It is a funny thing when you sit down at a restaurant and the waiter or waitress starts talking to you only to find you staring back with a blank look. We huddle and ponder what was said. Usually it was just “How are you” and “What can I get you to drink?” However, the best part is that when they realize you don’t speak their language they continue speaking but with indiscernible hand gestures. Even going out to eat is an adventure!

Don’t get me wrong, Brazil has been greatand the language barrieris nothing new to us. We have in fact mastered the art of restaurant going whilst managing most language barriers. More and more of our crew has arrived as each day has passed. We have now reached our full staff and athlete numbers. This is just a reminder of how close the race has come.

Each day is another chance to get on the water and to play with our friend the Caiman. You have good days and bad days, but another day on the water means it can’t be all that bad. Besides, it is a nice break from the monotony that is our ever present hotel rooms. That being said, we always enjoy retreating back to the air conditioning after a few hours of sun.

We are now two and half days from the official start of the Pan American Championships. This means that my nerves and excitement are mounting! It also means I am spending more time in the room getting rested for the upcoming challenges. Resting and excitement are not best friends, but you make it work. Yesterday we ventured outside of our beaten path and to the Parques das Aves (Bird Park). There we got to see hundreds of different winged species as well as a few grounded slithering and furry friends, an excellent escape from the norm!

So here we are, only a few more days away from the Pan Ams Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much to give y’all for results and video, but I promise to keep updates coming as often as I can. That’s all for for now. Let’s go USA!

See you on the water

Swim Capybara!

Well what do you know? Here we are, back in the southern hemisphere so soon after our trip to Australia. This time we find ourselves down in Foz Do Iguacu, Brazil, site of the 2007 World Championships and now the 2012 Pan Am Championships. I had the pleasure of two trips here in 2007, first for Pan Ams and then for Worlds. Due to some complications I raced C-1 in the Pan Ams and then C-2 in the Worlds, but this time I will be racing both boats in this years Pan Ams.

I am a canoeist through and through, and therefore I thrive on the challenge of competing in two canoe disciplines! The Pan Ams this year hold a great deal of importance as they are our last chance to secure Olympic positions for the United States. Let’s not put on too much pressure though! Well, maybe just a little

Our adventure to Brazil thus far has been short, having only arrived on February 24th. However, the adventures and training never end or grow old. We have already gotten to paddle on the water a number of times and have had fun growing acquainted with the local wildlife. For instance, has anyone seen a Capybara in the wild? We get to paddle with them as they swim by (yes, Capybara swim)! It is also a whole new experience paddling along and seeing the eyes of the neighborhood Caiman peering out from the surface of the water, searching for it’s next snack! I think it would be a great story to tell if one of them took a bite out of my paddle!

All in all we are having fun despite the fact that this race is our last chance for Olympic canoe positions. The athletes train well together and we continue to learn from one another. Often you can see athletes and coaches along the course watching the workouts of the other teams. Sometimes you learn best from watching.

Aside from the fascinating wildlife and fellow athletes, we have a few more cool things about the surrounding area. The course is in fact a part of an elaborate fish ladder system that travels around the Itaipu Dam, one of the largest hydroelectric dams in the world. On the other side of town are the Iguazu Falls. The falls ride the border between Brazil and Argentina and are a sight that tens of thousands of people travel to. I went once in 2007 but we are already planning our next trip there!

The combined excitement of tourism and training will sustain us to the race where we will put everything on the line. This is a big one folks! It is a wonderful thing when you put athletes together that have a common dream, who push their hardest, and who leave it all on the course!

I’ll do my best to keep updates coming during the race.

See you on the water!

After an exciting summer of 2011 the turn of the year had to eventually come. Can you believe that the Olympics are this year? We were at a training camp in Lake Placid, New York enjoying some cross country skiing when 2012 finally arrived. I can hardly believe that four years have gone by so quickly! Nevertheless, the next Olympic year is upon us and so you can see the athletes all around the world pick up their training a little bit more.

