5 Months in California 🌞

Where to even begin! Mid-January I was searching for training opportunities during a province-wide lockdown and was connected with 2-time Olympic Champion, Kriszta Zur, and her husband/coach Rami Zur, 5-time Olympian, who are based out of Newport Beach, California. Within 2 days my flight was booked, bags were packed, and I was on my way to California.

My original trip was planned to be 2.5 months long. After several extensions of my lease for my apartment on the beach, I ended up staying for nearly 5 months. Every single day I was grateful for the opportunity I was given to be there. I had so many amazing experiences and made so many new friends.

I’ll start by talking about my experience training with a Hungarian Olympian who is striving to make a three-peat in Tokyo. Since I only had 2 days to plan my trip, I wasn’t sure what the training environment would be like. It ended up being a really unique experience and the opportunities to learn from two multi-Olympians were endless. My entire time there I was trying to absorb as much knowledge as I could.

There are a lot of different elements that make up a training environment but the things that set this experience apart for me was the coaching ratio, the program, and the water. Having a small coach to athlete ratio is unlikely when training in a club environment. So having 2:1 coaching was a big treat for me. Rami facilitated all of our interval training and provided constant feedback which allowed all of my energy to go into paddling well. Oh, and there is no hiding in a crowd when there are only 2 of you 😉. Another element that was new for me was the program delivery. I am used to receiving the week’s program on a Sunday and having an idea of what I’m getting myself into for the next 6 days of training. But in Newport Beach I didn’t get the program on a Sunday… or any day. Rami would tell us the workout as we were warming up for it (or sometimes just telling us one piece at a time!). It was a big adjustment for me, but I quickly learned the value of being adaptable and prepared for anything at every practice. Lastly, the other unique element to training in the Newport Beach Harbour was the water/scenery! You are never bored paddling in the harbour. You can take a different path everyday by going around different islands and going through channels. You are also constantly entertained by multimillion-dollar yachts (and their punny names), celebrity homes, and wildlife. I loved it!

In the middle of my time training in California, we were joined by the Slovak national team who train in Newport Beach every spring and fall. We were excited to have our training group grow by 2 when Lisa and Marianna joined us for a month and a half. Chasing these girls, who all have medals on the international stage, was a really exciting challenge for me to take on. I was ready to grind and have my butt kicked every day. I knew that I was going to have to be really smart to be able to survive training on arguably the hardest program I’ve been on and to be able to keep up with my training group. A big part of why I decided to return to high performance training was because I saw opportunities in where I could train smarter and thus, hopefully see improvements in my performance. This meant homing in on rest, recovery, nutrition, technical review, setting bi-weekly goals and training objectives, and having regular check ins with my support team.

I was faced with a whole new set of challenges in my final month in California. Kriszta left for Hungary at the end of April, and I decided to stay for an extra month to do a training cycle alone and wait out the lockdowns that were happening at home. Training alone is a really difficult thing to do, and it is even more challenging when your coaches are in another country. However, I was genuinely surprised and impressed by my ability to train alone at a high level. The key for me was planning ahead. I planned out every aspect of my training so that I was not making any decisions on the fly. I was also comforted knowing that my most significant competition of the year was several months away, so the stakes of my training were low. This reduced pressure allowed me to try out some new things as well! I ended up joining the men’s outrigger team twice a week in the evenings where we would go out in the ocean in 6-man boats to ride some waves and do technical pieces on the way back. I had hesitations about trading in some of my kayak sessions for outrigger, but it was one of the best decisions I made. I probably worked harder in these sessions than I would’ve alone, I got to be competitive against other paddlers, I got a taste of what it’s like to work together with others in a boat again (it’s been so long!), AND I made 24 new friends and had a BLAST.

I established a few mantras that I told myself repeatedly to stay strong and focused on the task at hand during training. The first one was to strive to be 1% better every day. Initially I was frustrated that I wasn’t paddling the way I wanted to immediately on the water. I knew this was an unrealistic desire for a lot of reasons, mainly because it is extremely hard to paddle the way I want to all the time 😉. I tried to execute things 1% better each time and trust the process. Since our sport is so repetitive, the aggregate of 1% improvements will result in significant progress by the end of a macrocycle or training camp.

The other mantra I picked up was repeatedly telling myself “One at a time”. It is easy to get overwhelmed with the volume of training or the uncertainty of our racing season. I told myself “One [session] at a time” when I would catch myself worrying about the killer hill sprints we’re going to do on Friday during Thursday’s session. Same with worrying about what’s going to happen with competitions that are several months away… “one [day] at a time”. I also discovered that a lot of the tools I developed to push through challenging training sessions are transferable to life (i.e. being present and trusting the process). It seems easier to use these tools on the water than in everyday life, but I’m working on that 😉

These mantras and self-reflections along with influence from the people I was around lead me to developing my “California Mindset”. California Mindset is a term I coined to describe being easy going and trusting that things will work out. I was presented with a lot of situations where I had to realize that I had no control over the matter. I reduced a lot of my angst by learning to let go and trust that things would work out either way. I also had a lot of positive outcomes come from negative situations that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. Sometimes one door has to close for another to open. My environment played a big role in finding this mindset. Being by the ocean and beautiful scenery is calming and the easy-going attitude of the people I was around was very contagious. All of the people I met were extremely friendly and welcoming. It took no time for California to feel like home for me because of them. I reflect on all of these things as I leave with the intention of bringing my California Mindset back home with me.

Overall, I think this trip helped me grow a lot as a person and showed me a lot of new things to be grateful for. I (reluctantly) came home feeling like a new, whole person who, while sad to leave, is so excited for what is to come. I have set some very strong intentions to return to SoCal as there is a long list of bucket list items that I have yet to check off, a lot of friends that I will need to visit soon, and man I am already dying for another drive along the coast! A big thank you to everyone at home who helped me have this incredible experience and thanks to everyone who made California feel like home.