Monday, August 24, 2009

More Worlds Photos

These great pictures were taken by Bennet Wetch and belong to USA canoe/kayak.







Gumby

A month ago I started working on doing a split, and today I finally got it.




If you want to see some really impressive flexibility, watch Bikram Yoga Championships. It is ridiculous.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Stats from fun week.

Now that my rest week is over, I will be easing slowly back into off-season training (my favorite time of year!!) Here is some info from this past week.

Number of hours paddled: 8.5
Number of hours spent training but not paddling: 0
Total number of sessions: 5
Number of sessions that were considered a total riot: 5
Number of deer fly bites: 2
Number of times I shrieked and swatted away a deer fly: 200
Longest day on the water: 3 hours
Bridges passed under during that day: 13, twice
Number of months passed since I last spent 3 consecutive hours in a kayak: 18
Most consecutive hours I've ever spent in a kayak: 13
Number of miles I ran this week: 0
Number of miles Holly ran on Sunday: 20
Average number of cups of coffee consumed per day: 4
Width of my smile when my mom brought home the first local apples of the harvest season: a mile
Number of times I wished I were somewhere else or doing something else: 0

Saturday Shenanigans

Congrats to all my teammates who raced at US Sprint Nationals this past weekend in Gainseville Georgia. (Results!) Unfortunately my kayak '09 fund has long since run dry, so I've been having cheap fun in [upstate] New York. Cheap fun around here mostly consists of canoeing and related activities--- Marc and Matt are training for La Classique [120 miles], and Holly and Danielle are training for the Adirondak 90-miler. Me? I'm just working on my tan lines. But when someone says "20k paddle," I come running! err... paddling. ;)

Friday, August 21, 2009

Emily's Back!




Get it... Emily's back?? All the credit goes to Holly on this one, who took this picture yesterday on the crick while we were canoeing. And I couldn't resist sharing her spectacular pun.

Terry Kent's letter to US junior kayakers

I found this article on the USACK page. It's a letter written by Terry Kent to the US jr. sprint team following their experience at World Jr. Championships in Moscow. But it's pertinent to all of us, because we all need to work on raising the bar. I'm glad Terry reminded us that keeping up with the Euros IS possible. I think it was last summer during the junior/U-23 camp in Lake Placid that Mac Hickox gave us a splendid speech in which he said that the US kayak team is TOUGH, RESILIENT, and HAS WHAT IT TAKES to stand on the podium. I think we're starting to gain some momentum.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Maine


I found these little guys in Maine during our drive home.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Sick

I don't know how it happened, but it started on the first day of heats with a typical cold/sore throat. I tried to convince myself that it was all just in my head, but after a few hours I decided it would be better to acknowledge that I might not be feeling 100% and Attack. I learned all about Attack Sick Mode from the ski team in high school. All that time spent breathing in cold air made for plenty of colds and cases of bronchitis, and we developed quirky ways of fighting it off. My tried-and-true stand-bys included fresh garlic, emergen-c, preemptive zinc lozenges and zinc throat spray, a quarter cup apple cider vinegar mixed with a cup of water (that one took serious motivation), and hot orange juice.

Anyway, I started to feel better later in the weekend, although by that time most of the rest of the team was feeling sick as well. (Not my fault... Morgan and Timmy had it first!!) I guess my body knows it is the end of the season and it can finally break down. I have been pushing my body hard all season with no big rest periods. So now I am going to give it all the rest and recovery it needs! And maybe some hot orange juice and garlic, too.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

World Championship Wrap-Up

Great racing this weekend on Lake Banook. I'm very proud of what I've accomplished in my first season of international racing! Mickle and I improved a lot in our k2, and there's plenty more to do.

Today we had the 4x200m relay, which is a new event and totally awesome, in my opinion. The relay is set up so that the first leg starts at the finish line heading UP the course and paddles 200m; when that paddler finishes her 200m leg, the gate drops for the second girl to paddle DOWN the course to the finish line, and so on. Each team of 4 shares 1 lane, so you have to merge to the right-hand side when you're finishing, because your teammate is lined up in a gate facing you in the center of the lane, ready for the "tag off."

Fun!! Chaotic! I hope they keep this event and we practice it a little more. Our team was (in order) Emily Vinson, Maggie Hogan, Emily Wright, Emily Mickle. There are good pictures of us hidden in the depths of someone's camera, no doubt, and hopefully they will surface soon so I can post them.

Smile!

Henry Krawczyk is The Man. Seriously. He's part of Team USA's support staff and one of the most positive, helpful, hilarious people I've ever encountered.

