We kicked off the LA28 quad with a trip to the Colorado Springs Olympic and Paralympic Training Center as part of a development camp with US Sailing. Over a long weekend, we participated in team building exercises with other Olympic sailing athletes and completed physical fitness testing to establish baseline performance metrics. 

It was special to take advantage of the facilities and staff at the CSOPTC. The strength and conditioning gym is an athlete’s paradise with rows of racks and weights, each bearing an American flag and the Olympic rings. Carson crushed the slate of fitness tests all around, but in a bout of friendly competition, Lindsay bested him in the oblique hold!

The CSOPTC has a pressurized altitude room that allowed us to complete some of our testing as if we were at sea-level - a big help for us sailors who aren’t used to the elevation in Colorado. We also tried out the integrated force plate to evaluate our lower body muscle power capability. 

When we weren’t sweating it out in fitness testing, we attended seminars and team-building exercises aimed at building our campaign and team culture. We thought about core values, training block structures, and long-term planning. With nearly four years of work ahead of us, establishing a framework to guide our decision-making is key to being efficient with our team! Between the planning and the pull-ups, we still had time to have fun in facility’s Test Kitchen, where we worked with a nutritionist to cook up some creative food options for training camps. 

On the last day of our trip, our hard work was rewarded with a private evening tour of the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum, where we got to see the only complete collection of Olympic medals. We walked through halls filled with stories and mementos like the scoreboard from the Miracle on Ice hockey game, an entire wall of Wheaties boxes, and even a pair of Normatec Leg boots ( a recovery tool that Lindsay knows well!) If you’re ever in Colorado Springs, the museum is definitely worth a visit.

We left the training center feeling inspired by the Olympic spirit and ready to jump into our next block of training in Miami.