Lightweight Eats

This is a picture of a pill box. Except it doesn't have pills in it.

It has my daily doses of nature's medicine: spices! From left to right: cinnamon, chili flakes, dried thyme, cumin, paprika, curry and garlic powder.

I also brought a small container of salt, although it turns out salt is available in abundance so it was less than necessary.

I've been trying to add spices to as much as possible, since I have so much. My salad was topped with thyme, garlic powder and paprika. I'm planning to add chili flakes to my pasta tomorrow, and I've got a rice/bean/spinach/hummus dish planned that would be might tasty with some curry.

Cumin still needs some inspiration; I think it might work in a peanut butter, tofu, sweet potato dish I have planned, maybe alongside some garlic powder and a touch of almond milk to make a sauce. I'm still not convinced that those flavors will work together, but I'm open to trying.

In any case, I'm pretty happy with this little discovery. Just make sure you pick a pill box with tightly closing separated containers that also open separately. Keep all but one closed as you fill it; and do try to keep savory spices away from sweet!! Notice that the garlic powder and the curry are quite far from the cinnamon!

Two and a half days and five workouts later, I'm finding my groove here in Connecticut. After some solid napping and sleeping, I've made it onto East Coast time. There has been some wind and some cold and some rain, but nothing atypical of an East Coast spring.

The boathouse is located on a huge piece of property that used to be a tobacco farm. A large number of the boats are stored inside the old tobacco barn, along with all of the weight equipment and the ergs. There are also two small offices and a huge old house on the property. I'm staying on site, so the dock is less than 200 meters from the front door.



Although there was only one workout schedule for Sunday, we ended up getting on the ergs in the evening for a lactate test. I made huge gains from my last lactate test in January--I can produce much higher wattage for the same blood lactate level, a sign that I'm getting fitter and faster.

As part of the lactate testing, we are also given heart rate zones for each workout type, from the long, slow easy workouts that make up the bulk of our training, to the hard sprint work we do mostly just before racing. I use my Garmin to monitor my heart rate, as well as track all of my workouts. (Thanks Dan!) Although I'm not always happy with the speed I produce at a given heart rate, I know that staying in the prescribed zones helps me get fitter without pushing my body too hard.

Monday morning started with a nice long easy row in the single. I re-familiarized myself with the course and enjoy the new, lower heart rate zones. I was definitely cold--I couldn't feel my fingers very well. It made me glad I came out early and have an opportunity to adjust to the cold before racing.

During the day, the three high performance athletes that are here at the moment all just sat around the office, watching the Boston Marathon. We had actually tuned out and all gone to take naps/eat lunch when the bombing occurred; I found out later that evening. It was very inspiring to see the elites running the course, especially the women's race.

Monday afternoon, we headed out on the water with a gaggle of junior rowers. Lots of fun racing against all sorts of different boat classes and boat speeds, even if we only did short bursts of speed. It was also fun being on the water twice in a day! We rarely go out twice in one day at CRC, usually opting for cross-training or erging for the second session.

This morning, I had a work phone call scheduled for 9am, so I headed out in the wee hours of the morning to row. It wasn't as cold as the previous day, but it still took me the vast majority of the row to really warm-up; I need to get back in the habit of warming up on land, inside, before heading onto the water.

The day was spent sleeping and working. I'm lucky to have a job that lets me telecommute, and a job that's fun and engaging enough that four hours fly by. I've been trying to increase my hours without interfering with training--after all, if I'm not giving my training the focus it deserves, then why am I training at all?

In the afternoon, we hit the weight room. Lifting is definitely not my favorite part of the sport, but I'm learning how to manage it. I've found that eating well and consuming enough calories prior to lifting is really helpful--it makes the whole experience less miserable. Lifting the right amount of weight is also important, and I'm learning to ask my coaches how to pick a starting weight and how to best increase weight and/or repetitions.

Tonight, I'm hoping for an early bedtime, so I can be up bright and early for 1000m pieces in the single, plus speedwork in the afternoon.

I'm not always proud to be an American. Although I work my butt off for the opportunity to represent the United States, there have always been parts I'm not sure I want to represent.

You know what makes a 6-hour flight feel short? A 14-hour flight two weeks earlier. This time around, I'm headed east for a week long training camp followed by an awesome racing opportunity in my single.

I flew out last night on the red eye, and slept the entire flight. I brought a pillow with me and curled up into the window for 5 hours. We had an incredibly hard training day on Saturday, so I was struggling to stay awake before I even arrived at the airport.

I am starting my trip up in Connecticut training with Guenter Beutter, the man behind GMS. He's been coaching me, alongside my coaches at CRC, since January. At this level, all of the coaches are really spectacular, and all of them have something to contribute. Although it can be counterproductive to jump between training plans, I think it's really helpful to talk to as many coaches as possible to get their input. I've learned a lot already training with Guenter, and training with the other girls he coaches.