This year I made the trip to the land down under to train on the 2000 Olympic course as many other athletes have. After a little logistical work, both Devin and I have made our way to Australia with our brand new boats that have been given and designed by Boyton Moo Media! After a couple days of outfitting the boats were functional and amazing! My new C-1, that Sarah Anderson designed for my style, is a fantastic boat and has made training all that much more fun! Sandra Boynton did the graphics for our C-2 that matches up perfectly with the feel that Devin and I have for our new boat!

Australia is such a fun country to travel to! Once you arrive and get to experience the country and course, all the travel time becomes worth it! We have been here for about a week now and have enjoyed a good number of sessions on the whitewater. Three months of flatwater training makes any whitewater feel great, but Devin and I agree that things are feeling particularly good. We are looking forward to a great season! This is my third trip to Australia and I don’t believe that I have seen it rain so much here. Who is complaining though? Warm, rainy weather is my favorite to paddle in and it means we don’t get too hot or sun burnt. The training has been fantastic and each session gives us better control over our new boats. What more can we ask for?!

Sadly, our trip here will be short and only last a few weeks total. However, we will travel home for only a short period of time before we hop our next plane on the way to Brazil where we will race in the Pan American Championships! The United States needs an Olympic position in C-1 and C-2, and this race is our chance to do it…. But that is all another story yet to have been written

See you on the water!

Canoe and Kayak Magazine Summarizes Results of Recent Bratislava World Cup:

“…In Men’s C-1, only Casey Eichfeld moved on to the Semifinals for the U.S., placing 22nd of 67 starters—and in a nice show of consistency would have qualified on either run…”

Click here to read more…

Go, Casey!!

Also, check out the training camp recently announced by the Bethesda Center for Excellence:

Canoe Training Camp with Casey

The BCE  Canoe Training Camp with Casey Eichfeld will be held on October 8/9, 2011.   Athletes are invited to participate in both C-1 and C-2.  Three sessions will be on the Feeder and one at Dickerson. 

To view full schedule and registration form, click here.

Check it out!

Check out the US National Team on NBC’s Today Show: January 27, 2011. A special look at the London Olympics only 365 days away!

I last left off with my blog around the time that we arrived in Leipzig. Immediately the team seemed to take to our new environment, and we fell into our World Cup routine. We had booked a hotel that comprised of many houses and was perched just at the top of the hill from the race course. I don’t think we could have picked a more ideal place to stay. The houses were fantastic, and gave us the opportunity to cook which we always enjoy. It also gave us a place that felt a little more like our own for the time that we stayed there. In addition to a mere 5 minute walk to the course, the hotel was perfect!

Training came and went as it always does just before a race. You never feel that you have tried all of the moves that you wish you had. My heart is always in my throat when I am about to see the set course for the first time. I am always wondering if I had done most of the moves. Was I good at them? Are they going to be hard? None of that matters though when you reach the start gate and the countdown begins. All that matters is your race and only your race because you can’t do anything about anything else. You only have control over what you do, so you go out there and you give it your all!

After the first qualification run I was not sitting in a very good position. I had had some difficulties pulling my focus together and getting my boat going where it needed to be. You would have thought I was a different person for my second run as I navigated the course well enough to put myself into 13th place. Once again I had made a semi-finals. It feels amazing to have made three semi-finals in the first three World Cups when last year I only made it in one World Cup and World Championships. I have improved and it feels really good to know that, but none of that changes anything. I am a racer, and I am doing what I love. Ideally, improvement is a natural thing

Semi-finals… what did I do? Sometimes in racing you make a decision in the heat of the moment that isn’t the right one and so you must accept the consequences. I chose to take the direct line on the dive gate 9 instead of safely spinning next to the gate and going on to gate 10. As I missed gate 9 my heart sank. I so wanted this race to be the race that I made my first Finals at. How can I do that when I am missing gates? I still had a race to do though and I made my loop attempt to recover gate 9 and finish the run. Unfortunately when things go wrong it seems a lot of other things go wrong. I flipped and consequently missed three gates. With my spirits dashed I continued my run but I was not going to quit and continued to race as hard as I could putting me into 30th place.

