The Road to 2012

USACK is starting a newsletter! Brett Hyle’s putting it all together, so make sure to send him a nice note here. Brett also wanted me to let all of you know that USACK is looking for stories about you, your training, your coaching and your camps. ANYTHING will do. Send off a story and some pictures to addtoweb@usack.org, and Brett will immediately go to work getting you published to USACK’s website!

Back to the newsletter. During some brainstorming sessions at the latest Lake Placid Training Camp, Brett asked Emily Wright and myself if we wouldn’t mind writing a short column for the newsletter each month. Here’s what we came up with:

FEM AND SAM’S USACK COLUMN

Of which this is the first; of which there will be many.

Nearly two dozen years ago, hundreds of miles apart, two kayakers were born. Their names were Sam and Fem, and they each had a strange knack for voicing opinions in short essays of 500 to 1000 words. Fast forward 21 years. Sam and Fem both realize simultaneously that USACK’s biggest flaw–perhaps its only flaw–is its failure to produce a hilarious and cheesy column for the monthly newsletter. The curious pair decide to author such a column, because–improbably–the one thing they both do better than paddling is write funny columns about paddling.

Allow us to introduce ourselves. Our names are Sam Ritchie and Emily “Fem” Wright; we’re both members of the Sprint Kayak National Team, based out at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, CA. The idea for this column came about when slalom Olympian Brett Hyle, seeking to get USACK’s membership excited and engaged, suggested setting aside space in his newly-created newsletter for a column focused on the lives and interests of USACK’s athletes. He offered us the chance to write about anything we wanted, provided it had at least some tenuous connection to training or kayaking. Naturally, we accepted. Immediately.

Starting next month, we’ll join USACK as regular contributors to the monthly newsletter. Between columns, we’ll keep you all satisfied with numerous posts to our up-and-coming blog on the USACK website. We’ll be answering questions sent in by our readers, crafting essays on all sorts of athletic topics, and providing an entertaining glimpse into the unique lifestyle of the full-time flatwater kayaker.

Here’s a quick list of some of the items we hope to provide in coming editions:

• Gear Reviews
• Race Reports
  
• Technical analysis, using videos of the best paddlers
  
• Advice on training, both on the water and in the gym
  
• Updates from the Sprint National Team
• Anything else that we deem worthy.
  

To make this really work, we’re going to need three things from you all, our readers: questions via e-mail, comments on our posts, and feedback. We want to hear what YOU have to say, so that we can get to work shedding light on the topics you care about. We’re going to answer your questions, conduct interviews with the world’s greatest kayakers, tell hilarious stories, write comics, post videos; and, if we do our jobs right, give you all some insight into what it’s like to do what we do.

See you all next month!

Hailing from Rochester, New York, Emily is currently living at the farthest geographic point from her hometown without leaving the continental US. At the training center, where the ratio of kayakers named Emily to kayakers NOT named Emily can reach 3:7, our columnist is known as “Fem,” short for “Femmy Emmy”. You can find more about about Emily at www.emilywright.org, or email her directly at emily.mary.wright@gmail.com.

Sam has been racing flatwater kayaks since age 9–up until that point, his athletic prospects were bleak. He joined a local soccer team at age 4, and quit weeks later, running off of the field to an adjoining playground. It was scarring for all involved. After earning his engineering degree from school this spring, he’ll be moving out to join forces with Fem and the rest of the National Team in Chula Vista. Read more about his life as a paddler at www.kayak2012.com, and make sure to get in touch at sritchie09@gmail.com.

We’ve been down in Satellite Beach, Florida for the past week for a 13-day training camp. This is the first time that we’ve been able to get on the water in January, and it feels fantastic! The weather has been really great (apparently cold by Florida standards, but not bad compared to D.C., where the Potomac is still frozen!). We added some pictures and video to the gallery, so you can check out where we are training.
There is a system of canals here that we paddle on—the longest one is about 6 kilometers in length. We can also go out on the Banana river which goes on for a really, really long time, so there are plenty of options. Debby Page has kindly let us stay at her home, and Taran Stucchio, a senior national team member with hefty culinary ambitions, has produced some really tasty meals for us. Debby’s home is right on one of the smaller canals and has a dock in her backyard, so it’s a perfect training location. Thanks Debby for giving us a place to stay!
We will be here for another five days, and then head back up to Princeton for our last semester, which starts on February 2nd. We have more dry land training and kayak erging planned, hopefully followed by some time out at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista in mid-March. Check back for details…

I’m just getting back from a wonderful training camp up at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, attended by some of the nation’s finest paddlers and hosted by Scotty Greifenberger, a member of the USA Canoe Kayak Board. Nathan Luce, the national team coach, announced this camp just a few weeks ago, while Dave and I were out in Chula Vista; we would be cross country skiing, he said, some of the BEST cross training available to us water-locked kayakers. Having heard stories for years about the prestigious XC skiing camps hosted by some of the best kayaking countries in the world–Poland, Hungary, Germany–I decided that, even though I knew nothing about the sport, it was time to learn.

Dave and I, along with Maia Farrar-Wellman, arrived up in Placid on New Year’s Day, after a 10 hour drive, and settled down into our rooms. I stayed with Taran Stucchio, an exceptionally tall kayaker from New York, while Dave bunked down with Tim Hornsby. First skiing session was the next morning. We enjoyed the snow, drank hot chocolate, and crashed early, excited for the camp ahead. In the AM, Scotty drove us out to the old Olympic XC course, helped coordinate our rentals, and let us loose under the care of Caitlyn McElroy, and Emily Wright, both Xtreme XC studs.

It became clear almost immediately that skiing was incredibly hard. All 6 of us inexperienced athletes had dressed quite warmly, and within minutes were shedding articles of clothing; stashing extra shirts in the woods, tying jackets around waists, sweating profusely all the while. Terrible. My heart rate crashed up through 170 and stayed there for a solid hour. The workout felt great, though technically it was quite awful, and I grew even more excited for the camp. That night, of course, we all slumped down at around 8pm, much more tired than we had expected to be, and sore in the strangest places (or so Taran claimed?)

Other notable training camp moments:

• Watching the bobsleds tear up the course on their qualifying races, very cool
• Getting up on the OTC Record Board, 1st in the Weighted Pullup category (and realizing that to get a squat record on the board, I would have to triple my current number …)
• My exceptional crash, which the fantastic Emily Wright blogged about here…

The camp was pretty brutal, though very satisfying–we’re all really hoping that the coaches extend this one to three weeks for the upcoming Winter of 2010. Our skills DID improve, mostly due to embarrassment after being goaded by our 14 year old pal Bug Lokken on the slalom team (shown below in all his pubescent glory).

Oh, I forgot. The TRUE highlight of the trip came during a visit to Starbucks. Imagine, Dave, Tim, Emily and myself sitting by the fire, warming our hands, waiting for our drinks. Dave’s is the first to arrive. The barista calls out: “Venti Mocha Double Raspberry Frappucino!!” See below for a little vid of what happened next.