I Hope everyone is having a happy holidays!

Bright and Early

We resumed regular practices , albeit with a start time that is thirty minutes earlier than usual. At first I decided to protest the new 6:00 AM start time by not attending practice. However, I soon found out that avoiding the workouts has a detrimental effect on speed and endurance.

We are in the midst of a big time presidential campaign season. Check out this interesting look at the latest candidate to enter the ring:

Michael Scherer on Fred Thompson

Of Possible Interest

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/08/private-paddlin.html

Awwww Yeah.

This image best encapsulates how I feel after taking a week+ off after nationals. In other news...we went to nationals in Seattle, it was fun. EJ and Peter went to Junior Worlds, they had fun. Ariel, David, and Sam went to Pan American Games in Rio, they had a whoole lot of fun.

image source: http://www.fritchman.com/images/lazy-five-ranch/groundhog-a.jpg

Gladiator Arena

Radley, Darek and Johnny D have been frustrated all year that Nationals is not being held in the swelteringly hot swampland of Gainesville Georgia. To ameliorate the effects of our sadness we decided to have an all out fight to the death grudge match over five 1000 meter pieces on a muggy mid July day on which the air quality index was somewhere between crappy and Mexico City. The residual effects from the battle were divided equally between emotional and physical trauma.

AdirondAction!

We survived a wet and wild weekend of racing in the Olympic laden town of Lake Placid. Results are here:

results

Ariel, Sam, David, Peter and EJ were staying in the Olympic Training Center for the two weeks prior to the race in preparation for Pan Am games and Junior Trials respectively. Peter and EJ's fate on the Junior National team was to be determined late last night. If anyone has the latest news regarding this please spill it.

Latest From the Front Lines

Heres the latest from Jim Ross reporting on Junior Trials.

Hey all well there was a very big wind on the lake today so NOBODY made any time standard in any boat. K-1's; both boys made finals but Peter jumped the start and was called back so he had a bad start to the actual race and got 5th; EJ had trouble with a swivel seat that didn't. (swivel) and he got 9th. In the k-2 they did much better and won the 500m by just a hair! Ian and Sean both made C-1 finals and Ian got 6th and Sean 4th. As with the k-2 they did much better in the tandem. They got 2nd in the C-2 by just a hair (two tenths out of first) So that was it for the first day of races the 1000's are tomorrow and they are hoping for quiet winds. All-in-all not a bad showing for the WCC crew. Everyone is still certainly in the hunt for a berth on the team. Talk to you tomorrow, late afternoon cheers jim

Time Trials and Tribulations

Wcc paddlers were freakishly fast this weekend during our regular time checkup. Some may attribute the team's collective speed to fortuitous-Potomac-River-tidal-vicissitudes but I think its just cause were dang fast.

Jan has completed his transformation into a full blown traitor and is now paddling for a club that goes by the oh so prestigious name of the "Royal Leamington Spa Canoe Club". I wonder if their towel service is better than ours.

You might get a kick out of their famed annual August event (check out the name of the gallery):

http://www.rlscc.org.uk/gallery.aspx?galleryid=1

The World's Toughest Canoers

President Andrew Soles is among them. If you see Mr. Soles you might notice that he looks like he just got in a fight with a heard of cats and then fell down a flight of stairs. Thats because he decided to do the World's Toughest Canoe Race

Check out these hilarious pictures

Fish Fry!

Rock star revelers dancing the night away at the Washington Canoe Club's famous fish fry.

Pan Amania!

Congratulations to Ariel F, Sammy R and David P as they all were officially chosen to represent the United States in the Pan American Games in Rio next month.

Time trials went according to plan today as John D and David P decided to let EJ and Peter win the 1000.

Holla!

Bad Omens

Before today's workout we all watched in horror as a crane (or is it egret) plucked a snake from the river and shook it for several minutes hoping to kill it. Eventually the massive bird decided that it was too hungry to wait for the little guy to stop squirming and just swallowed it whole! I evaluated the experience as a sign that the workout was going to eat us alive - which it did.

Gods and Generals

Our local lord of the river glowing after a solid outing on the Susquehanna. He and other WCC members dominated as expected. Here's the proof results.

The men's relay team did well, finishing just behind "smokin' joe's bbq". They kept it close most of the race, a few errors in course selection and transitions between relay groups probably cost them a repeat of last year's victory.

our mixed relay teams finished in first and third. Things were close, with the (eventual) second place team opening up a substantial lead in the 2nd leg, but our teams paddled hard and Andrew Stephens and Emily Harris squeaked into first by an incredibly narrow margin.

Dan Havens was the hero of the day.

Rich Libby won the unlimited Kayak division, even after trailing the leader by up to 4 minutes.

