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.

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.

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!

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

Unfortunately not. As with my paddling, I’m riding on the laurels of my past achievements; last year, I was invited to TED as assistant photographer. That was back before Dave and I had discovered our fiery passion for updating this website, and, unfortunately, the account of my experience is lost. This time, at TED’s first appearance in Long Beach, CA, I’ll be one of 100 TED Hosts, responsible for familiarizing the 1400+ Conference goers with the new venue. Dave will be holding down the fort back in frigid New Jersey, partying like the madman he is, out at Cloister, one of Princeton’s ten eating clubs. I know he’s looking forward to Two Articles of Clothing night this Thursday, so make sure to leave comments giving him some suggestions on what to wear.

Nothing of substance to say here now–only, look forward to some fantastic updates over the next few days. Here’s a sample talk to get you acquainted:

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.

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.

We’ve been down in Satellite Beach, Florida for the past week for a 13-day training camp. This is the first time that we’ve been able to get on the water in January, and it feels fantastic! The weather has been really great (apparently cold by Florida standards, but not bad compared to D.C., where the Potomac is still frozen!). We added some pictures and video to the gallery, so you can check out where we are training.
There is a system of canals here that we paddle on—the longest one is about 6 kilometers in length. We can also go out on the Banana river which goes on for a really, really long time, so there are plenty of options. Debby Page has kindly let us stay at her home, and Taran Stucchio, a senior national team member with hefty culinary ambitions, has produced some really tasty meals for us. Debby’s home is right on one of the smaller canals and has a dock in her backyard, so it’s a perfect training location. Thanks Debby for giving us a place to stay!
We will be here for another five days, and then head back up to Princeton for our last semester, which starts on February 2nd. We have more dry land training and kayak erging planned, hopefully followed by some time out at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista in mid-March. Check back for details…

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.

So much to talk about! For now, I’ll start with a quick list of the events in our lives, both academic and athletic, since the last post.

• Triathlon! I attended the Lone Star Half-Ironman in Galveston, TX and the Endurasport Olympic Triathlon in Pomona, NY, and won both (for the 20-24 age class). I’m still gearing up for the full-length Ironman at the end of August, so, more on that to come.

• Olympic Trials! Dave traveled out to Oklahoma City this past April to race for a spot on the US Olympic Team. He ended up with some impressive results, finishing 6th in the finals. Unfortunately it takes a win to go to the Games, so we’re going to have to hold off until 2012 to make our statement.

• The school year’s over, along with the brunt of our work for our Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering degrees. Next year should be much simpler on the brainy side of life, giving us plenty of time to focus on the brawn. The US Men’s team has been fantastic in 2008–we’re going to need the brawn.

• We’ve decided on a senior project in the engineering department. For those of you who haven’t seen this already, go over and check out the Flyak;Einar Rasmussen has been working on this hydrofoiled modification to the K1 for years, and it looks like it’s about to go into production. David and I are going to take this concept and apply it to the K2. It’s a slightly tougher problem, as we won’t have a paddler sitting at the rotational center of the boat (important for pitching the front foil up out of the water and alleviating some of the hull drag, allowing the boat to speed up for “lift-off”. We’ve got a few ideas for overcoming this, including generating bubbles from the leading edge of the hydrofoil to keep the kinematic viscosity low until take-off–props to Mike Harbold, 3x Olympian and former WCC coach for this insight.

• I’m learning the Blues Harmonica, mostly on my own but with some help from Adam Gussow over at YouTube. One of the unfortunate truths of full-time training is the overwhelming boredom that sets in once the initial excitement of it all wears off. I’ll always be the kid with the odd hobbies, but composing the 2012 Blues might just make up for all that. (Other obsessions in my life–I’m learning to ride motorcycles this August, I’m playing Jazz guitar again, and I’m finally, finally learning to cook.)

• David and I will be making an appearance at the Lake Placid Invitational on the weekend of July 5th. Come out and support the dream!

Back to work. Thanks for reading, everyone, if you’re still checking up on this. David will add his voice again shortly. One fun little addition to the site we’re expecting to begin shortly–video posts from our respective locations, via YouTube.