In the Boonies: Preparing for WEG 2010

Here is a blog I wrote for the World Equestrian Games Blogspot. Check out their blog to get to know the athletes of the Games at http://2010alltechweg.blogspot.com/.

I like to think of myself as multi-faceted, but my friends know well that I have two prominent “facets.”

1. I’m a vaulter, and
2. I’m a bit of a nerd.

I am currently a senior at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York trying to reconcile these qualities while simultaneously gunning for a spot on Team USA and hopefully the podium at the upcoming World Equestrian Games in Kentucky. This has been no easy task.

For those of you who don’t know Ithaca, it’s this great little hippie town in upstate New York (about four hours north of New York City) that just happens to be home to Cornell University. Well… not just happens. Apparently Ezra Cornell (the university’s founder) got a great deal on land in the 19th century and didn’t mind that he was about to found such a great university so far away from any real civilization. When I started my first year at Cornell, my dad, who himself was a Cornellian, explained that I probably wouldn’t be coming home for Thanksgiving, or any trip shorter than a couple weeks, because even though Ithaca is still in the United States, it is really in the boonies. Ithaca has this quaint regional airport with four gates and frightening puddle jumpers, but the trip from Ithaca to California, all said and done, takes at least nine hours. It’s almost easier to fly to Europe.

Needless to say, in signing on to be a Cornellian, I entered a land of self- imposed isolation, which was fine and great as a retired vaulter, which I was after the 2006 World Championships. But then I was roped back into the sport when my WEG teammate and friend, Rosalind Ross, talked me into competing with the Dark Side of the Moon team for the 2008 World Championships. It was after those Championships I decided I couldn’t bear the idea of letting the World Equestrian Games in my home country pass me by, and I began to figure out the logistics, including a training plan, that would prepare me and simultaneously allow me to finish and enjoy my senior year at Cornell. Although these puzzle pieces have not been easy to connect, I have been lucky to be surrounded by great people, many of whom I have met along the journey, who have reached out to make my dreams possible.

My first and most important puzzle piece was, of course, finding a vaulting horse. My longtime vaulting horse who helped me win the 2006 WEG selection trials, Faronia, is now happily retired in California, and my WEG vaulting horse, Leonardo, is with my trainer Lasse Kristensen in Denmark, preparing for European competitions and eventually for this upcoming WEG. To be prepared for the Games, I needed a horse to keep here in Ithaca who was already trained in vaulting, was high quality, and was willing to travel to the bitter cold tundra of Ithaca to be my training partner. To my fortune, some great friends of mine, the Hamar Family, offered to sell me their pride and joy, Paradox, so I could train for the Games.

But then I had to find a stable in the area… preferably one that had a decent arena, some nice footing, and ceilings high enough for leaps. The first stable I called had all these qualities, was a ten minute drive from my apartment, and had one open stall available. Are you sensing a theme? This stuff literally FELL into my lap.

Before Paradox made his trek east, I had to find a lunger. For those of you who are unfamiliar with vaulting, this is the person who controls the horse from the center of the ring. The lunger is fundamental to the performance of the horse, and therefore, to the performance of the vaulter. My roommate, a member of the Cornell Equestrian Team, had a teammate who mentioned teaching vaulting at summer camp. As it turned out, Kelsey O’Shea had been lunging horses for summer camp for the past four years and knew all about vaulting! And I thought I was the only vaulter around these parts…

It was amazing how quickly all the basic pieces came together with seemingly minimal effort and astonishing ease. Unfortunately, even with my team of random but enthusiastic supporters, I am still training in Ithacan isolation. One of my coaches, Emma Seely, lives in California, and the other, Lasse Kristensen, lives in Denmark. My personal trainer, Stacey Burnett, also lives in California and sends me my workouts electronically—videotaping herself doing the exercises and explaining proper form. My chiropractor, my dressage trainer, and all my vaulting peers are in California, and I’m here, in snowy New York.

For the most part, I have made things work. I coach myself, create my own schedule, and force myself to stick to that schedule. I have found a great local gym where I do my “Stacey” workouts (people look at me as if I’m crazy when I’m doing them). I train once a week with a private gymnastics coach, twice a week with a dance instructor, and I have even found a pretty good substitute for my favorite chiropractor. Sometimes it’s hard to stay motivated when there is snow on the ground, the wind is blowing, and it’s 10 degrees outside, but then I just think about the Kentucky Horse Park, the experience I had vaulting in that brand new arena this past summer during the Kentucky Cup, and how great it would feel to stand on that podium once again.

This weekend, I am headed to California for a United States Equestrian Federation High Performance Training Camp. It will be a nice to emerge from my Ithacan isolation and show my coach how hard I’ve been working. I’m sure there will be a few reality checks throughout the weekend, but they will only make my training more focused and more exacting going forward. Can’t wait for that California sunshine!

Peace or Loneliness: Moving Past the Language Barrier

I don’t speak Dutch. In fact, I don’t speak any languages that are even remotely useful for my vaulting adventures. In a sport where German dominates and I spend the majority of my European training hearing Danish, my (once) nearly fluent Spanish is almost completely useless. Even though the European education system is wonderful enough to teach all its youngsters English, I would think communication is always best when each person speaks in his native language… not that I’d know from experience.

