"Back to California Where It's Warm"

Post # 151

After being gone for over a month in Korea, Boston, and Chicago, I've touched down in California again and I'm glad to be here. It was a fun trip and so great to see my family and friends during the weeks after Worlds. Now that I'm back, I'm easing back into work and training. This time of year always tests your patience as an athlete because you feel so slow even though a couple weeks ago you felt so fast. It's tough to wrap your head around when you're on your first couple rows back and you're watching how slow your speed is on the GPS. Somehow it always works out but it never feels like it's going to.

So what's on tap for my fall season? I'll be racing at Head of the Charles again this year, this time in the Championship single. For the past five years I've raced in the lightweight single and this year I'm stepping up to the big leagues and racing past heavyweight Worlds medalists, among other incredibly talented scullers. That's October 19th and 20th. I'll probably do a couple more races, but I'm still sorting out which those will be. More to come!

Happy to be back with the California Rowing Club team 

World Silver Medalists!

Post # 150

We won a silver medal in a tough final race at the World Championships on Saturday!

The field was tightly packed through the 500 before the Italians nudged ahead and led for the rest of the race. Behind them, we fought with the Germans for second place during the entire middle thousand with New Zealand and Great Britain pushing us from behind. In the last 500, we were deep in the pain cave but slightly ahead of Germany and trying to wind it up to get to the line. Once I heard the Italians cross first and scream with elation, I knew we could hold the silver medal position.

Happiness (and waves of pain) after crossing the line

For the record, that Italian girl is standing on her tippy toes

Check out the photo gallery of the medal ceremony as well as video of the race. 

Huge props to the Italians, who earned the first ever women's World title for their country in any event. That's an incredible feat and one that is so well-deserved. Congrats to the Germans, as well - their longstanding partnership is really starting to rack up some medals now. 

For me and Kate, it was absolutely thrilling to win a medal in this event. It was my fourth time racing the lightweight double on the senior team and though I'd won World Cup medals, I'd never laid claim to a World Championships medal. For Kate, it had been a hard couple of years and now, in her debut year as a lightweight, she won a Worlds medal. She also now has medals in both lightweight and heavyweight events at Worlds. That's pretty badass. Here's our post-race interview with USRowing (yep, I'm still out of breath).

It was a great weekend for Team USA overall; we won medals in eight events. Between that and the Lucerne results, it's been a solid first year in the Road to Rio and everyone, regardless of where they train or what event they're in, seems ready to get back to work and build towards next year. 

Thanks for the support and for following along. Go USA! 

Our women's 8 won their seventh consecutive World Championships title

A pair of bronze medals for our men's sweep program: congrats to the four and eight. 

Yeah lightweights! Our quad won a silver medal. 

Worlds - Last One, Fast One

Post # 149

Chungju, South Korea - With a second place finish in the semifinal yesterday, only one race stands between us and the end of the season: the World Championship A Final.

Our race will be STREAMED LIVE at 3:48 pm tomorrow. That's 2:48 am EST Saturday morning and 11:48 pm PDT Friday night. Set your alarms!

We'll face the exact same countries and athletes as we did at the World Cup: Italy, Germany, New Zealand, Great Britain, and the Netherlands.

You can also check out World Rowing and ITA's Twitter accounts for up-to-the-minute results. I'll update mine later on in the day.

To all the Team USA crews racing in this weekend's finals: let's make this last one a fast one!

Last few strokes of the semi. Full photo gallery here. 

Winner winner chicken dinner: men's four gets their bowball across the line first in their semi

Powerful women's pair stays ahead of New Zealand to take second place in their semi

Worlds: Semifinal Day

Post # 148

Chungju, South Korea - The last few days have dragged on. We had three full non-racing days and that's provided a lot of time to for practices, but also for rest and mental preparation for our semis and finals. I've been polishing off yet another book and closely followed my teammates' heats and reps racing via online tracking to break up the monotony.

