We have wrapped up our Olympic NACRA 17 training at The Cleveland Yachting Club in Rocky River, Ohio.
My beginnings in the sport of sailing were here on Lake Erie. I still remember my first day of Sail Camp at CYC when I was only 8 years old. The excitement was real, the friendships are lasting and the love of competitive sailing will always be a part of who I am. Now that I am well into my Olympic campaign on the NACRA 17, it has been great to get back to where it all started for me and to do some freshwater training along the shores of my home town. Being at The Cleveland Yachting Club has been sort of a refresher for me, reminding me how awesome my career in sailing has been, how far I have come and why I am so determined to accomplish my goal and win an Olympic Gold Medal in Rio 2016.
While the primary purpose of our trip to Ohio was for our Fundraiser (thank you again to everyone who came to support our campaign), we were able to spend a week on the water training and getting our timing down on how the NACRA 17 performs in the lake. Because Jessica and I are just starting to sail as a team, we have a lot of work to do and being at home was a great way to get started in the warm water and what proved to be a nice fall breeze in Northeast Ohio. We were able to build our team movements on the boat and to work on some basic timing for maneuvers while we were in Cleveland which gave us the ability to lay out our goals for the fall and lay out a training program that will make sure we are able to meet them.
Now that we have wrapped up our training in Cleveland, we are off to Newport, RI for a few weeks of training on Narragansett Bay with one of the top coaches at the Olympic level and we will spend a couple of those weeks sparing with our training partners to make sure that our boats, our heads and our progress are all inline with where we need to be by the end of October. Sailing in Newport gives the unique opportunity to sail in a variety of conditions, depending where on the bay we sail and what time of day we are training in, we can experience just about all conditions with some tidal currents to help keep us in check and force us to stay aware of what we are doing at all times
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Working with top coaches gives us the ability to constantly refine our boat handling, our crewwork and our boat setup in all conditions. This is critical as we make up for lost time and strive for rapid progress leading up to the ISAF World Cup regatta in Miami next January, which is also the single qualifying event for the US Sailing Team for the 2015 season.
Both Jessica and I are determined to win the US Olympic Trials in 2016 and then go to the Rio Games and win Gold while we are there. We are focused, driven and constantly have our eye set on our objective. Our training program is aggressive, and it is all designed to make it happen. We will not stop until we are on the Podium in Rio2016!
Please keep watching our progress and if you can, continue to support our work to bring Olympic Sailing Gold home to the USA in 2016 on the NACRA 17!
You can make a donation to our campaign here