But back to Dutch. I spent all last weekend with the Van der Sluijs Family, a Dutch dairy farming family living in Olds, Alberta. The family’s farm is the vaulting headquarters for Meadow Creek Vaulting Club, run by sisters Angelique and Jeanine. The Van der Sluijs family made the trek to the “New West” (as Alberta likes to call itself) a few years back, but they still maintain much of their Dutch heritage. For one, they’re dairy farmers. Their house is decorated with speed skating posters (the Dutch’s favorite pastime), they eat yummy bread and cheese for breakfast (much better than the American cereal tradition in my opinion!), and, of course, they speak Dutch. Considering that Canadians use the metric system and speak with funny accents, it basically felt like I was in Europe… just a few hours north of our American border!

Whenever I’m in Europe, I’m almost always surrounded by people speaking a language I cannot understand. In this case, I was surrounded by Dutch. I’ve been here before… in this weird place between peace and loneliness that comes from not understanding the language of the house. I was here in Olds last year, also to teach a clinic to some of Canada’s top vaulters, and I remember feeling the same way the first time Jeanine (Van der Sluijs) spoke to her mother in Dutch and the conversation carried on in Dutch for the next five minutes. For the first few non-English exchanges, I tried to figure out what they were saying. Knowing absolutely none of the language, this was nearly impossible. I listened for names, looked for facial expressions and hand gestures, and then realized it was a moot point. So then I sat there, completely disengaged, and got lost in my own world… until suddenly (or so it seemed to me, not understanding whatever segue might have been uttered in Dutch) the conversation reverted to English, obviously for my benefit only.

I can never decide if I love being around families that speak a foreign language or if I actually loathe it. I’m starting to think I loathe the fact that I can’t understand but generally love the people I’m around so much that they kind of cancel each other out. Those first few times the conversation reverted back to Dutch, I almost enjoyed the liberty it gave me to think about other things. The family knew I couldn’t understand, so obviously whatever was being said was not of importance to me anyway. It is peaceful, even enlightening and freeing to be able to disassociate occasionally from the community around me. I can do my own thing, which I love to do, while everyone else does something else.

But at the same time, it’s never fun to be the stupid American who can’t understand. It can be a lonely and infantilizing experience being unable to understand, unable to connect. I always wonder what I’m missing. With the Van der Sluijs family, I only realized what I was missing as the weekend of vaulting wore on. These people are warm and wonderful. The sisters Jeanine and Angelique, as well as their mother and father are all kind and happy people, full of good stories and life experiences. Sometimes I forget to ask about them, forget that they would love to converse if only I seemed interested. Sometimes I forget that just because they occasionally speak Dutch has no bearing on the fact that they speak English fluently too.

So if nothing else, this rough draft of an entry is a little reminder to myself (and anyone else who cares) just to be yourself always… even if there seems to be a language barrier. With the right company, you can fly past all the obstacles. ☺

Rough Drafts and Goals for the Near Future

There's a lot to learn from rough drafts, even though I hate the dreaded things. To me, it is merely that imperfect, messy, and disorganized creation I hate to acknowledge exists. But as my loving 7th grade teacher taught us, rough drafts are the necessary (and always painful) beginnings of something that could, just maybe possibly, end up being something great... and that's why I bother. Start with the raw ideas, try to synthesize, figure out what might be lost gems, gather, reorganize, and work from there. This piece of crap first blog entry is part of that draft process because I have decided, rather officially, that I am in the rough draft stage of my life... quite literally.

Here are some of my working drafts. The imperfect, messy, occasional "gem" moments of what I'm up to... namely vaulting.

1. My freestyle is in giant pieces. I have several sequences I think are fabulous, but can't yet perform. I have some old pieces I'd like to revamp, and much to my coach's dismay, I have absolutely no leads on freestyle music or uniforms.

2. Same goes for technical, albeit to a lesser extent. For the most part, I'm set on all the technical moves. Needle, cartwheel, and outside stand I've got, but I'd like to learn how to roll mount using the middle handle and pop nearly to handstand like the Neuss girls and I wouldn't mind being able to hold that dreaded rear-ways push up (always sounds dirty) for a consistent four strides. The rest of the routine is currently non-existent, and although I have some music ideas, I have not figured out how I can squeeze my 6 minute song of perfection into a minute 15, nor have I decided the full body spandex creation I'd like to wear.

3. My compulsories all need a lot of work. Seat and stand need the least work, but everything else promises months of drills, conditioning, and repetition before I will feel ready to compete at a world level. I want to mount as high as Nicola Stroh, to have a flag as strong and lifted as an expert pilates instructor, and the mill of a rhythmic gymnast. Scissors and flank need the most work. I need to be hitting handstands in my clicks every time, and I haven't hit one, like a legit could-flip-over-at-any-second handstand, in two years.

I have lots of barrel training sessions and horse practices and gymnastics lessons ahead of me, so I have full confidence I can achieve my goals. There's just a lot of work that I need to do on my rough drafts between now and the World Equestrian Games in October!

For now, it's back to Ithaca, NY in a week to resume training, thesis writing, and life living. My goal is to keep this blog updated with my latest discoveries, adventures, and insights as I train and prepare for selection trials, international competitions, and the World Equestrian Games! I'm looking to stand on the podium one last time before I start a new chapter of my life (with entirely new rough drafts and imperfect pieces).

I freaking want this. So... as only the famous Luigi (and my loving boyfriend) can say, HERE WE GO!