I love these kids!!

Post #4

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON - I started my community project this week in Madison and it was absolutely awesome!  I am working with a third grade classroom and the kids are so thoughtful, curious, and fun-loving.  I can't wait to spend more time working with them and getting to know them.  We had some time in the classroom during the middle of the week and then on Friday we went on a Valentine's Day field trip to an ice skating rink on the UW campus.  Some of the kids looked like pros on the ice (we do live in Wisconsin after all!) while others got their first ever taste of ice skating.  It was amazing to watch all of them experience the thrill of ice skating.  I spent a fair amount of the hour and a half timing the kids as they skated around the perimeter of the rink as fast as they could.  Now these are kids after my own heart!  They were so excited to try to break their best times, they kept asking to be timed over and over again.  I'll post pictures soon!!

On the training side of things, my team had an annual erg race yesterday morning.  All 40 (or so) lightweight rowers got seeded into races against each other and each of us raced 2,000 meters (the standard sprint racing distance in rowing) three times.  It's always one of the toughest mornings of winter practice, and this year was no different.  It was a particularly exciting practice for me because I beat my personal best time by 3.3 seconds, which is a pretty big amount!  Even though it was great to PR by that much, it was a bittersweet race because my goal was to go faster than I did.  The piece was going well for the first part and I was right on my goal splits, but the last part was where I didn't perform as well as I should have.  As I came into the sprint of the race, one of the coaches was behind my erg telling me to push harder.  My mind responded by being excited and ready, but unfortunately my completely exhausted legs didn't respond quite so well.  While I was disappointed that I didn't have a good sprint, my coach reminded me that we haven't done a lot of work on the it yet, so for this time in the season, it wasn't a bad piece.

After the erg race, I went to the airport and flew from Madison to Seattle.  I'll be training with some other US National Team members for a week out here.  The water never freezes in Seattle, so I'll not only get a chance to train with some great athletes, I'll get to actually ROW on real water!  That is always an exciting thing for us cold-weather rowers.  This morning I walked around a farmer's market without a jacket, hat, or gloves on.  Quite the change from snowy Madison!  Tomorrow morning is my first chance to get back in a boat and I can't wait.

Finally, for the ITA athletes competing in the Olympics up in Vancouver, GOOD LUCK!  I'm rooting for you!