2014 Royal Canadian Henley Regatta Championship Women's Single Champion
Dear Professor Cordain,
My name is Mary Maginnis, I am a Paleo athlete training for the Olympics, and I am writing to thank you for your work, The Paleo Diet for Athletes.
To offer you some background: I began rowing in high school and continued my career on the Division I level at Harvard. Although I was always on the shorter and leaner side for a rower, I spent these first eight years of my rowing career competing as a heavyweight. I was lucky that I was able to find as much success in that weight category considering my size, but I knew that if I wanted to continue rowing on the elite level, I would have to make the switch to lightweight.
To be clear, I spent most of my rowing career eating as anti-paleo as possible. I abhorred most vegetables, and I viewed pizza and cheeseburgers as the best-tasting foods (and I admit that I still think that they--retrospectively--taste awesome).
While I considered training full-time after college, I was instead initially drawn to a corporate position in New York City. I certainly gained a lot from this experience, but I knew after the first six months of work that I was giving up my only opportunity to achieve my long-standing Olympic dream. Corporate life will always be there for me, but competing in the Olympics is only achievable for a limited period of time. I left New York in the beginning of March and began training full-time as a lightweight in Philadelphia with a high performance group.
