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Post # 3

MADISON, WISCONSIN - First and foremost, huge congratulations to all of the ITA athletes that have been named to the Olympic team!  I am anxious for the Games to start and can't wait to watch Emily, Torin, and Caitlin compete.

I've been back in Madison for about two weeks now.  I helped drive the trailer carrying about 20 boats back from Florida and it took us 2 days and about 24 driving hours.  The truck and trailer together are longer than an semi, so driving it can get a little tricky sometimes.  Luckily the weather wasn't too bad, except that it was really windy on the first day so the trailer was swaying back and forth on the highway a lot!  I finally got to my house at 1:30 am and went to bed before getting back into training the next morning.

Here are two pictures of when we drove home.  Next to cars, our trailer looks huge, but put it between some semis, and it looks really little!

I've heard different reports on how thick the ice on the lake here in Madison is right now, but it sounds like it's somewhere between 8 and 16 inches.  With that, my team and I are hard at work on the indoor rowing machines (ergometers, or ergs) and in the weight room.  We've had some tough workouts but I had a really good week of training and it feels great to be working hard. 

It looks like my community project will be coming together in the next couple weeks.  I'm so excited to get started!

Training Camp in Florida

COCOA BEACH, FLORIDA - I am just wrapping up a 2 week training trip in Florida.  My team and I train in Wisconsin during the year but since the lake freezes, we take a couple trips south to get some time on the water.  It is a great way to break up the indoor season so that we don't have to be on the rowing machines for the entire winter.  To orient you a little bit more on my training situation, I rowed at the University of Wisconsin during college and now I'm continuing to train alongside the team even though I graduated.  So while they are training for the collegiate national championship in June in big, eight person boats, I am training for my races in the single.  The picture below shows how practices usually are.  I'm in the red boat!  As you can imagine, I have to push myself to keep up with the speed of the eights, but it is great for training.  

During the first half of the trip, the weather was unseasonably cold.  On one of the mornings last week, we woke up to 16 mph winds which made the air temperature feel like 19 degrees!  We must have brought the cold with us from Wisconsin because the news reports said that it was the coldest it has been in decades for this area!

One of the coolest parts about rowing in Florida is that the wildlife is unlike any other place we get to row.  We see groups of dolphins swimming around the boats during almost every practice.  The other day we saw at least 20 at one time!  We've also seen lots of fish and a few manatees, although not as many as in past years because of the cold.

I love training camps because you get the opportunity to focus solely on rowing.  Morning practices go from 8 to 11:30 and afternoon practices are from 3 to 5:30.  Although practices are long, we have been able to put in lots of good miles and it has been a really productive trip all around.  One more practice this afternoon and another tomorrow morning before we head north to Madison!

Hello!  I am so excited to be part of In the Arena and eager to get involved in the community!  I hope to add something not only to the Madison community, but also to the larger ITA community.  As the first ever rower on the Arena Roster, more of you will get to learn about the mysterious sport that I do, and I hope to learn more about the sports that the other ITA athletes do!

As I write this, I am on a plane leaving Oklahoma City.  I was down there for a couple of days rowing out of the local boathouse with Jen, a 2008 Olympian. Not only were we there to get some good rowing in, we got to see the plans for the new US Olympic Training Center that is just starting up in Oklahoma City.  It’s going to be a facility for a variety of sports: kayaking, rowing, archery, and volleyball. There are lots of plans in the works, from a world-class boathouse (complete with an altitude chamber for better training!) to an athlete village and even a wind wall along the rowing race course to keep the water calm.

While we were there, Jen and I gave a talk to the local high school rowing club about how each of us got started with rowing and what some of our experiences at the high school, college, and national team level have been like.  It was a great opportunity to connect with the community there and to be an inspiration to the up-and-coming athletes. A couple of them even came up to me afterward and told me how special it was to meet me and hear me speak.  I hope that ITA will give me the opportunity to inspire more youth like the ones in Oklahoma!