OKC Blizzard

Oklahoma city was hit by a massive blizzard on Christmas Eve stranding many people on the roads and in the airport for the holiday.
I left work around 11:30am and made it to my apartment and hour later (its a 20min drive). All flights out were canceled so Jen and I spent the Holiday snowed in in Oklahoma. We did get to have a Christmas dinner at a friends house today which was really nice.
The weather and snow conditions today would have been perfect for skiing alas my skies are in ME.
Hope everyone had a very happy holiday!

ICE

The river had a thin coat of ice on it the other day so we were forced indoors to the pool. Now I love the water with a passion but its a bit more specific then that, I should say I love being ON the water. Notice the emphasis on the ON not the in. Well this morning I was in the water swimming laps in a pool, I have a rather difficult issue with swimming because I get motion sick, don't laugh its true. I solved that today by popping a few Dramamine before practice and it worked I didn't feel sick! While this did nothing to improve the quality of my session I felt much better and will live to tackle the pool again another day.

K2

I am getting ready to head out for my first K2 practice with Jen Burke we have 8x500m lined up for a practice. I am really excited and a bit nervous to get into a K2 its always such a great unknown or a least to me. Wish us luck but hopefully it will be all skill!

Strength Training

As a nordic skier I was considered fairly strong as a kayaker I have a long way to go. Recently it feels like each time I hit the weight room my butt gets kicked, the funny thing is I don't mind. I keep thing well if I feel like death it must mean that I will get stronger and therefore faster its a little bit of a long convoluted mental process but it seems to be working for me.
We did a brief max testing in bench press and bench pull 135, and 140 respectively which is more then my body weight so I feel that that's an ok place to start the winter season.

Twitter

I' m now on twitter Username: Kaitie_Mcelroy. I am working on getting my tweets to go to my blog site hopefully I will have that running in the next few days.

Coffee conversations and communication

Today has been a whirlwind of activity. I had the opportunity to meet with Joe Jacobi (executive director of USACK), Coach Caven (current coach) and Jen Burke( future k2 partner) to discuss the promotion of canoe/kayak in the USA. I think the meeting was great and gave all of us a lot to think about and expand upon.
After that I grabbed my Phone and had a conversation with Dan from Canoe & Kayak Racing magazine about writing an article form them. Now I am catching up on emails having dinner and heading off to a OKC thunder Basketball game.
Plus I got a California girl out on the water in 33degrees for a rather productive workout oh yeah !!!!
What a day, I love it.