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.

I’ve got my personal heroes in life, all people who are the Best in the World at what they do. (In this context “Best in the World” means the best at achieving the goals they’ve set out for themselves.) My old coach, Mike Harbold, was fantastic in his ability to inspire me to train hard and make those long-term goals tangible. He’d been there before, to the World Championships and even the Olympics. He brought back stories, good enough stories that I was willing to go out and kick my own ass every day after high school when the rest of the kids were doing the things teenage kids usually do. He was the Best In The world, in that he did what he set out to do. There are Professors here at Princeton who are the Best in the World. Every single person at the TED Conference (see my earlier post) fits this mold, and David and I are hoping that someday we can follow the lead of these Heroes we admire and become the Best in the World of sprint kayak. This isn’t the same as becoming Olympic Medalists, though that would be fantastic–it’s more about living up to the goals of dedication, commitment and inspiration that we set up for ourselves.

It’s tough to train as a full-time student, but we’ve been getting by. School’s given us the chance to experiment with our training in ways that a full-time athlete doesn’t have the freedom to do. We followed Mark Rippetoe’s advice in Practical Programming for Strength Training and developed an ambitious strength program that had me benching close to 300 pounds. We’ve played around with yoga, cycling, swimming, running, all sorts of different puzzle pieces which some day are going to fit together into the skill set we’ll need to make the Olympic Team. We don’t have it all yet, but it’s interesting to be aware of how every decision we make will reverberate forward into our athletic futures. To be the best in the world, you’ve got to dedicate mind and body to the exclusion of all else. This is unfortunate for someone with as frenetic a list of interests as myself, but the discomfort is part of the draw.

And now, the actual meat and information in the post–in the spirit of this site’s aforementioned love of making bold claims about distant events, David and I have locked down the sweep of our lives for the next couple of years. We’re both working on pretty wild internships this summer (more on this later!) which will give us the freedom to train, me for my Ironman (with much paddling thrown in–Ben Fouhy can cross-train like an animal, so I can too!) and Dave in the kayak. Following Senior Year, we’ll be racing in Europe and then moving in with the Kayak Team at the Chula Vista Olympic Training Center. After a few months we want to make the next step up in average ability, traveling to Florida with the guys to train with the Canadians and international paddlers flying in for camp. Trials for the World Championships next, followed by another hard racing season… then, we’re hoping to move out of the country and train with the Best in the World. Two years of full-time training, all boiling down to the minutes-long frenzy of the Olympic Trial.

So, there it is, all laid out. All of you reading, comment away, because perspective such as this really clarifies how important it is to have the support structure that we do. The goal of a single race seems incredibly narrow, almost selfish–but of course its about more than the personal gain. It’s about pushing the edge, inspiring those close to us and becoming the Best in the World.

Sam and I will both be in D.C. for our weeklong break; hopefully we’ll get in a lot of base mileage on the water, paddling twice a day or more. Although we’ve both made large gains in weight training over the winter, it will take lots of technical work in the kayak before this strength shows up on the water. More updates to come over spring break, I’ve got my digital camera now so hopefully I’ll have some pics up soon. Also, my good friend John DeRiggi is training for a triathlon and raising money for leukemia and lymphoma. His donations page is http://www.active.com/donate/tntnca04/tntncaJDeRigg , and since it all goes towards non-profit research all donations are tax-deductible. If you’re able, help donate to fund the means to fight these deadly diseases.

In terms of training, we’re finally getting back on the water. Last week was brutal, the temperature was mid 30’s so the lake was barely thawed. There was still a bit of ice along the edges, and I was surprised to take this picture of myself on one particularly cold day:

Yes, those are icicles on my hair… I didn’t realize that they had formed until I got off the water and tried to dry my hair off. Thankfully, the weather is finally now warming up with temperatures in the low 50’s for the next few days. I’ll be getting in good mileage and trying to make use of the little time I have available to prepare for the Olympic Trials in Oklahoma City taking place April 18-20. I’m excited just to take place in the event and hopefully the experience will help for our big trials before 2012.

