Pull-Up Yahtzee!

New favorite game to play at the gym: pull-up yahtzee! Role the dice, do the pull ups.

Fall Training

Fall training is back underway in Gainesville, GA. Time to get stronger! As the weather gets cooler, we turn our focus to the gym. Follow our team on our new Instagram (Performancepaddlers) and Facebook pages (performancepaddlersoflanier) !! See the crazy stuff the 7 of us do day to day.

North Shore Cup

I had an awesome day of racing at the North Shore Cup in Summerton, SC today. The conditions were brutal! I heard it was a race on a lake; so I mistakenly figured I could get away with my sprint boat. Big mistake! I got a clean start; we started in an inlet protected from the wind and waves. I took off with a hard sprint, but the waves began to build as I headed out towards the hot-spot. I felt my pace dropping and the rhythm in my stroke breaking as I saved my butt on a few hard braces. Shortly after the hot-spot, we rounded a buoy and headed with the wind and waves. I caught rides as best I could in my narrow little sprint boat, but for the most part, I spent more time bracing than I did paddling.

It was insane! I've never seen such a rough lake. But on the bright side, I've also never surfed a sprint boat as hard as I did here. My mantras for the day: "Stay in the boat, stay in the boat" and "Harden up, harden up." This was a whole new type of race; I felt like it was me against the elements. I kept giggling to myself about how silly I was to try and do this in a sprint boat - the runs I could have gotten on these waves in a surfski! I truly missed out in that reguard. I sacrificed my shoulders with aggressive braces and saves; those muscles were completely beat by the end - "just stay in the boat, just keep moving forward." Somehow I miraculously kept myself upright, or the very least, slightly above horizontal. In the last mile, we approached the protected shore, and I have NEVER been happier to see flat water. With one mile to go, I took off for a final sprint to get across the finish line in first. So thankful I stayed in the boat.

This races was incredibly fun, and one of the biggest races I've seen on the east coast. There were 10 women in the 12 mile race! Enough for us to have our own start. That's insane! Thanks to all the guys who helped put on such a great event. This is a great race; one I will definitely do again in the future. Check out their site! http://www.northshorepaddlerace.com/

LCKC Fungatta

This weekend we hung out with the little athletes at the Fungatta. Middle-schoolers from all over the area trained for weeks to compete in these races - first regatta for most of them. Really fun to meet and hang out with this little pros. We got to hang out in a tent and tell them stories about our summer races. Even with the endless rain, they seemed to have a great time, and paddled hard! Congrats everybody!

World Championships 2015

World Championships - the best in the World. We really saw that this week. This regatta was the first qualifier for the Olympics next year. Everyone was on their A-Game. Some of the fiercest racing of the past 4 years happened right here this weekend. I'm happy to say that I improved in my racing, but so did the rest of the world. For that, I know I still have a lot of training still to go. This life is an endless fight, but I am thankful for my little improvements.

We've finally come to the end of the 2015 race season. I'll take a couple weeks off before I head back to Georgia, USA to start up the next year of training. I'm stoked I'll be touring around Italy for a little bit with my mom this next week, and enjoy some good rest time! 2016 Season, here I come.

World Champs - Milan, Italy

We're hanging in Milan Italy this week for World Championships. The competitions is fierce! I'm stoked to race the women's 500m K1 for team USA. Good to see old friends. Milan is Beautiful. This is where the accumulation of the past year of work all comes together.

Erg Technique Session

A little clip from a recent technique session I did on the erg. Even in the summer, erg work is super valuable for technique training. Things I'm working on these days: exaggerated rotation, connection with the top hand, keeping my hands higher through the stroke.

Training in Pitesti, Romania

With one month to go until World Champs in Milan, we have moved to the town of Pitesti, Romania. The training center here is perfect for our 4 weeks (our last cycle) of pre-race training. The center is built on a 2km lake dammed off on both sides with a permanent 1000m course. As we approach Milan, there's nothing better than training on buoyed lanes complete with start gates. Practice like you play! There is often no wind on this course, and the boat traffic is minimal. It has been great going out for the first paddle of the day on glassy water: stirring up the first ripples of the day. My training group and I are still training with the Romanian National team. Even from a language away, we've all become pretty close. Jokes and laughs can cross any language barrier; it's amazing how much paddlers have in common even from opposite sides of the world!

