Leif and Natalie

In April 2024, I was invited to give a motivational speech about kayak racing at a women's happy hour event in Seattle at the Rough and Tumble Pub organized by Megan Kelly and Anastasia Alder. I was invited to do this partially because of the blog I wrote in 2021 titled “ Motivations for competing in Whitewater Kayaking ”, and because I was currently coaching one of the organizers on an online race team with my husband, Leif.  I was honored and excited to be invited and speak of my journey because  (in the words of a mentor of mine, Abby McHale ) I truly believe that “ we must foster reverence for the courage of uninhibited expression in one another because when we show ourselves to one another, we realize we are not alone and that our experience is simply the experience of woman. And when a woman is in her power, fostering her sisterhood, it makes all woman feel safe. ”  The following speech is an uninhibited expression of the wisdoms I have learned from my experience ka...

So, you've spent a season or two making sure that your mental base is solid and you're centered, well adjusted, and happy. You're competing for all the right reasons, with a zen-like detachment from any results. But… wouldn't it be nice if those results were maybe just a little better? How exactly can you work on racing faster? Here are some strategies and tactics that we’ve found helpful. What follows are not physical training tips to improve fitness, although fitness is a big part of racing and there are many dimensions to fitness. These tips are also not specific technique tips, like “take a more vertical stroke,” although again, paddling technique is perhaps more important than fitness. Instead, these are meta-tips. They’re tips that should help you analyze your own paddling so that you can figure out what small changes to make to your technique or to your lines. The tips break down into a few easy steps. observe others figure out what makes them faster l...

The Snail is my second custom design. The first was the Slug, way back around maybe 2012, when I lived in Fort Collins. Somewhat after the fact, I wrote a blog aritcle about that construction . The Slug ended up being very fast but had a lot of problems. After many years, I have learned much and decided to sort of try the design ideas of the Slug again, but with better construction techniques. The differences in technique between the Slug and the Snail Money. The design philosophy If you've read my other articles (who am I kidding? Of course you've read them because my only readers are my mom and my wife and they have read all my articles) you remember that I talked about how nobody interested in boat building really cares about your boat design ideas, so I will try to restrict my comments here to the bare minimum, but there are a couple features that actually impact the construction. First, my general vision for this design was a very fast but stable surf boat. I tried Ben...

  Natalie reminisces over Stakeout, 2023 Freestyle Worlds, and the progression of the airscrew in the sport of freestyle kayaking. This post was cross posted with one published on the Kokatat team Blog. In May 2023, I travelled to Quebec for Stakeout and arrived just in time to hit Molly for some prime flows and witness the first fully rotated double airscrew by Luke Pomeroy , which is two full aerial rotations before landing. He spent the evening hours try after try, and just as the light was beginning to dim, a huge cheer went up. Two days later, on Cheese Wave, Dane Jackson was the first to throw a double airscrew and stick it , a trick he had been trying since 2013. Dane commented to me afterwards “Seeing Luke get the closest one we have ever seen with such wild rotation got me more fired up to go and land it.”  It felt historical and special to witness both Luke and then Dane be the firsts to land something I would never have imagined was possible within a couple of days ...