I’m sitting here on a Sunday afternoon with clothes strewn around my room, trying to figure out what to pack for the mind-blowing week ahead of me. Through a wild stretch of luck this past year, I managed to get myself invited to the TED Conference in gorgeous Monterey, CA as the assistant photographer. For those of you who don’t know TED, take a look at Thomas Dolby’s fantastic description of the conference. I’ve been going to this thing since 2005, but this will be my first year as a volunteer and should get me backstage and talking to a lot of the big speakers.

Though next week is a rest week in the program, I can’t wait to get out on the California coast on my triathlon bike. No, let me boil it down a little further–I can’t wait to get on my bike without donning four pounds of warm clothes that don’t really do too much to fight the bitter, bitter cold of this blasted land. More on TED: From a mental perspective, this is one of the only weeks of the year where my mind is boggled on an hourly basis. It’s really quite exhausting, but I come away better every year, open to possibilities and with more connections (and TED freebies) than I could imagine. I’m showing up at TED this year armed with my kayak2012 business card:

a nice little something that I’m hoping will garner interest in our goal. Really, be sure to take a look at that link up above and get a feel for what TED is all about. The talks on their website can change your life, and they’re all free for download! Post comments here on the blog about what you find

LONG-TERM TRAINING PLANS

In other news, David and I sat down today to discuss our long-term plans for these Olympic dreams we’ve been so bold about sharing with all of you. It’s becoming clear that to really reach our full potential, we need to throw all of our effort into this one boat and push for the K2 spot on the Olympic team with all of the will-power at our command. That’s going to mean plenty of sacrifice, but it’s also going to mean that we need to be fairly fierce about working our way into the best K2 training groups on earth. We’ll be starting out with the US team in Chula Vista after we graduate, something we’re both very excited about. From there, if all goes well, we’ll pull our way up to the next rung of ability and begin the slow, painful climb up towards the upper reaches where the giants roam.

To start down this road while still at school, we’re going to need to raise some serious funds and work with either Princeton or our local Canoe Club, the WCC, to purchase two kayak ergometers so that we can continue our kayak specific work during the winter season. We want to thank everyone who’s donated so far–you can track our progress towards these two ergs with the ChipIn widget over to the left in the sidebar. We’re almost a third of the way there! Seriously, all of the guestbook posts and personal messages we’ve gotten have been really inspiring.

Training is going quite well, with both of us braving the New Jersey weather– which has been quite horrible recently. Lots of cold, rainy, and occasionally even snowy/icy weather. We’re spending the majority of our time swimming, doing weights, running and biking for now, but I know both of us are really looking forward to getting back on the water soon. More updates shortly.

Also, thanks to everyone who has signed the guestbook.

One of the toughest parts of the transition from kayak to Ironman training is the emphasis on massive, lengthy endurance rides on the bike. I recently got myself a little iPod shuffle that keeps me company when the rain starts to come down and the road gets long (and the rain HAS come down on me, for my last two 4+ hour rides!) so the sanity is still intact, but that’s by no means a permanent thing. Below, we have a picture of me before my 82 mile trip up to Gettysburg (left) and a picture of me after the 4.5 hour trip. My wonderful mother who came to pick me up so far North of DC took these pics, so thanks so much to her!

The basic idea of the Ironman training is to spend as much time on the bike as I spend swimming and running combined. The swim training I’m doing focuses almost exclusively on technique, as this is where I’m going to be able to eke out the biggest gains for the 2.4 miles I’ll have to swim for Ironman Louisville this August. The cycling will give me the leg strength I need to do the marathon after the 112 mile bike leg, and since running introduces such a high chance of injury into the training I do a bit less of that than a typical marathoner would on a weekly basis. That funky rear wheel is a HED Jet 90 with a Powertap hub built into it–I’ll be using this power meter both for training and for pacing during my big races this year.

More on the Ironman training later; I’m excited about the website, and it feels good to complete this first post!

crazy, training, triathlon, weather, biking, ironman