It was after my run that I was talking to a coaching friend of mine and recounting my reasons for going direct as oppose to spinning. I was fearful I was slow and so I tried to gain some time by risking. My friend looked at me and said in his French accent, that is stupid, Casey. You are fast enough to make a finals without risking. Wow, I had once accidentally pulled this man into a river during some spring race training because he tried to save me after I swam out of my boat. He is right though and it felt good to hear him say that.

With three World Cups behind us and the rest of the summer ahead we traveled back to Bratislava where we spent two weeks of training furthering our knowledge and comfort on the course that will decide our Olympic participation! At this point some team members had returned home and were resting up for the rest of the summer. Others chose to stick it out. Basically it was cheaper for me to stay here, but I enjoy getting to train in Europe a bit longer!

Now we have moved onto London and finally gotten to try our hand at the new Olympic course! What is there to say about this course? It is amazing! I am having so much fun getting to paddle this course! One of the fantastic things about this course is that there is constant whitewater all the way down the course. In that sense it is similar to the Beijing course, but this course really is its own beast!

I will keep you all posted on the events here at the London Olympic course, and of course the race as well! Look for the United States team on the Today Show, Wednesday July 27th, for their one year from the Olympics program!

See you on the water!

Once before this year I had come to France and raced in a World Cup at the venue in Pau. It was my first World Cup as a C-1 and it was a great new experience! This year we had World Cup #2 in L’Argentiere, France. At first I didn’t know what to think about the venue and it didn’t seem to be a very large course. It in fact was not the most challenging whitewater but it was a natural river which made it pretty awesome anyway. It was a treat getting to be on a natural river again for an international event.

The week of training leading up to the race was productive and warm. We loved the weather there as it was always sunny and warm! The weekend of racing soon rolled around and we found our nerves amping back up for our upcoming racing. I must admit that the schedule for the race was very peculiar. For television purposes I had to race both of my qualification runs and my Semi run in one day. It was almost like doing a training full length workout with a lot of time between each run.

My qualification runs put me in great standing and safely in the top ten as we waited for the semi final runs to approach. My semi final run went really well all the way up to the end where I got a little to excited and hit gate 17 and caused a little bobble for myself in the next two gates. All in all I had a good race and I am okay with my finish. I am really seeing the growth that I have made during this Europe trip. My consistency has improved a great deal and I am going to keep training towards making my paddling even stronger!

So we have left L’Argentiere and found our way to the next World Cup venue in Leipzig, Germany where I am really excited to get to race our third World Cup. Training so far has been a lot of fun and the water is great! I really like the course here and I am looking forward to getting to train here more and race this weekend!

The team has been doing well and we have had some really strong performances! It is great getting to be a part of such an elite group of athletes. I feel that a lot of us have grown a great deal over the past few years and are finding ourselves reaching up higher into the ranks of the best in the world. I won’t say that it is easy to be together for so long as a team but we make it work and in the end we are a team. So here we go Team USA! Here is to the rest of the summer of racing and training!

See you on the water!

The course in Tacen, Slovenia is one that we built a familiarity with last year when it was the venue of the 2010 World Championships. At that time I really loved the course but had not been able to dial it in yet. I felt like I had done alright but I knew I could do better. Turns out, I got a second shot at it!

The race in Tacen was the first World Cup in a circuit of four this year. The others take place in L’Argentiere France, Markkleeburg, Germany, and Prague, Czech Republic. The training week had a string of up and down workouts for me and didn’t really let me feel like I was very confident on the course but I knew it well and knew that I had to trust myself with everything that I had learned about the water.

After a few sessions the race weekend arrived and the team fell into race mode. We all have our own ways of coping with the race stress. Some of us get excited while others become pretty subdued. You have to do what is good for you and trust that you in fact know what is good for you. So we all muddle through as best as we can and focus on what we need.

For me it is hard to tell what it is that I do that makes the difference. Sometimes I do well with a double warm up and other times not so well. Do I stretch, do sprints, eat a snack, walk around? It is hard finding that balance that you need and sometimes I wonder if there is a balance. I know there are things that I like to do and that is usually what I stick with. I believe that you need to want it and to know that you can have it in order to take it. So maybe it isn’t what you do before the race but what you do during your actual run. When you finish your run you should be able to feel if you pulled each stroke like you wanted it or just pulled because you knew you had to.

