World Cup II Gold!

Post #55

Hamburg, Germany - Julie and I won World Cup gold yesterday in Germany and became the overall World Cup leaders in our event. It was the first international gold medal for each of us, and we could not be more pleased with our result. We're about to head back to Switzerland but I wanted to pass along the race recap links:

- Video of the race (click on Hamburg - LW2x thumbnail)

- Results sheet

- World Rowing press release (scroll halfway down)

Podium: Germany, USA, Denmark

World Cup II

Post #54

Hamburg, Germany - So here we are, the city where the most recent E. Coli outbreak began. With reports from German health officials that the infection threat has been removed, the second World Cup is all systems go.

Starting blocks at the Hamburg race course. Still that light out at 9:15 pm!

A quick look at the entry list for our event shows that we'll be lining up against many of the same crews that were in Munich, but also a bunch of new ones. There are sixteen crews entered, and the most notable addition is the German double. The Germans won a silver at last year's World Championships in New Zealand. Unfortunately, the E. Coli threat caused the entire British team to pull their entries, as well as the Dutch double that was supposed to race in our event. We were really looking forward to racing them again. Still, there will be some great competition here and we're excited to get back on the race course.

We'll be in a heat tomorrow morning with Norway, Korea, Sweden, and Switzerland at 11:18 am (5:18 am US Eastern time). Top 2 advance directly to semis and the rest go to the afternoon reps. Results are here, on World Rowing's website. Select class: "LW2x." Go USA!

Church Bells and Cowbells

Post #53

Switzerland - What a month it has been. Julie and I started rowing the double together in late April and within about five weeks, we've qualified the boat in the US, come overseas to Vienna, then gone to Munich, and qualified ourselves for the World Championships team. Phew!

We've been training in Switzerland since World Cup I. It has been the perfect place to unwind from the first batch of racing, get some training in, and figure out logistics for the rest of the summer. Switzerland is an incredible country and every day we talk about how lucky we are to be here. We're rowing on a aqua blue lake surrounded by perfectly groomed hillsides, cows with cowbells, and stunning snow-capped Alps in the distance. I could get used to this!

Looking down the buoyed course on the lake. I don't think I've ever rowed in a place this gorgeous.

Perfect hillsides

Alps at dusk

A few other impressions of Switzerland:

1. Everything is small, except for the mountains. Our "family size" milk is smaller than a half gallon, I haven't eaten off of a regular sized spoon (mini spoons only) since we arrived, and the washing machine only fits a few days worth of workout clothes. The smallness also applies to fruit, refrigerators, cars, docks, and - perhaps most alarming - the width of two-way streets.

Mini everything. Penny for scale.

2. Every town has at least one church whose bells chime every fifteen minutes. Our town's church also does a big bell song at 7 am and at noon. Up and at 'em!

3. Each town has one or two amazing bakeries. When we row by the town centers in our morning workouts, the fresh bread and pastry smells waft across the lake. Kind of nauseating during practice - and hard to resist afterwards!

4. Much to our occasional frustration, the Swiss actually take lunch breaks. Every store in town closes for a solid hour and a half in the middle of the day. We also tried to get some groceries on June 2, only to find out (after we were standing in front of the store's locked doors of course) that it's a national holiday. And if any national holiday falls on a Thursday, they just take that Friday off too and make it one big four-day weekend.

5. German is the main language spoken where we are, which means we're in the land of long words. They take a phrase like "central train station" and smoosh it all together to make one big word. Julie took a year and a half of German in high school, and (lucky for me and Ken), she actually remembers it. We'd be lost without her!

World Cup II starts next week in Hamburg, Germany. Much more info to come as we lead up to it, so check back to follow along.

Training in Switzerland