Introducing: This Week's Fuel

Post # 143

The idea of sharing a weekly recipe has been floating around my head for a while now. As an athlete - one in a weight-based sport, no less - people are always asking me what I eat. Problem is, that's a simple question with a complex answer. Sure, I eat a lot of fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains (my standard answer to that question), but what am I actually having for dinner on a Tuesday after lots of hours of training? That's what people were really getting at.

So I created something called "This Week's Fuel." Each week, I'll share a recipe I've made, liked, and recommend. I'll post a link on Twitter and under the TWF page on my website to where I got the recipe. When I tweet it, I'll add the hashtag #thisweeksfuel so it's easy to search for.

What to eat used to be a huge complex question in my mind and I didn't really know where to start. So a few years ago, I figured the best thing to do was to research food and nutrition. I read books about it, watched documentaries, listened to interviews, and looked at the science. I started to understand what's good, what's bad, and what the latest trends are. I spent a lot of time experimenting in my kitchen and have made some successful new creations as well as some awful mistakes (first attempt at Black Bean Brownies were disgusting!). Through all of this, I figured out a lot of things that work for me and discovered that cooking and baking can be awesomely fun and rewarding. It's an ongoing process and I'm still learning, but I consider it part of my job to feel ready to attack each workout and recover quickly afterwards, and that requires careful attention to what I'm putting in my body.

So whether you're one of the kids I've coached, an extended family member, one of my personal training clients, a former or current teammate, a coach, mentor, or neighbor...or someone I've never even met (how has this blog come to encompass such a diverse audience?!), I hope you'll try a few - or all - of the recipes that will be coming at you. Let me know what you think of them or of you have ideas for new ones.

World Cup III: Day 3

Post # 142

Kate and I took silver in the final! WATCH the video of our race here. 

I know some had it worse than me (the New Zealanders told me about their 13-hour layover in Singapore on their way home), but man that was a long day of traveling back to California. I'm so glad to be back. There's so much to tell about the weekend's racing in Switzerland. Team USA made history on several fronts, but the most impressive thing was how we performed as a team. We won medals in 8 events. As a country, we've never won the whole regatta before - meaning that we've never tallied enough points based on how we finished in all events combined to beat out every other country. This year, we did. The results are worth sharing:

Men's eight (M8+) - GOLD. Pipped the Germans at the line to end their four year winning streak. 

Women's eight (W8+)  - GOLD. A boat of young, relatively new (to the national team) girls set a World Record and World Cup record. 

Men's four (M4-) - GOLD. The US men's 8 and 4 have never won in the same year until now, and our four won this event for the first time since 2004. 

Women's single (W1x) - SILVER.  In her first year in this event, Elle Logan, who has spent many years in the women's 8+, overhauled last year's Olympic champ to take the silver. 

Lightweight women's double (LW2x) - SILVER. That's me and Kate. This finish qualified us directly for World Championships in August. 

Lightweight men's pair (LM2-) - SILVER. Two recent college grads made their debut on the senior team in this event. Impressive start! 

Women's double  (W2x) - BRONZE. One of these two is making her senior team debut, and grabbed third place by defeating fourth place Belarus - a boat with a multiple time World and Olympic champ. These two also qualified directly for Worlds. 

Women's pair (W2-) - BRONZE. Awesome race by these girls, who got third behind GB and New Zealand. They also qualified directly for Worlds.  

Sunday was an exciting day to be on Team USA as we kept seeing great performance after great performance come down the course. You can watch the finals for all these events online here (scroll down and click the icons to watch the different ones). Many of the events that didn't medal also had gutsy, impressive races and contributed to the overall result for our team. It's a new quadrennium and it's fair to say that Team USA is starting it off right. 

Men's four (M4-) right after crossing the line

Our US women's 8+ on the medals dock

Following tradition by tossing the coxswain in the water after victory in the men's 8+ (M8+)

Lucerne was the last international regatta before the World Championships. The team has now gone back to our respective training centers, whether that's in New Jersey, Oklahoma, Washington, California, etc. to get back to the grind and get ready for the big show in August. Along with a few more boats that will be selected through trials, we'll all convene again in Chungju, South Korea for this year's World Championships.  I'm excited to get back to training and see what we can all produce in six weeks' time. 

