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.

Marathon World Champs '12 Rome, Italy

Hi guys,

I just finished up with marathon worlds. The course was beautiful; there is something very cool about paddling on the narrow Tibet River... You know, that river you heard about all year in your 6th grade ancient history class. Yet, I saw no one in a toga so that was disappointing.

The opening ceremony was a lot of fun! They piled all of the athletes and coaches onto buses and toured us the long way through town past the colosseum, pantheon, Vatican, etc. We had police escorts and ran all the red lights. We felt like celebrities in a country where paddling is actually a top sport. The ceramonies were held outside on the steps of what looked like an important building (not sure which). Each team assigned an athlete to parade their nations' flag at the event and the rest of us took a seat.

While sitting there waiting for the program to begin, I was approached by the president of Italian canoe/kayak. He asked me if I would get up on stage during the ceramony and read the athlete oath. I gladly excepted! I read it in English and a male athlete from the Italian team read it in Italian. It was a crazy experience getting up and reading in front of all the other athletes... Especially since I'm dislexic! I read it about 15 times in the few minutes I had to practice before it was my turn at the mike. It was really really cool!

Otherwise, the week was all about paddling and getting ready for the races. The course was about a 5k loop, the start/finish/portage was all in the middle of the course and there was a left hand buoy turn on each far ends of the loop. The portage was challenging. We watched the masters races on the first day who suffered through the very steep ramps in the rain! One woman slipped and broke her hip that day, another man was carried off in an ambulance.

We practiced in our boats for the first time shortly after their races that day, also in the rain. We were forced to be quite cautious on the portages and most athletes took them a bit slower than they would have liked to protect themselves and their boats. Nelo, plastex, and elio watched all week as their boats got bashed against the ramps on the portage bank. The price of renting boats went steadily up as the week progressed!

On Friday, I had my under 23 k1 race; this was my last year to do the u23 category. I had a start that I personally still can't believe happened. At the start line, i was sandwiched between two Hungarian girls (each country may enter two boats in each race) near the far side of the starting line and thankfully, on the inside of the upcoming turn. Our other American racer, Emily House, was positioned near the opposite side of the start line. Right before the start, the Hungarian girl next to me fell into the water; i think her boat holder might have had something to do with this. They asked me to move forward so that she had room to get back into her boat. They start us so close together that she otherwise had no room to get to her cockpit on the dock. I pulled about half a boat forward from the line, thinking that if the starter decided to call the start without the Hungarian woman, I'd have a half a boat on the rest of the field. The Hungarian woman got back in the boat, I backed up, and the starter fired the gun with very little notice.

We were off, I dropped behind the two Hungarian girls but caught their stern wash as we took the slight right hand turn down to the first buoy turn. About 500m in, I looked around to see I was still in the front of the field. That's the moment I realized how much all of my sprint work of the past year has really payed off. I give a quick personal smile, felt my confidence grow, and drowned out the shouts from the angry Italian girl on my left wash. It was a good start.

I dropped back a little as the wash groups began to form and I ended up doing about three laps trading wash with a french girl. It's crazy how half the race is won in the first 1000m of the race (total distance: 21.5km). After that, the pace dramatically slows, and groups mostly focus on sticking together, while on occation, testing each others strength and smarts. As much as we hate our opponents, we go slowest when we are alone. In marathon, we need each other.

So the French woman and I switched off watch equally and without much "testing" because there were only two of us. However, it became obvious too me quickly that I was much more comfortable than her on lead pulls and on wash riding. I felt confident and knew I could out sprint her on the last lap. Otherwise, there was no one around us; everyone else was either far ahead or far behind, so I enjoyed my rides and cruised along with her at a comfortable pace. At about lap 4 the top men C1 paddlers caught us (they started a few minutes after our start). I thought it a good opportunity to jump on their wash and cruise away from my French opponent. There was some yelling in French, as I flew away from her and headed for the 4th of 5 portages. For the next lap I followed the stern wakes of the top C1 men and cruised into the finish about a minute ahead of the French girl.

I was very happy with my race. I was the faster of the two American racers and I beat both Canadian women making me the top woman from our continent. Yet I still have a lot of training to do to before I can knock off the top European racers.

Two days later, Sunday, I raced k2 with my teammate, Macy Dwyer. This race did not go as well for us. I was grateful for the day off in between races, but i still felt a little sore. We finished the race but I was a bit upset with our performance. However it was another great experience, and another killer workout. After the race we did some sight seeing around Rome, and the following morning I said good bye to my teammates who headed back to the states.

This is our last big competition for the summer season so now begins a two week break from workouts. When planning my trip, I figured what better way to get a mental and physical break then by backpacking through northern Italy! So I'll be staying in Italy for the next two weeks roaming around and experiencing more of the country. I'm really excited; more to come on those experiences.