Adrian and his dolphin nose boat led the race in the deep lake start, but got into trouble in the upper swamp section, where he capsized four times. At some point the nose section of the boat began to leak water at the seams, allowing his competitors to sneak away from him as he bailed water.

Andrew and Radley managed an unofficial 11th place, only swam twice. No photos are yet available, but radley's dad has some video we want to get posted on youtube.

The sprint team mimicked a race scenario in which John and David P were unexpectedly placed in a K-2 with little to no forewarning. Luckily, they are both butchers (latest term for bad ass paddlers) and were able to find some semblance of power-synchrony.

Demons of the Speed Variety

We are delving back into speed work this week and Darek is pushing everyone to their limits. Monday morning's breakfast featured eight healthy portions of 200 meter pieces followed by a slovenly run up the capital crescent trail. Absent was the ever-redolent Jan Vorberger who was no doubt at home coping with the effects of heightened separation anxiety stemming from his upcoming departure from the Washington Canoe Club.

Many club members are headed up to NY to do battle in the famed General Clinton. Good luck guys!


I just set something up that lets you track site usage. Check out the stats for the blog over the last two days! Anyone know what bounce rate means?

Region	Visits	Pages/Visit	Avg. Time on Site	% New Visits	Bounce Rate
California	5	2	101	0.2	0.4
Maryland	3	1	0	0.333333	1
District of Columbia	2	1	0	1	1
(not set)	2	1	0	1	1
New Jersey	2	1.5	82	0.5	0.5

Woah Dude Preakness is Crazy

I decided to cap off the "easy" week by heading to Preakness to see what people do when they are allowed to bring as much alcohol as they can carry into the middle of a race track on which the second portion of the famed Triple Crown is held. Hilarity ensued. I was in the general vicinity of these true athletes :

Life's Fine When You're Bearded

Life's Fine When You're Bearded, originally uploaded by kayakwcc.

Here we see Radley, widely considered to be a keen hunter/gatherer, in his natural state devouring ice cream with reckless abandon and ultimately vitiating(word of the day) his beard in the process. The photo stream does not capture the delicate art of stalking the lunch lady which preceded the kill.

Bodaciously Loquacious

That's how I would describe the participants in this jovial yet informative email thread between two mainstay's at the WCC.

Dear Dr. Rhodes:

You look like a guy who rarely misses a meal. How can I know if I need to eat while I am exercising? I plan on doing an idiotic 40 hour paddling race in a few weeks. One of my pals recommends tubes of mayonnaise. Another says expensive sport gels are the way to go.

A Safari Sole

Dear Sole,

You’ve got to be kidding. No human can sustain intense athletic output for 40 hours without nourishment! Instead of sucking down tubes of warm mayonnaise, I recommend you consider the following facts.

Fatigue during a workout or sporting event is usually caused by lack of water, salt or sugar. Most athletes in sports that last more than a couple of hours know that they should drink and take in some salt, but they also need a source of sugar.

When you exercise, you get your energy from sugar and fat stored in your muscles and sugar and fat in your bloodstream, and, to a lesser extent, from protein. At first you get more than 80 percent of your energy from fat and sugar stored in muscles.

Usually at the start of exercise, almost 45 percent of the energy comes from stored muscle sugar. As you continue to exercise, you use up fat and sugar stored in muscles and get far less from these stores. After two hours of exercise, you have used up most of your stored muscle sugar (glycogen) and get less than 15 percent of your energy from that source. At four hours, your muscles have almost no stored sugar at all.

When your muscles are depleted of their stored sugar, they become difficult to coordinate and feel heavy and hurt. Your muscles can get some sugar from gluconeogenesis, a process in which your liver makes sugar from protein (branched chain amino acids), but that is not enough for all-out exercise. During intense exercise, you need a source of sugar. It can come from sugared drinks or any carbohydrate-rich foods. You can use special sugared exercise drinks, sugar gels, carbonated soft drinks, exercise bars or any food that contains sugar or flour.

Personally, I recommend tubes of frosting. They are tasty, yet nutritious!

Good luck in your Silly Safari,

Dr. Rhodes - Response mostly pirated from Gabe Mirkins’ website…http://www.drmirkin.com/about/AboutDrMirkin.htm#whois

Mother of All Recaps

I apologize for the delay in posts to this blog. My only excuse is that the task of conveying the significance of recent and upcoming events over a simple blog post was so daunting that I chose to put it off, hoping that the pressure would dissipate. Instead I was taunted day and night by my own guilty conscience, ballooning in the pit of my stomach as if I were cautiously sipping on a two liter bottle of Diet Coke chased promptly by a few Mentos every night. However, now that I am writing this I think waiting an extra week or two was a good idea because it gave me a chance to fully digest the significance of all the latest happenings at the Washington Canoe Club.

