The Road to 2012

I spent the last two and a half months in Georgia training with my friend Morgan House. The training has been great, with lots of paddling, lifting, running, biking, and swimming. We have also been able to do something fun pretty much every weekend. Some of the cool places I’ve been to include Dahlonega (site of the first gold rush!), Highlands, NC (awesome hiking and stay at our friend Suzy’s house), Stone Mountain (meeting place of confederate generals.) I also went to the UGA vs Ga Tech game in Atlanta with my buddy Tim “Pillow Ripper” Hornsby which was my first experience with southern football games and an interesting time.
Here is a picture of the gang at stone mountain:

And one of me shooting a shotgun with my friend Rob Finlayson!

As much I’ve enjoyed immersing myself in southern culture I will be heading back up North (“yankee-land”) for the Holidays. I’m planning on another great cross country skiing camp in the beginning of January before getting back on the water for next season.

Dave and I managed to get out of Princeton this June, distinctly ravaged by the previous four years of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, but toting our degrees and happy to be moving on.

The schedule for this summer–

• Head out to Chula Vista until July 13th for some team boat training with the guys, and a final set of trials on that final weekend
• Move out to Lake Placid on the 15th for a final training camp, before…
• 2009 World Championships in Nova Scotia, August 13th to 17th!

The official website can be found here.

More updates to come soon; expect pictures, youtube videos, and outrageous stories.

After reading some of the great entries over at http://www.vankayak.com/ and http://emily-wright.blogspot.com/, it’s become clear that this blog is woefully under-updated. There ARE exciting things afoot in the lives of Dave and Sam, but how the hell would you ever find out, with our update frequency?

We’ll be working hard at rolling out some shorter entries over the next few days, complete with pics, to get you all inside the MINDS of the athletes hard at work here at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, CA.

Okay, all, It’s that time of year again… though again doesn’t really apply, since this is really our first Winter election…

I seem to have blown the suspense. USACK Elections are here! We had a bit of a hiccup last time, what with the whole restructuring of the national board, but we’re back in business. All of you readers who are paying members of USA Canoe Kayak should have received ballots via e-mail over the past few days. If not, make sure to send a note to the fantastic Gerald Babao (gerald@usack.org) and make it known that need some assistance.

I’m running for the Sprint Athlete Director position, and would love all of your support. I’ll end with a copy of the letter I’ve just sent out the the Yahoo “Kayak” group.

(On the horizon, a week away: Sam Goes West to Chula Vista, for a spring break voyage rivaled by no other. Seriously, comment if you have a better idea than two weeks at the Olympic Training Center.)

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Hello all,

my name is Sam Ritchie–I’m writing to ask for your support in USACK’s current election of a new Sprint Athlete Director to the Board.

I’ve been kayaking competitively for 12 years, and have represented the US on three US Junior National Teams, and one Pan American Team, traveling to Brazil in 2007. I’m currently finishing my final year here at college, after which I’ll be moving out to the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, CA, to start seriously training for the 2012 Olympics in London.

I’ve put in many hours over the past few months as a volunteer, working with Brett Heyl and other members of the USACK staff on various outreach initiatives to the membership. I’ll be co-authoring a column in the upcoming USACK monthly newsletter, assisting in website development, and keeping you all up to date on the goings-on of the national team through my website, www.kayak2012.com.

I’ve also created a web portal–usack.slinkset.com–to allow you all to speak directly to the USACK board, and offer the membership the chance to hear back on any and every issue it deems important. (Keep contributing to this, please! The Board will be responding to the most interesting ideas in the newsletter each and every month.)

Whatever the outcome of the election, I’ll be working hard as a representative for the athletes and members across the country–your vote, and my spot on the Board, would bring you one step closer to the heart of USA Canoe Kayak, and allow all of us a bit more faith in the organization we’ve believed in for so many years.

Make sure to vote, using the ballots you should have received via e-mail over the last week! If you have any questions, or problems with the ballot, get in touch at sritchie09@gmail.com.

~Sam Ritchie

Dave and I try to bring you all the best training tips and stories on the internet–up until now, I thought that we had succeeded in holding this high office. Then, I found Club Trillion. Mark Titus, a walk-on at Ohio State, named the blog after him and two of his walk-on buddies, down at the end of the bench, all members of Club Trillion. To earn a ticket to the club, you have to get into the game for a single minute and do absolutely nothing that would add to your stat line. Your row in the stat sheet at the end of the game shows up with a 1 followed by thirteen zeroes–technically TEN trillion, but no matter.

Here’s the link:

http://clubtrillion.blogspot.com

In other news, please look forward to Dave and my upcoming announcement about the new and exclusive Club Last-At-Trials.

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.