The Road to 2012

We had our National Team trials last weekend, so both Sam and I flew out to sunny California to enjoy some good weather and to take place in some exciting racing. Our big events were the K1 500 and K1 1000, where we were both shooting to place top 7 to maximize our chances of making the World Championship team. Overall, the racing went extremely well, with both of us achieving our goals. In the 500 I placed 4th and Sam 6th (both with PRs), while in the 1000 I battled a broken footstrap to come in 9th and Sam 7th, which ranks us as #6 and #7 overall. The K2 1000 also went quite well… we battled blustery conditions and a vicious sidewind to come in a close 3rd behind the Dolan brothers (www.dolanbros.com) and Tim Hornsby/Morgan House. Morgan actually won all of his events, so a big congrats to him! Pictured below is the K4 combination of (front to back) Sam Ritchie / Dion Maxwell / Taran Stucchio / me. It was our first time in the boat (and my first time in 4 seat– I couldn’t even see above Taran’s head!), but we still came in within 2 seconds of the winning crew which was great. Full results on the USACK website.

After the trials we also got a chance to clean our boats off with some Marine Restorer, compliments of Debby Page. We know have shiny, new-looking boats which will hopefully glide across the water even faster now that they have a shiny new finish. (It’s amazing how dirty our kayaks get in their neglected state behind the Princeton boathouse). 

We’re now back in New Jersey, where it’s been raining for 48 hours straight. (Gotta love the dirty Jerz!). We have a few more exams left, and a presentation of our senior thesis entitled: “Variable Drag Element on a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine for Improved Performance” (I know what you’re thinking, but hey, I wasn’t the one who came up with the title). If all goes well, graduation is June 2nd after which we will officially be in the ‘real world.’

So now its back to training basics as we prepare for the next trials in July, which will determine exactly which boats will race at the World Championships (Aug 12-16 in Dartmouth, Canada). Stay tuned for more updates!

This site’s dedicated to the power of dedication and the long-term goal. The title of the blog is a perfect example–we’ve put up a website declaring our intentions to embark on what will prove to be one of the hardest journeys of our lives. There are going to be plenty of opportunities to give up, of course, but that’s exactly why the Olympic Games hold such mystique in people’s minds. So many people take on and let go of athletics as children that we admire the few who can keep their claws buried in a dream and ride it on to its fullest potential.

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.

So the training’s been heating up here, unlike the weather which has been teasing us with warm, humid days in between icy days that are starting to drive me crazy out on the bike. I’m about to start my longest week of training before the big Lone Star Triathlon down in Texas (March 30th!). This has me out on the bike for about 11 hours total, swimming about 5 and running for 4 hours, with 2 hours of weights packed in there around the edges. My cycle moves back to rest next week, and then I ramp up for a couple more before my peak week before the race. This will be my first Half Ironman, but the training’s been feeling really good and with luck I’ll be able to nail all the little details leading up to the race and knock out a really good time.

In other news, David and I are both new members of POWERBAR Team Elite! We got the news a few days ago, and want to thank Powerbar for supporting our Olympic dreams. The toughest part about training so hard as a full-time athlete is that it’s often tough to fit proper nutrition in around Engineering classes and Dave and my duties as Residential College Advisors. Basically, we’ll be subsisting on meals in bar form from here on out.

For future posts I want to start including some of the raw details of our training, and laying out exactly what we’re doing to try and make it to the highest level. One of the biggest things that separates us from the other guys is the amount of reading and research we do on exercise physiology and kayaking in general. We don’t have the free time that some of the other kayakers do, but we do distinguish ourselves by training SMART. An update I really want on the site is the Training Library we use, to direct anyone interested to some of the best books out there on all of the many aspects of training at the Olympic level. There’s so much junk out there–I’ve spent tens of hours combing over different training guides and exercise physiology textbooks, and I think I’ve done a pretty good job boiling the list down to a select few from really knowledgeable sources. That said, tens of hours isn’t that long a time–if anyone has any suggestions for us to take a look at, shoot us an e-mail or comment on the post!

And here we are, with the first big update for this website. Check back here to get the latest on the journey of Sam Ritchie (that’s me) and David Petrovics to the 2012 Olympics in the sport of Sprint Kayak. To understand the mission, you’ll do best by reading a little bit about what makes us tick and why we think we can make a good run at the Games.

A Little Bit About Us!