This morning, I went out for a quick 15K row before doing my grocery shopping and taking a solid 2-hour nap. Always a great way to start a trip!

From there, I'll be headed back to my alma mater, good ol' Princeton. Although I vowed to wait two decades before returning to campus, it seems fate had other plans for me. I will be racing at the first national selection regatta of the year, an opportunity for rowers around the country to pace themselves against the competition.

For me, I hope it will be a good starting point for me. I'm relatively young and new to training, so it is a great chance to see how I stack up against some more seasoned competitors as well as others with similar training backgrounds. I'm going into the race with hopes for great racing experience and not victory--it's a very comforting place from which to approach race day.

I will try to post updates throughout the next two weeks!

It seems we have officially welcome spring in the Bay Area. Warm weather, followed by rain and strong winds. Unpredictable cold snaps keep reminding me that it's not yet summer, and for that I'm glad.

In high school and college, spring was racing season. After emerging from a cold, dark winter, we transitioned in mere weeks from the long 80-120 minute sessions to short sprints and painful 2000m races.

A lot of pain went into that medal.

Whether they were on the erg or the water, my nerves would stay in check until we reached the starting line. And in that moment, the calm, collected, calculating rower disappeared. The part of me that believed rowing should be excruciating, and that your effort was based on your ability to endure more pain than your opponent, blossomed.

Even when I ran races, I raced much smarter--somehow the need for race pain didn't translate to running.

We would jump off the line, and as my nerves gripped my body, I would descend into a world of hurt 200 meters into the race. The burn of oxygen deprivation would build in my system, searing my mind and my muscles. In the best races, I held on, only falling slightly off the pace as the pain clouded my mind. In those races, my coxswain usually led my body when my brain failed. In the worst races, I watched as slower crews moved through us, the water in our lane turning to mud beneath me.

750m to go, struggling

But in the past year, something has changed. Perhaps it's my maturity as an athlete; perhaps it's the time between races; and likely it's the experience of my coaches and teammates. Either way, I am finally learning to race.

Instead of accepting the pain, I am learning to stave off the pain for as long as possible--while maintaining scores. I am learning to use my smaller size to my advantage by taking more strokes at a lighter load. I am learning to stay calm and collected, relying on my technical strengths and my lungs rather than my muscle and brawn.

This is where the change all began.

The whole experience has been mind-blowing. I'm seeing personal bests and coming off the erg ready to go again. The low stroke rates that have plagued my racing career are gone. My immense fear of racing is subsiding as I manage the pain, keeping it tolerable until the last minute.

Although I'm nowhere near the quoted 10,000 hours it take to become an expert in your field {I estimate I'm closer to 5000 hours}, I'm starting to understand why it takes so long.

I've had this book on my shelf for a while, but always passed it by, daunted by the word "advanced" in the title. I guess I underestimated by background in chemistry and the amount of reading I've done about nutrition.

Overall, I found the book to be very informative. If you were hoping for a 'magic bullet' of nutrition, you'll probably be disappointed. Instead, Bernadot talks about common sense nutrition and goes into the how and why behind it.

For example, he emphasizes the need for athletes to have a high carbohydrate diet, explaining how carbohydrates are utilized as energy during exercise, which carbohydrates should be consumed at what times, and how any excess protein is simply converted into carbohydrates plus detrimental waste products.

The points I found most interesting, perhaps because of their relevance, were about weight loss and body composition. Although he seems generally opposed to weight loss in athletes, focusing instead of improved body composition, his approach is very sensible and well-founded.

Primarily, he advocates a balanced calorie deficit/surplus throughout the day, rather than just over a 24-hour period. I've been trying this out for the past week or so, and have been pretty happy so far. It's a bit hard to get in enough calories before/during morning practices, but I've been noticing that my desire to eat an entire jar of peanut butter has decreased.

My biggest bone to pick was the idea--no insistence--that athletes don't eat enough. I've heard this from so many places, and yet it doesn't seem to be an issue with me. I definitely think a lot of athletes eat at the wrong times or eat the wrong foods, but if I eat everything I want to, I gain weight. Of course, he argues that training should make you gain weight--but nowhere close to the amount of weight that I would gain.

As with all nutrition books, I'm taking the advice with a grain of salt (or maybe two, since Bernadot recommends upwards of 10g of sodium a day for athletes). But overall, I think this book is pretty well grounded and definitely geared to the elite athlete (those training twice a day, most days).

You can check out the first 30 or so pages here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=w0Zel_bJn-EC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Another update on the classic PB & J; this time, it goes the veggie route!

Take a 10" tortilla, microwave for 30 seconds. Spread with a layer of peanut butter, then sprinkle with raisins and chopped celery bits. Roll and devour.