Lightweight Eats

The U.S. sends three lightweight women's boats to the World Championships every year—a single, a double and a quad. 

The double, the only Olympic boat class, has a slightly different selection procedure. The double raced at the second National Selection Regatta of the year, and the winner, two of my teammates from the California Rowing Club, earns the right to represent the U.S. at one of the World Cup races (different from the World Championships).

This year, the lightweight double won silver at the third of three World Cups, held just a week ago. In doing so, they earned an automatic berth to the World Championships. (Had they not placed in the top 4, there would have been a trial race for the double as well as the quad and single.)

From August 4th-7th, the remaining two lightweight women's boats will be decided, along with a host of other boat classes—from the heavy men's single to the lightweight men's eight.

In preparation for trials, I am back out in Connecticut training with a group of lightweights, trying to put together a blazing fast quad.

We are living just uphill from the boathouse. Follow the path through the trees for another 150m and you arrive at the dock, and 12000m of uninterrupted water. (I've heard you can go farther than that, but haven't yet felt the need.)

We are sharing the space with some of the juniors who will be racing at the Junior World Championships, as well as a few of the senior heavy men who train with Guenter (the coach behind GMS Rowing).

Things are a little bit crowded. And yes, those are rowing machines in the living room. It's the only air-conditioned building on site; we set them up to do lactate testing to get accurate results.

Internet access is limited the western wall of the house (the wall closest to the office, located about 35m down the hill), which means I've been doing a lot of reading.

In addition to training, I also used our afternoon off yesterday to head into the New Milford farmer's market, and visit the local library and an organic cafe. I picked up a tomato, cucumber, lettuce, beets and carrots, and made a Mediterranean pasta and fresh bread to go with my summery salad. Yum! Overall, the farmer's market was pretty uninspiring. My tomato wasn't very good, and the majority of the produce was zucchini—which our neighbor gave us for free just last week. (Did I mention it's also growing in the garden?)

The library definitely needed more comfortable seating, but I was pleased with the number of people just there to read. I've been devouring books (more on that to come) recently. And the cafe was a lovely retreat—there was just enough seating, it was brightly lit and nobody rushed me to leave. I enjoyed a nice pot of green tea and fresh, organic summer fruit while finishing yet another book.

Although the prices here seem awfully high for just about everything, New Milford is quite a charming little town—everything you need and nothing you don't. Without a car, it could get really boring really quickly, but I'm enjoy the pace of life at the moment. It's very conducive to productive training.