Sam Ritchie

I started kayaking in 4th grade, joining one of my classmates down at the Washington Canoe Club for informal practice in the canoe a few days a week. I wasn’t the best at coordination sports, and the solo aspect of the sport drew me in. I began to improve as more and more athletes joined the program down at the WCC, eventually earning a spot at the National Championships in 1996 as a Bantam and learning as much as I could about racing from the coaches.

In 2000 I won my first medal at the National Championships in the K4 200m, and the next year won the K1 bantam events in both the 500m and the 1000m. I ranked in the top three Junior paddlers in the nation every year until college, attending two Junior World Championships (Komatsu, Japan in 2003 and Szeged, Hungary in 2005) and earning spots on three consecutive US National Teams. I raced both the K1 and K4 in Japan, but by Junior Worlds in Hungary had committed to the K2 with my partner David Petrovics.

I put kayaking aside for a season in 2006 to focus on school–David and I had both earned spots at Princeton University, and were settling down into the long road towards Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering degrees. In ‘07, I decided it was time to pick up the paddle again and convinced Dave to jump back in the K2 with me. We both attended the US National Team Trials in the Spring of 2007 and earned spots on the Pan American Games US Team, once again racing in the K2 over 1000m. We finished 7th in the A-Final, and decided then and there that we would begin to focus long term on a spot at the 2012 Olympics in the K2.

So that’s where I am now, in my Junior year as a Princeton Engineer, trying to fit training in around the school work and having fun in the process. This year, due to the complexity of Olympic trials (we won’t be able to make the team without putting our educations on hold and attending a series of training camps throughout the year, not an option at this point) I’ve decided to take up training for Ironman Louisville this coming August. the aerobic base, nutrition habits and discipline about training that I’ll learn from this journey will set me and Dave up on the path to our short term goal–the 2009 World Championships in Nova Scotia.For more personal stuff, hobbies, favorite foods, and all that stuff, see the bio page on the site!

David Petrovics

Flatwater sprint kayaking has always been a bit of a family tradition for me. My entire extended family lives in Hungary, where kayaking is really popular. Two of my uncles competed at the world championship level, and they share several medals between them. The elder of my two uncles, Kalman Petrovics, is a two time World Champion, in the 1990 K1 (singles) marathon and the 1985 K4 (four man kayak) 10,000 meters. My youngest uncle and godfather, Bela, also earned a bronze medal in the K2 (doubles) 1000. Their accomplishments have inspired me to also try my luck at the sport and to continue the family tradition.

Although kayaking is not as popular in the United States as it is in Europe, I was intent on finding a place to pursue the sport. In the summer of 1999, at age 12, I finally found the Washington Canoe Club (located in D.C.) I joined the team and have been a member of the club ever since. I attended my first nationals in Gainesville, GA, in 2000, where I placed 4^th in the K1-500 semifinal, narrowly missing the final. That summer was also the first time that I competed in the K2 with Sam, setting the stage for a really successful, long term partnership.

Several years later, at age 18, Sam and I raced and won the K2-500 and the K2-1000 meter events at the Junior National Team Trials in Lake Placid, NY. This performance qualified us for the Junior World Championships which were held later that summer in Szeged, Hungary. Unfortunately, Sam had a very untimely accident and broke his wrist days after our trials. He made a great recovery, however, and I stayed true to the K2 and we raced quite well at the Jr. Worlds given our setback. We placed in the semifinals and narrowly missed the B-Finals.

After Junior Worlds, I began my college career at Princeton University where I am majoring in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and obtaining a Certificate (minor) in Finance. Both Sam and I train on Lake Carnegie, where we share the water with the Princeton crew team and the US National Rowing Team.

Our most recent competition was the K2-1000 meters at the Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We placed 7^th in the finals in a really tight race. It’s been our most impressive accomplishment to date, and we hope to do even better in the future.

Our Goals
To compete in the 2009, 2010, and 2011 World Championships, and to qualify for the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Our Plans
Get our Princeton Bachelor’s degrees in June 2009 and then start the 3 year training phase leading up to the 2012 Olympics. Train in Chula Vista at the Olympic Training Center for our first year and abroad for the next two.

What We Need
Sponsorships in nutrition, kayaking apparel, kayaking equipment (boats and paddles), and other funding to cover travel and the inherent poverty of training full-time.

k2, kayak, olympics, philosophy, teamwork, training