The good news? Tomorrow is our semifinal. The draw has us in Semi 1 at 10:54 am, which is earlier than the original schedule due to predicted storms. We'll face Denmark, New Zealand, Italy, South Africa, and Argentina. Something interesting about our semi draw is that all three Lucerne medalists are in the same one. Yup, gonna be some fun racing. Top 3 will advance to the A final and a shot at the medals.

You can WATCH LIVE video of this one - 9:54 pm Wednesday for the east coast, 6:54 pm in CA. And if you're going to watch my race, it's well worth your while to watch the ones before and after mine as well. It'll be a fast, tight, crazy morning of racing for Team USA. Here's the full schedule.

Go USA!

World Championships: Heats

Post # 147

Chungju, South Korea - Sitting on the starting line in the last moments before any race is tense, and rowing races are no different. Once we're locked on and ready to go, everything goes silent (save for the cameramen's shutters clicking away) and you can feel some intense nerves in the air. We were in full-on race-mode today when that tension was cut by a grasshopper that unexpectedly landed on Kate's hand. She tried to flick it off and instead it jumped onto my hat, right near my eye. This of course startled me and gave us both a laugh - maybe just what we needed to stay light.

Grasshopper crisis averted

Overall, day 1 of racing at the World Championships was a successful one for Team USA with four crews winning their heats. Kate and I are excited to be one of these crews and will advance directly to Thursday's semifinal. With Worlds being a week-long regatta instead of the the three day boom-boom-boom formula of World Cups, there's more of an opportunity for recovery between races. We'll have a few days to sharpen up and get ready for the big races ahead.

Results sheet select "LW2x" under "Select Class," then click on the  >  for heat 2's results.
Bio on World Rowing to see just the final result

Report from Row2k on the whole team

More to come later this week!

The Eve of the 2013 World Championships

Post # 146

Chungju, South Korea - The course has been perfected, the opening ceremonies are in the books, and Korea is officially ready for the World Rowing Championships. From the athlete's perspective, we can't wait to get this regatta going. We've been here for nine days and are acclimated and tapered, so we're itching to get on the course and let it loose.

The heat draw came out today. Kate and I racing at 12:27 pm local time tomorrow against Sweden, Argentina, South Africa, and the Netherlands. The top 2 crews will advance directly to Thursday's semifinal and the rest will get another shot at the semis in Tuesday's repechage.

By my calculation, that's 11:27 pm on the east coast and 8:27 pm on the west coast. Although we're racing on Sunday here in Korea, those times are for Saturday night in the US. You can follow live here by scrolling down a little to where it says "Live Results." Turn up the volume to hear commentary, too. You'll see 500 meter splits on that tracking page; keep in mind the race is 2,000 meters so whoever gets the fastest 2,000 meter time wins the race. For all live tracking and results, look for LW2x - that's the lightweight women's double (our event).

To really get in the spirit of things and learn more about how we got here, check out this article that Team USA did on us.

Also worth a look are these crazy cool pictures row2k took of the Korean Air Show at the Opening Ceremonies. There are three pages of shots - here's one of them:

Go USA!

Making it Normal in South Korea

Post # 145

Chungju, South Korea - We're all settled here in South Korea and feeling more and more acclimatized by the day. Life in the week leading up to a World Championships is decidedly "boring" because our priority is to feel as normal as possible. Even though we're in a really cool foreign country, the goal is to be ready to go when it's time to sit on the starting line. This means we adjust to the time zone as quickly as possible, tinker with the equipment until it's just the way it feels in California, and create a practice and eating schedule that we can rely on. You almost forget you're in a foreign country because all you see are the hotel, racecourse, and bus ride in between. All is going well so far and we are getting really, really excited for racing. Only four days to go.

I'll post an update later this week with racing times and schedules (though converting my race times to US time zones will be challenging because the International Date Line blows my mind). Until then, here are some more photos from practice: 

Land warm-up in the boatyard. To everyone who I've made do lunges: I "suffer" through them too!

Training row

View of the boatyard from the top of the boathouse

South Korea - first few days

Post # 144

Chungju, South Korea - Here are some images from the first few days of our trip to the World Championships:

Team run across a big dam near our hotel

Racecourse facilities are great!

Downtown Chungju

Fish at the open air market in Chungju

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!