January 26, 2009
Miami, Fl USA

Today started the second leg of the ISAF Sailing World Cup in Miami, Florida, also known as US SAILING's Rolex Miami OCR. There is a great turnout for the event with more than 440 sailors competing from 41 countries. In my fleet there are 42 boats from a very international field. We did two races today in a shifty 10-14kt breeze. Although I struggled up the first beats, I managed to pull back to two good finishes, a 2, 5. Leading our class is Jen Spaulding from Canada with a 1, 2. And tied on points with me is Emily Billing also from the USA with a 3, 4. We have three races scheduled for tomorrow with similar wind conditions forecasted. You can follow along with the results here: rmocr.ussailing.org

Leading into this event, we had our first official US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics training camp. It was a four-day camp filled with sailing, workouts, and lectures. Each morning started with an 8am gym warm-up before we were released for an hour to do our own workout. Then we had either a briefing or a lecture starting at 10. Most days we had about a 45 min talk on the weather before we broke into our groups to go sailing for the day. I was sailing with Paige during the camp. We had some very good sessions, probably some of the best training sessions I've ever had. We were both pretty keen to not lose to the other person, so we worked very hard and had some long runs before one of us got the better of the other. I'm very excited that we're training together and looking forward to where it can take us.

After our sessions on the water, we were given about 45 minutes to change and debrief, before the afternoon lectures started. They were all very informative. We had some media training, we learned about periodization, and general medical team information.

Because we had a lot to cover, we ended up with very long days, but we got the weekend off to relax and get our boats ready for the event. The regatta runs through Saturday when the medal race will be held. I will write my next report on Wednesday, but you can follow along online here rmocr.ussailing.org

Sail hard,
Anna