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Authors

Andréanne Morin

A native of Montréal, Québec, Andréanne has travelled around the world with her oars and boats representing Canada on the national rowing team. She is a three-time Olympian—Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012—where she won a silver medal.

Her posts focus on the excitement and thrills experienced during the countdown to the London Olympics with the grueling workouts and challenges of achieving that ambition.

Andréanne is now practicing law.

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Cady Hart-Petterssen

Cady Hart-Petterssen found rowing as a freshman at the University of Connecticut. Having never pulled on an oar in her life, the team recruiter grabbed her and her tall friend to test her on the erg. Cady jumped on and hauled away and found her future sport. Her tenacity and natural mobility allowed her to excel in a long person's sport, despite standing 5'5", and she went on to captain the UConn heavyweight boat for three years. Since college, Cady spent time as a yoga instructor while getting a Masters in Exercise Science at Colorado State, then worked as a Corporate Wellness Program Manager and Wellness Coach before moving to Vermont and finding CrossFit. That same passion she had for rowing led Cady to a full time CrossFit coaching job and she was soon competing at the CrossFit Games Northeast Regionals.

Cady became co-owner of Green Mountain CrossFit in 2012 and has since developed a three day a week CrossFit program at the Concept2 headquarters in Morrisville, Vermont, for employees. Cady has also created a successful CrossFit Rowing program at GMCF, teaching many of their athletes the joy of indoor rowing and contributing to the CrossFit Rowing Facebook programming. Through this experience in her own gym and with Concept2, Cady is now also a trainer with CrossFit Rowing.

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Jameson Halnon

Jameson resides in Burlington, Vermont. His love/hate relationship with the “erg” matured after joining a local CrossFit affiliate in 2013. Jameson joined Concept2 in 2015. When not trying to keep up with his coworkers on the RowErg, Jameson can be found at Concept2 on the marketing team. Outside of Concept2, Jameson spends times with his dogs and tries to take advantage of the Vermont landscape by hiking, biking and skiing.

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Judy Geer

Judy Geer learned to row in college, and gradually realized that there was no way she was going to "grow up" and stop rowing after her graduation from Dartmouth College in 1975. She went on to compete on three US Olympic Rowing teams in '76, '80 and '84. During this time she also coached rowing, and then went back to get a Masters in Engineering, also at Dartmouth. When she graduated, she joined Concept2, which had been started in 1976 by Dick Dreissigacker (now her husband) and his brother Peter. As happens in family businesses, her responsibilities have migrated over the years as the company has grown. She is currently a member of the Marketing and Communications Team.

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Linda Muri

Linda began rowing as an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After being recruited for a one-day intramural rowing competition, she decided to give the varsity rowing team a try.

Linda's 30+ years of coaching experience spans all age groups and skill levels. In addition to 20 years of collegiate coaching (which included stints at Cornell, Harvard, Dartmouth, and MIT), Linda has coached club and masters athletes around the country. A US National Team coach for 12 years now, she is currently working with Tokyo Olympic 2020 hopefuls.

A 9-time US Team member, Linda is a 3-time World Champion who continues to enjoy her own time rowing as well as accumulating meters in various online Challenges. In the fall you can find her at head races, and in the winter she's pulling 2ks on the RowErg.

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Martin Stridde

Martin started rowing in 1987. After a year as a foreign exchange student in Casper, Wyoming, he started rowing competitively in Hamburg, Germany in 1990 and has loved the sport ever since. Talk about love: when he was coaching at his rowing club in Hamburg, he met his future wife Tina, who—what else?—was one of his rowers. Martin has been with Concept2 since 1998.

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Meredith Breiland

Meredith started rowing in high school. She quickly fell in love with early morning practices, erg tests, blisters, and track bite. She continued her rowing career at Cornell University. After graduation, she switched her focus to running and triathlon.

Meredith is a former member of the Concept2 marketing team. She currently rows with her husband, Erik, as a member of Green Mountain Rowing. They stay active with rowing, running, triathlons, skiing and chasing after their two daughters.

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Nick Petterssen

Nick Petterssen is a lifelong athlete, dating back to the days of elementary school recess when playground kickball stoked his passion for competitive play. He eventually found that his body type was a good match for the sport of volleyball and went on to have a successful collegiate career playing on the University of Colorado indoor team, and played for a brief stint on the AVP professional beach volleyball tour.

After a knee injury sidelined him from volleyball, Nick moved to Northern Wisconsin to work as an outdoor educator and converted his past passion for alpine skiing into a new discipline of skate skiing. Training as an endurance athlete led to other sports, such as running, then triathlon, then eventually road racing. Always a jack of all trades, when CrossFit stumbled into Nick's life he loved the fact that being good at everything made you very good at one thing. Nick opened Vermont's first CrossFit gym in 2009, met his wife Cady Hart-Petterssen through that process, and they now own and operate Green Mountain CrossFit together. With the Concept2 Indoor Rower such a critical piece to the world of CrossFit, Nick began honing his indoor rowing technique, and when Concept2 introduced the SkiErg his world was made complete.

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Peter Dreissigacker

Peter Dreissigacker, along with his brother Dick, founded Concept2 in 1976. The idea for the company grew out of a graduate course they took together at Stanford University, combined with their love of rowing.

In 1976, the two brothers were competing for a spot on the U.S Olympic Team, and they saw a need for a lighter, stiffer, faster oar. After a series of kitchen experiments with carbon fiber and fiberglass, they developed the first viable, affordable composite racing oar to hit the market. In 1992, their innovation again changed the face of rowing with the introduction of the "Big Blade", an asymmetrical hatchet-shaped blade that offered a speed advantage of several percent.

In 1981, they developed the first Concept2 Indoor Rower, known familiarly as the Erg. The indoor rower rapidly became the standard for wind-resistance rowing machines. In addition to his work at Concept2, Peter continues to row competitively both on and off the water and enjoys backcountry skiing for variety in the winter.

He also makes time for painting and drawing, and playing the accordion.

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Sam Loch

Sam Loch is a former Australia National Team Rower. He’s a dual Olympian—Beijing 2008 and London 2012—and two-time bronze medal winner at World Championships. Prior to training with the national team, he rowed at Princeton University and graduated in 2006. Just before the London Olympics, Sam offered some training advice that still holds true today.

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Terry Smythe

A former elite level rower, Terry trained for the 1980 and 1984 Olympic Games. She founded the Michigan Technological University Rowing Club in 1995 and remained its head coach until her passing in 2018. She was a passionate advocate of indoor rowing as well, and in 1996 she became a master instructor for Concept2. She focused particularly on applying rowing to adaptive audiences, including seniors, the overweight and obese, and physically and cognitively impaired rowers.

Terry was a sought-after authority on fitness programming for audiences of all kinds, and in that role advised numerous schools and other institutions around the country on how to use indoor rowing and other fitness options to improve health, performance in school, employee wellness and more.

Her community work has been recognized with numerous state and local awards and she has served on a variety of health and fitness-related boards, including the Michigan Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness, Health and Sports.

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