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).