically, it's your birthday. Happy Birthday, me.