Week 8 - Aspen, Colorado.
🌍 Round the World Week 8
🌺 We left the Hawaiian Islands last Monday and had a couple of days more rowing to reach the dry land of Los Angeles. We landed at Santa Monica Pier, and paid a quick visit to Muscle Beach 🏖 🏋️♀️ to top up the guns. After so long at sea, you lot are getting a bit skinny... 👀
Los Angeles was of course home to the 1984 Olympic Games, and the races were rowed on Lake Casitas. There’s a great book about the USA M2x selection for and build up to the Games. I won’t spoil it, but it’s full of interesting methods of preparation and a great case of leaving no stone unturned, and refusing to let your dreams fall apart. It’s here, and I’d highly recommend reading it:
https://www.amazon.com/Assault-Lake-Casitas-Br…/…/B003VPWZOA
🥇 Sir Steve Redgrave won the first of his five gold medals here in the coxed 4. It’s also looking like Los Angeles will host the 2028 Games on a 1500m, 7 lane course at Long Beach – the same venue as the 1932 Los Angeles Games. In 1932, there were no Women’s events, and only two sculling events – the M2x and M1x, the winning times respectively being 7:17.4 and 7:44.4 (it was 2000m then, too). I can’t comment on the conditions, but lots of you, both men and women, could go faster. A sign of nearly 100 years of developments!
🚣♀️ Here’s the venue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Beach_Marine_Stadium…
🎰 We left Los Angeles, in the state of California, passing through Las Vegas (Nevada State) into Utah towards Aspen.
🤓 California (423,970sq km) is getting on for twice the size of the UK, with both Nevada and Utah being similar in size to the UK. The US is MASSIVE.
🏔 We finish our journey in the state of Colorado, close to Aspen. Colorado is home to the Rocky Mountains, or The Rockies – a mountain range spanning 3000km (that’s a week’s worth of our Round the World Journey!). Denver is the capital of Colorado, and is 1500m or so above sea level. Boulder, Colorado is a popular altitude training area for pro cyclists.
🌳 Aspen has been home to the Winter X Games 🏂 since 2002, and is a popular ski resort. It takes its name because there are lots of Aspen trees there!
🏠 Aspen is one of the most expensive places in the US to buy a house – the mean house value was calculated at just over $5million in 2015, compared to an average of £361,000 in Reading! We probably can’t afford to stay here that long…
🤓 Good luck everyone still doing exams – looking forward to seeing any 10km runs or ergos..
Graphics courtesy of Jess Lewis : madebyjess.co.uk
We’re keeping track of every mile and every heartbeat on Strava, and the team participate in frequent group calls to keep communicating and laughing.
Keep up to date with our social media accounts to keep track of our journey.