We have a new coach! Darek Oborski was recruited from a top notch club in Poznan Poland and has been tasked with growing the sprint team into a high caliber program (not that it isn't already, I'm just sayin...) and to instill fear in the teams with which we compete. It became clear early on that his knowledge of the technical aspects of the sport is immense as he systematically identified various flaws and quirks in each of our strokes. Darek also thinks its funny to mock our feeble strength by jumping in on a set of bench press and treating the the 185 pound bar like its a twig. All in all he's a great guy and a perfect fit for the team.

Jan is leaving! (boooo!) Our much beloved friend and training partner is packing his bags and heading across the pond in pursuit of unlocking the ever present mysteries of the universe. And on the side he will be training for the Olympics with a club in Coventry England. We will miss you Mr. Jan. You were the spotter for my bench press, the rider of my wake, the lone laughter after my bad joke, the anti-American remark to my "U.S.A!...U.S.A!" chant. Please come back and visit us when you can (and don't be surprised if you get a visit from a throng of WCC paddlers). Good luck and all the best with your new endeavor.

Today's photo is in tribute to Jan. When you hear the word Jan the first image that comes to mind is often of Jan himself, changing in the grill room right before a workout. Apparently he does it in other countries too! Here he is disrobing behind a boat rack in Germany. My those English are in for a treat!
In other news, Maia, Johnny D, Radley, and President Soles ran the Charles River. And by ran I mean we paddled some twenty odd miles down a river littered with portages, rapids, and slower paddlers hahahaha. Soles also participated in what is known as the "World's Toughest Canoe Race" which took place in Texas, of course. Radley and Soles are doing another marathon race in NY this weekend - Radley gave me the details this morning but I forgot them because I was too mesmerized by his attractive yet confounding hairstyle.

Making 'em Cry

Pay Attention, originally uploaded by kayakwcc.

David shows no mercy when mocking all the teary eyed paddlers he left in his wake last weekend. Thanks to Sammy R. for taking this photo and alerting us of its existence.

Day Two! More Coverage of the Clobberage

Sam and David made a strong case for their place on the Pan Am team today as they slayed their fellow B Finalists. Good job to all racers as they were taunted by free food at the cafeteria and rabbits.

Results! And Oh My, They Are Good!

Everyone did well this weekend ,especially team mascot Jan Vorberger, and most especially Sam, David, and Ariel as they came in top 11 in their respective categories. Check below for photos of the non stop fun and a link to all 500 meter results. Tonight we rest up for tomorrows upcoming maelstrom of 1000 meter massacres (it is us that does the massacring, not us getting massacred - we hope :-)




http://www.usack.org/2007_SP_TT_results_day1.pdf

Live at the OTC!

Our very own Princeton boys have been innovating away as usual. Check out their latest foray into changing the world

blog.pinpointetching.com,

We have big time races this weekend. I am updating this post from the ultra plush at&t athlete connections center. It looks like this:

http://blueroom.att.com/sports/teamusa/otc/imageviewer.php?id=after

Half the paddle. Twice the man.

the beave on the canal

Gosh its hard to find them Easter Eggs under all that darn snow

Not sure whats harder to keep up with - seasonal vicissitudes in D.C. or David Petrovics in a K-1. Both are able to change state in the blink of an eye.

Today Was a Little Cold. Oh Yeah and We Had an Epic Disaster

It was unfairly cold out this morning especially after being teased by a weekend chalk full of warm weather, giddy tourists, and cherry blossoms. Despite having an Epic paddle crafted by the venerated engineer-kayaker Greg Barton, Maia was able to overpower the epoxy job on the shaft and pull the paddle apart with her bare hands. Now she paddles a canoe.

"Wake Me OUT Before You Go Go"

Not gonna sugar coat this one - we were really slow this morning. Is it because we are flat-water snobs and can't handle motor boat wake? Have we been neglecting to take our post-workout juice protein shakes? Whatever it is, I feel totally housed. But wait, maybe its good to feel housed since that would make us namesakes of this very talented paddler:

Morgan House

Today's blog posting title was inspired by this timeless little number:

Hooray For 2K Tuesday...

and for Maia because she was accepted into an institution of higher learning.

I title this one "Coachless"

Two thousand meter peices,
Fighting rower-borne chop.

We had nary a coach,
Nor anyone to yell stop.

Jan is a human odometer,
He can measure out a course with his canoe.

Maia got into GW,
Because shes fast and shes smart too.

If you're reading this right now,
You're probably behind on your dues.

You can pay up on this new web site,
it takes less time than tying your shoes.

