The Road to 2012

Just a short little post this time to let you all know that we’ve updated the Photo Gallery portion of our website. It looks even cooler than it used to, with the added feature of multiple Flickr sets and great navigation between them all. The set you see at the top (titled “Cell Phone Pics”) is set to auto-update with the latest mobile phone pictures from each of us. We’ll try to snap as many as we can of school and the various training SNAFUs we have to deal with (the morass behind the Princeton Boathouse being the most absurd of all of these).

In addition to this auto set, we’ve posted pictures from last summer’s Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as well as some of the training camps we went through along the way. Let us know what you think!

So its been a busy 10 days since my last update, with midterm exams, summer job interviews, and training on and off the water. Although the weather has been much warmer recently, it’s been quite windy, sometimes gusting up to 40 mph, which has made getting quality mileage quite difficult. Given the circumstances, I’ve only been able to get about 80km and 3 weight sessions in over the last week. Not an ideal number but I’m happy to have gotten that much in over this busy time. I’m desperately looking forward to next week, by then midterms will be over, I’ll know where I’ll be working over the summer, and I’ll finally be in spring break!

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.

Several updates have been made to the website in the last few days. We’ve completed the templates for nearly all parts of the site, with big changes in the biography, results, media, calendar, and sponsorship sections. Sam also added a way to view YouTube videos of us in the Gallery section, so check back soon for video posts. There are still a few more aesthetic updates to come, but at this point we’re almost complete!

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.