After a first run that wasn’t anything that I would think said I wanted it; I took my second run knowing that I wanted it and that I was going to have it. It was only important to push myself into the semifinals and so I raced like I wanted to win it all, even though it didn’t matter in the qualifiers. My second run, aside from an unfortunate mistake, put me into the semis as the 30th boat. They only take 30 C-1s into semifinals. I had made semis before and I liked that but I wanted the finals. I had never made a finals before and that was an important part of winning when you race internationally.

Semifinals took place the next day and I was the very first boat down the course. I knew what I wanted and I was going to have it. After doing nothing particularly special for preparation I took my run down the course. My run was a 106.13 if my memory serves me well and that included one touch on the very last gate. One touch is a lot of time when it comes down to an international race. The coaches and I sat across from the scoreboard watching racer after racer go down and for awhile I held onto the first position. Soon enough the top racers came down the course and I would occasionally get bumped down. Mind you, they only take 10 boats into the Finals. The last three racers came down and I was finally pushed from the top 10 and down to 13th place.

The cut off time for 10th place was about 105 seconds. A clean run for me would have moved me from 13th to 8th and safely in the Finals. You can imagine my disappointment with myself. I had touched the last gate in such a way that could have been avoided had I pulled just a little bit harder. That is it though. That is the nature of the sport that I love so much. I can’t hold it against myself because I cannot change what happened but only learn and grow from it. I know now that I can compete with the best in the world where I had once been unsure.

So here I am training for the next World Cup and I am ready. I know that I can be as good as the best in the world I will train even harder to become the best in the world. It was a dream that started when I was only two years old and it is a dream I intend to see through. And who knows, maybe one day I will help someone else see that dream. For now it is about me and my love for racing. Here is looking forward to a summer of racing with the best racers around!

Click here for the link to see the Men’s C-1 Semi-Final runs!

See you on the water!

A summer in Europe has become a fairly regular occurrence for me, but each year is still special and I would miss Europe if I didn’t get to go. This year we started out our journey in Bratislava, Slovakia where we spent a few days training on the soon to be World Championships course later this year. When it comes to the Olympic qualifying year nobody on the team takes the World Championships too lightly. That is clear when you know how many trips and camps we actually have planned in Bratislava for this summer.

Among one or two other athletes I will be staying in Europe for an entire 3 months! My trip started on June 12th when I flew to Europe and I will be leaving on September 12th. I learned an interesting fact recently. Apparently American travelers have an automatic 3 month Visa when they travel to Europe. I was unaware of this but am certainly glad that I leave Europe just in the nick of time before causing any trouble for myself.

After our brief visit in Bratislava we made our way to Liptovsky, Slovakia for the Slovakian nationals. The course in Liptovsky did not look to be much but proved to be difficult as soon as you hit the water. I had a great time there and enjoyed getting to experience a new course!

Our next stop brought us to Tacen, Slovenia via a pit stop in Bratislava (apparently the halfway point). Tacen is the venue of our first World Cup of the season and is where ya’ll catch up to us in this entry! We have spent a good few days of training and are now preparing for the race to begin tomorrow! With fingers crossed and nerves set in I am looking forward to our first World Cup!

This year brings with it a new adventure for me. I have been on the team before in C-2 and then in C-1, but this year I get to be on the team in both boats! Devin McEwan and I have joined together as a C-2! As some of you have and seen and/or heard we have been racing together for the past couple months. Unfortunately, we are not racing in all the World Cups but we will be racing in Prague, Czech Republic for World Cup 4 as well as the World Championships. We are both really excited and it is great having Devin in Europe with me! Sometimes I can’t believe me luck that he agreed to be my new partner on the water!

Hopefully everyone is getting some good time on the water! I am looking forward to the rest of the summer and all the postings or stories, videos, and resutls! Let’s go Team USA!

See you on the water

A solid run!

A winning C-2 run with my partner Devin:

“Did that just really happen?”