Take It to the Bridge

Tomorrow we will hammer through many sets of 0.5047279502320697 km. Get ready, it's gonna hurt. All (0.5047279502320697 km) *(many) of it, where many is a non-zero, non-negative, exorbitantly large number generated by Coach.

Sparta!

I thought we were all pretty good at pull ups. These dudes take it to another level. Although to our credit, we're not Spartans, we are just paddling loving Arlingtonians, and Upper Georgetownians (Georgetownites?), and Marylanders...and German.



Today was the first day back on the river for most of us. Remembering how to navigate the current was challenging.

Jan and John (translation: John and John) Are Not at All Emasculated by Riding Bikes to a Parade Together

Pain

Today's workout was so difficult that I am considering checking into a mental health clinic to see what new techniques psychiatrists have for treating victims of prolonged emotional trauma. Resistance from shallow sludge and intermittent logs will make paddling through deep warm water feel entirely effortless, or so I am told.

Luck O' the Irish! Warm Weather at Last

The northern hemisphere tilts back towards the sun, zealots with red hair don green shirts and hats, pots of gold appear at the end of rainbows, Chicago dyes their river green, and us paddlers get to kayak outdoors. We had it out on the canal for two grueling days this weekend. Some were thrown by the accelerated start of daylight savings and didn't make it out on the water until some point embarrassingly late in the day.

March Madness Brings Greatness in April, and flowers. Or is it showers? I can never remember how that saying goes.

If February is a bed of rusty nails that you were forced to lie on for 28 unrelentingly painful days, then March is that perfectly shaped Adirondack chair with a cup holder for your lemonade. March also brings an early surprise this year as daylight savings goes live on the 11th! Credit to the Bush administration as this is clearly one of its biggest accomplishments in the past six years. Perhaps moving the date earlier in the year is simply a diversionary tactic intended to shore up support for the disheveled Republican party in the midst of a Middle Eastern Quagmire the year before a national election. But hey, I say divert on as long as it means more daylight for us.

The surface of the Potomac is back to its liquid state leaving most of us paddlers drooling in anticipation of the chance to paddle on a naturally formed outdoor waterway.

And my apologies for the lethargic rate of blog updates. I was actually running away from the warm weather risking bodily harm (my own) in Colorado. Check out my Mentos commercial:

Dude, Where's My Hat It's Like Nine Degrees Outside

Old Man Winter finally decided to start flexing his muscles as temperatures dipped into the single digits this morning. Perhaps he is worried that all this talk about global warming is going to trump the attention he usually gets from previous pseudo natural disasters such as "ice storm '96" and "blizzard of the century" or one of the other names that the fear conjuring hype masters of local news live by in D.C. Or perhaps he is challenging local athletes as if to say, "You know, you could stay in bed under your wimpy down comforter that your mom bought you at Target. Or you could brave the cold and fight for your place on the awards stand by hitting the gym as hard as you know you can."

Luckily, relief from the ice flows comes in the form of a ballroom filled with ergometers. These machines are great because they roughly replicate the pain one feels when paddling a kayak, without being distracted by the exciting sensation derived from actually paddling on the water.

Dog Days of Winter

Temperatures hovered around 70 degrees for the second straight weekend this month. Most paddlers were unsure whether to act elated to be paddling in short sleeves, or to be concerned about the prospects for planetary survival over the next several decades. In the end we decided in favor of savoring the short term gratification of unseasonably warm air and put off worrying about saving Mother Earth until Monday, or perhaps Wednesday since thats our day off.

Jan made it back safely from Germany with chocolaty gifts in hand. The team is no longer devoid of funny jokes and interesting commentary regarding the physical sciences.

And news just came in that Maia is representing well down under after winning a gold medal at Sate Championships in Penrith. Yay Maia!

Jerzy the Great

Jerzy's presence in the weight room was hard to miss this morning as repetitions were moving at a faster clip than usual. Everyone's notion of low intensity training was altered as we ended the workout by stumbling out of the gate crippled by excessive lactic acid in our veins.

Becoming increasingly weary of the northern hemisphere, Maia decided to make the long trip down south for the Australian Youth Olympic Festival where she will be competing in big time races on the 18th and 19th of this month. Best of luck to her and all the other American paddlers. Be sure to follow the action here:

http://olympics.com.au/ayof07/sports.cfm?SportID=8

In other river related news : apparently the Anacostia is polluted, perhaps so much so that revitalizing the riverfront may be impossible:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/08/AR2007010801738.html

Happy 2007 Y'all!

Hopefully everyone had a great New Years and had a chance to savor their extra days off from training as there wont be too many more before our next push towards greatness this spring.

I posted this video below in the spirit of giving your brain a break from all things paddling. And because its darn funny (has audio).