Artemis summer rowers: you can bet I'll be stopping by practice this week to say hi. See you soon! 

World Cup III: Day 2

Post # 141

We won this afternoon's semifinal and posted the fastest time of both semis, so that puts us in the A Final tomorrow. We'll be racing at 11:01 am local time against GBR (Great Britain), NZL (New Zealand), ITA (Italy), GER (Germany), and NED (Netherlands). That's 5:01 am east coast and, for the really diehard fans on the west coast, a lovely 2:01 am for you. The good news? Live video this time. Click here to check it out. 

Team USA has had an awesome regatta so far. It's not a "usual" thing to win a semifinal and today we had three boats do just that: the men's four (M4-), women's single (W1x), and us. Add to that the fact that our men's lightweight pair (LM2-) scored a silver medal today and our women's 8+ won their race for lanes, and that the men's 8+ is gunning for gold in their final tomorrow, and it's pretty awesome. Oh, and the women's quad (W4x) and women's pair (W2-) made their respective finals today, and we also have two women's doubles (W2x) in the A final. We all have a big day tomorrow. Go USA!

USRowing write-up from yesterday
Results - same link from the last post
Row2k coverage

Off the line in the semifinal

USA men's four (M4-) in their semifinal. They went on to win it.

World Cup III: Day 1

Post # 140

Kate and I won our heat this morning, which means we're directly on to the semifinals tomorrow. It was awesome to get out there and have our first international race as a double.

One really cool part of the day was that my host family from the past two years of racing in Lucerne came to cheer us on. They're a Swiss couple that wore their United States Rowing supporters shirts today and brought their newborn son, too. They were such great people to stay with and get to know over the past couple years and have been wonderful fans and friends ever since.

Tomorrow we'll be racing at 2:12 pm local time - 8:12 am on the east coast and 5:12 am on the west coast. Top 3 finishers move on to Sunday's A Final and a shot at the medals. Bottom 3 finishers head to the B final.

Today's results (under "Select class" choose LW2x)
Race schedule and lane draws for tomorrow
Live race tracker with commentary

Video from the starting line docks! (props to Erik Dresser/row2k)

Life in Lucerne - this is what it looks like right next to the starting line

Heat Update

Post # 139

Quick update: I'll be racing tomorrow in heat 2 of the lightweight women's double (the abbreviation used is LW2x) at 11:06 am local time. That's 5:06 am on the east coast and - oof - the middle of the night on the west coast.

We drew NZL (New Zealand), GBR (Great Britain), ARG (Argentina), and HKG (Hong Kong). Top three finishers advance directly to Saturday's semifinal and the rest go to the afternoon repechage to try to qualify for semis again.

Full Start List Schedule
Live Results
Row2k coverage

Good luck to all US crews racing tomorrow!

World Cup III

Post # 138

Our week of training in Lucerne has been a great lead-in to the World Cup. We've been reunited with our USA teammates who came over to Europe and it's been fun to have everyone in the same place again. All of us train in four or five different locations around the country and only get to see each other on training trips or at regattas, so it's been great to catch up with them and hear how their training is going.

Racing starts the day after tomorrow and we're feeling adjusted and ready. The schedule is as follows:

Friday morning - heats
Friday evening - repechages
Saturday afternoon - semifinals
Sunday morning - finals

Details to come tomorrow once the heat draw comes out. Check out the images below of the past few days!

Gigantic fireworks show on our last night in Zurich

 View on our walk to practice. Not too tough to take! 

Launching for practice

Post-practice swim 

Scenes from the Road: Zurich

Post # 137

Here are a few shots from Zurich, which has been our home base for the past week:

 Sitting outside one of the rowing clubs

It's helpful when your coach used to live in Zurich; you get the direct route to cool things like this (with a history lesson along the way!)

There's a big festival going on in the city, hence the ferris wheel and millions of people.