After our team meeting tonight, Henry randomly walked over where Mickle and I were sitting and said in his Polish accent, "Hey girls, let me ask you something. Why do you have ears?" Mickle said, "For listening?" I said, "For earrings?" And Henry answered with a grin, "No. They are so you can smile.... from ear to ear." Then he told us to keep smiling, and he trotted away.

I think Henry is saving the world, a little bit at a time.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Watch me race today!

World Championships is streaming LIVE today and tomorrow on the ICF [International Canoe Federation] website! Click here to watch. (7:50-9:30AM E.S.T. and 1:30PM E.S.T.)

I believe you can also get coverage here (It might be the same coverage, I can't tell.)

Friday, August 14, 2009

Semifinal Report

After a great 1000m in the morning, leaving us 13th overall (there is no B-final), Mickle and I were pumped to "give 'em hell" in the Olympic-distance 500m semifinal later in the day.

Unfortunately, our hardest effort wasn't enough today. We wouldn't have changed anything about our race... in fact we are thrilled with our progress. But we missed out on qualifying for the B-final by 1 spot. (We were 19th.) Since we've been working solely towards our Making The B-Final goal for two months since we returned from Europe, we are disappointed.

As for the rest of the US team, Maggie made it through to the 1000m k1 B-final, Morgan House is in the C final for the k1 1000m, and Yariel Rodriugez, our badass canoeist, made the B-final for the c1 1000m.

The rest of us get to focus on the 200m distances. We still have lots of racing to do this weekend!

New Olympic event for women

Check it out: the International Canoe Federation has just added a women's k1 200m event to the Olympic programme, starting in 2012!

Thursday, August 13, 2009

World Championships: Day 1

Out of 14 USA boats today, 13 made it through the heats to the semifinal! Mickle and I had good races in the 1000m and 500m k2 events and are happy with the improvements we've made since World Cups 2 and a half months ago.

Wanna see?



Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Opening Ceremonies

The Opening Ceremony was really cool. For the parade of nationals, club teams from the area (I'm told there are no less than eleven clubs in the area Halifax/Dartmouth area... which is more than in the entire USA, I think) paddled the flags down the course in war canoes.




I only stayed until 9pm, so I missed most of the good stuff... but I did find my family!!


The whole clan of Wrights



Me and my mom!

My schedule the day before worlds

6am: wake up
6:30am: breakfast-- cereal, soy milk, egg whites, fruit, and coffee
7:30am: catch bus to the lake
8:00am: arrive, stretch
8:30am: paddle, practice using the start gates
9:30am: get off the water, stretch
10am: bus back to hotel, relax.
11am: lunch: soup, salad, and turkey
12pm: read, relax, write this blog post
1pm: nap
3pm: wake up, make a pot of coffee
3:30: chiropractor
4pm: massage
4:30: shower
6pm: dinner
6:30pm: team meeting
8pm: opening ceremonies!!

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

World Championships

We have arrived safe and sound here in Halifax, Nova Scotia! The weather is lovely: rainy and cool (60 degrees). Everything is seeped in Atlantic fog. This morning when we paddled, visibility was only about 50 meters, making for an eerie racecourse where boats are randomly emerging from the clouds.

We are racing on Lake Banook in Dartmouth, which is just across the harbor from where we're staying in Halifax (Dalhousie University). The preliminary race draw puts my Thursday heats at 12:09pm and 4:30pm. You can get live results at the race website, www.canoe09.ca.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Fun fact:

37.5% of the US women's team is comprised of Emilys.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Cloud-chasing

On my way home from the training center tonight, I found the clouds mesmerizing. It isn't often that we get clouds here. (Tragic.) I happily jumped on my bicycle after dinner to find a hill on which to admire them.

Then I took this generic sunset picture, which is not as good as these sunset pictures.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

More Video Goodness

Here's a really cool video that I took with my GOPRO camera. And while I have you here, let me just tell you how perfect this camera is. It's small, waterproof, and mounts right to the kayak with a super-powerful suction cup. It would be great for someone training without a coach who still wanted to do video technique analysis. Check out the website.

This video features Ariel Farrar-Wellman, Jen Burke, Kaitlyn McElroy, and Maia Farrar-Wellman... but Maia is the only one you can actually see, since she was sitting in 4th seat. :) She's also wearing wacky kineseo-tape on her upper back, if you were wondering what all that black tape is for. (It acts kind of like an exo-skeleton.)




And here's another one of me in my k1. You can notice that my body isn't twisting perfectly back and forth.. I sort of tip over and fall onto the stroke sometimes. (bad!) That's why this camera is awesome... instant feedback, and a totally different angle of video than coaches get when video-ing from the motorboat.




And lastly, if you want to see ALL my fun kayak videos, visit my youtube channel here.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Videos!

Here are two videos from last week of Mickle and me training in k2 (and the women's k4, too!)