Practices This Week

Monday: Practice tonight at Millvale -- you know the routine: warm up, stretch, ergs, weights/abs. The erg workout will be designed with Saturday's competitors in mind.

Thursday: Light practice at Washington's Landing (Chuck will lead this, but it will be relatively light so the sprinters don't peak till Saturday).

Saturday: No formal practice: Paddlefish will be at the Indoor Sprints to either pull, cheer, or volunteer! See http://www.threeriversrowing.org/r-isprints.html for directions to North Catholic and more information on the races.

Grand Masters Class in Berlin this summer

Good news for all us not so young paddlers. The IDBF has agreed to have a Grand Masters Class at the Berlin IDBF World Dragon Boat Championships (Aug 3-7). See http://www.njdragonboat.org/masters The large number of people signing up as interested had something to do with this. If you are eligible and have not yet signed up as interested please contact Ellen Law at ellenlaw@yahoo.com. You may not make the team but you are helping Dragon Boating become even more of an accepted sport for all ages.

Post-Gazette Items of Interest

Ben is quoted in yesterday's paper in an article on "third places" (those places that are neither home nor work but where people gather in community): see http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05018/443939.stm .

Yesterday's paper also carried an article on ways to measure your general fitness level. Want to see if all our flexibility exercises are paying off? See http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05018/443863.stm .

Indoor Paddling Regatta in NYC

The 5th Annual Indoor Paddling Regatta will be held March 19th at PS1 (8 Henry St) in New York.

The event is from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM; participants are asked to arrive one hour earlier for registration and briefing.

Each paddler is allowed to paddle in two individual distances (events) and one team event. The race distances are 1000 Meters, 500 Meters and 250 Meters. The team event is groups of four paddlers all paddling 500 Meters together against other teams of four.

Depending on the number of registrants, divisions will be created according to: sex (M, F); weight (lwt, hwt) and age (Senior (40 and over), Working (23 to 39), College (19 to 22), High School (15 to 18), Middle School (11 to 14)). The two weight divisions (Lwt, hwt) will be determined by the midpoint and weight for the number of paddlers in that division.

Paddlefish brought home some medals from this event last year!

Practice Saturday

A heads up: Saturday's practice will include an hour in the tanks and an hour on the ergs. Bring whatever you need to make that transition comfortable for you!

Nutrition for Performance

TRRA sponsored a very useful talk by Leslie Bonci on maximizing performance through effective use of nutrition. I'll send out a summary of her points in this week's team update, but wanted to offer this link on the blog as a helpful reference recommended by Bonci: http://209.48.219.53/. This is an interactive Healthy Eating Index site.

Bonci's advice on fluid intake was particularly interesting! Did you know you're supposed to gulp 20 ounces of fluid an hour before our workouts? (Aren't you glad we don't work out at 6 AM??)

Calendar Alerts

Updated 1/7/05: We'll hold a team meeting next Monday evening (January 17th) around 7:45 at Millvale -- we can get a good hour of practice in and then start promptly at 7:45. The purpose of the meeting will be to confirm which races we want to travel to this year and to get team members matched up with various positions (recruitment coordinator, fundraising coordinator, specific-race-logistics coordinator, etc.).

As noted in a December update, the festivals receiving the most votes so far for travel races are DC, Toronto, and Philly. Brief info about each of these -- dates and links -- will be posted inside this post as a "comment." Other races to keep in mind are the two local ones we've traditionally participated in: the July Regatta at the Point and the September Pittsburgh Dragonboat Festival.

Happy New Paddlin' Year!  

Indoor Sprints

Registration's open for this year's Pittsburgh Indoor Rowing Championships. Paddlefish pulled hard last year with great results: let's do it again! Please go to http://www.threeriversrowing.org/r-isprints.html to download the race packet and to register. Deadline for registration is January 28th; the races are held February 5th.