Thank goodness for getting over jet lag. We no longer look this angry/tired. (Photo: CRC)

Racecourse in Lucerne. Perfection. (Photo: CRC) 

World Cup Prep

Post # 136

Since our NSR 2 victory a month ago, Kate and I have been training in California to get ready for the World Cup in Lucerne, Switzerland. We've gotten in some solid weeks of work here and it's been a lot of fun to start fine tuning this double. We're leaving this week and will be training and adjusting overseas before we hit the starting line of the World Cup for our international debut as a LW2x.

Training in Oakland 

Lucerne is a magical place. It ranks high, if not the highest, on my list of favorite places to race. How can it not be when there's flat water, fast and exciting racing, rolling hills, and clanging cowbells - all set in a quaint, historic city with towering mountains as the backdrop? (Oh, and I think there's something about the Swiss and their chocolate...) There's no denying that I'm excited to be going back.

Lucerne from a castle

We'll be racing July 12-14, and there will be much more info to come as we get closer. In the mean time, check out this brand new organization: US Lightweight Rowing Association. It was created to help support lightweights in the US, both in development and on the elite level. What they're doing is already pretty exciting and I have no doubt we'll be seeing some great stuff from them in the future. So if you like lightweights and you like rowing, you should probably "like"the USLRA on Facebook. 

Go USA!

What Does a Crazy Person Look Like?

Post # 135

Like this. 

(The guy on the right...come on now)

This week, I had the pleasure of meeting Scott Jurek at an event hosted by Clif Bar. For those of you that don't know, Scott is the best ultramarathon runner this country has ever seen. He is the owner of seven consecutive Western States 100 titles (yes, that's running one hundred miles as part of a race) and has twice won the Badwater Ultramarathon, dubbed the world's toughest foot race (it's a 135-mile race in Death Valley...enough said). He's also a vegan and author of Eat and Run, which I read earlier this year and definitely recommend.

Why someone would have the desire to run that many miles at one time is beyond me, and that's precisely why Scott draws such a huge following and packed the house at this event. It was fascinating to hear him talk about his experiences and how he came to do what he does. His message was one I really believe in: you won't know if you're able to achieve something until you get out there and try it. Whether your goals are large or small, it's important to keep pushing past your comfort zone because what you'll discover can be pretty amazing. Despite all of his success and fame, Scott is a humble, down-to-earth guy and it was an honor to meet him. 

On the rowing front, Kate and I are grinding day in and day out in preparation for the Lucerne World Cup in July. It's been so great to have Kate out here to train with. Stay tuned for more to come on Lucerne. 

Training shot from this week. Photo by Jeremy Ivey. 

National Championships

Post # 134

Today was finals day for the collegiate national championship. It's only held on the west coast once every four years and lucky for me, this was one of those years. It wasn't a big training day, so my Wisco alum friends and I went up to Sacramento to cheer on the Badgers. On the way up, we got word that the Cal women's team (that Julie and I trained alongside last year) won the heavyweight national championship in Indianapolis! It was a really tight race and they pulled out a win. After hearing about that, I knew it was going to be a good day.

Once we got to Sacramento, we got to cheer on the Wisconsin boats as they charged down the course. The lightweights did a great job. They earned a bronze medal in the 8 and a repeat gold in the 4. Really cool to see them getting themselves slowly back to the top.

Back at home, my time with the kids at Artemis wrapped up at the end of the spring season. They're starting their summer season, but I'm taking time to train "for real" instead of coaching, which means I'm putting more hours of my day into training and the much needed rest/recovery that goes along with it.  I'm still involved with the program - I was at a local high school with the other coaches last week to teach kids some rowing basics and try to get them to come give it a shot - but not nearly as much as I was before. It feels strangely empty not seeing the kids and being around their ridiculously funny antics on a daily basis. I'm training at a boathouse right down the waterway from them though, so there have already been a couple times that I'll be tackling a long workout on the bike and will see them rowing by. I of course have to pause my timer for a moment, run out onto the balcony, and cheer wildly for them as they go by. Looking forward to stopping by for a longer visit one of these days.