Constanta Vacation

After a hard month long cycle of training, our team went on a small vacation: a 3 day weekend at the Black Sea! A quick 3h drive brought us to Constanta, one of Romania's top tourist vacation spots. We had beautiful weather. We stayed with the athletes at Constanta's paddling club. It's awesome to meet young athletes around the world training for the same sport which we dedicated large parts of our childhood. It's kind of like a coming full circle moment. This was a great weekend get-away.

4th of July at the USA embassy!

For the 4th of July we were super thankful to be invited to the US Embassy for their celebration! The event was incredible. There were tons of dignitaries present; countless venders offering complimentary American foods, drinks, and even gum; and even a couple airplanes spewing red/white/blue smoke across the sky as they played God Bless America. It was pretty great to see so many Americans together celebrating our holiday from a country far away. We were super spoiled, I'll admit. We even had the opportunity to shake hands with Klaus Iohannas, the Romanian Presendent. It was pretty cool that he took the time to visit the embassy for our celebration. This was by far the most lavish 4th of July party I have ever visited. If you ever find yourself in a foreign country in early July, definitely contact the US embassy for tickets to the 4th of July party.

Interval Training

Here's a clip from todays interval session. The water was a bit rough from wind chop and motorboat traffic, but that makes us stronger - a good session for balance training. Otherwise, it was another beautiful day on Lake Snagov. Today's training: 4x (60seconds, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10), equal rest between pieces, 5 min rest between sets.

We made it to Romanian National TV!

The other day, we had a quick interview with a Romanian National TV channel. We talked a bit about how awesome it is to train over here. Romania provides perfect training facilities and awesome training buddies. We like it here, and we were stoked to tell the whole country about it. My TV début!

Training in Romania

After Germany my training group and I flew to Bucharest, Romania to stay at our "home away from home." The Romanian Olympic training center on Lake Snagov. This is the same place we trained for two months last year, 2 weeks in 2013, 2 months in 2012. It really is starting to feel like another home to us. I'm the only woman in our team USA training group here. So I'm very thankful to say, the Romanian national team women have welcomed me into their training group. They have a solid group of 8 women (2 K4s) that train together and live at the center. They focus primarily in team boat competitions, but still, when we're all together in singles, they prove to be excellent training buddies! I've been training with them for the past week now, under their coaches training program. A summer with these girls could make me fast! (And also fluent in Romanian, the other learning experience to be gained here).

World Cup 2 - Duisburg, Germany

Just finished up World Cup 2 in Duisburg. Races this weekend were.... challenging. This world cup proved to be twice as big as the 1st World Cup. We saw many more of the international big names here. Times were generally a bit slow because of the cold water and usual headwind. Competition was fierce making it hard to advance in these races. I again raced the 1000m, 500m, 200m k1s. The experience I got from the races was priceless, but I'm most thankful for the spark these World Cups weeks have given me. I cant wait to get down to some serious training for the next few months as I get ready for World Champs in Milan, Italy (August).

World Cup 1 - Portugal

Just finished up World Cup 1 in Montemor-O-Velho, a nearly coastal town in Portugal covered in Castles and known for is 2km water-sport course. Race's this weekend were ok. It was the first international regatta of the season. So it's great to feel the pressure of international racing again, but man, there's a lot to learn and a huge ways to go. I'm stoked I found my way to the B-final in the 500m race. I need a little work in some of my other races. World cups results don't matter too too much. They're mostly just a chance for athletes to get some race experience early in the season. Some countries do use these as race off opportunities to select their national team athletes. For me it was about experience which meant I was entered into a good number of races- 1000m K1, 500m K1, 200m K1.

This is the first time I've raced sprint so close to the ocean- you can feel some of the coastal characteristics impacting the flatwater course. Like the wind. The wind would be calm in the morning. As the sun rises, a light onshore breeze would develop meaning a tailwind at the course. Throughout the day the wind would build and shift to an off shore breeze and side wind on the course. Watching the flags all day, you can see the wind growing and shifting the same way it would the day of a beach surfski race or something. It mirrors east coast USA conditions perfectly. All of this meant that the timing of your race and your lane assignment on this narrow man made channel could leave you with very different results. These were all factors we mentally thought out before each race. Just another cool part of being an outdoor water sport. This aint no gym treadmill workout.

It was really cool to see all of the international racers: some old friends, some new ones. There were like 25 countries at this regatta. This number is rumored to be doubled next week at World Cup 2 in Duisburg, Germany. It's all just part of the journey; adventuring throughout Europe!