Looking Back

As 2008 drew to a close, I found myself recollecting all of the amazing experiences I've had this year! What a lucky person, I keep thinking, to have met the people I have, to have been the places I've been...

The crazy thing is, even though it's the off season, time seems just as scarce for me to come by as it is in the on season! Fall flashed by before my eyes...after the World Series race in Maryland, I hurried home, only to leave a week later for a training block in Denver, Colorado, where I worked with Christopher Weigand for a solid week on slalom, even getting a chance to run a creek up in the mountains...where the water is as cold as the ice in the eddies and the mountain goats leap from one precarious boulder to the next.

Denver was an exceptional training camp, with the help of Coach Weigand, my entire off-side stroke was rebuilt, and became far more efficient!

Soon after, I journeyed down south to Charlotte, NC, where it was schockingly colder than Wisconsin for once. This was over the course of Thanksgiving.

I worked with Coach Cathy Hearn, on Charlotte's incredibly chalenging man-made course...someday I hope to be in complete control on that course. The week was very challenging, both mentally and physically for me, but I felt like I overcame a lot of bariers, and became a much stronger paddler through sessions in the freezing rain and over big drops. It truly was a great expirience.

As I type this, I look out of my window onto four solid feet of snow, and snuggle closer to the crackling fire...my days are now filled with hours of cross country and downhill skiing, both of wich are now becoming just as much passions as they were a way of cross-training. Only three short months now remain before I'll be back in the saddle---or shall I say boat? again.