Topic: News: Melanie Roach training for 2008 Olympics

[Matt Rupiper]

She has one heck of a story.  I will definitely be watching this summer (if NBC airs any weightlifting ).
As for ribose, it must have a great placebo effect.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Living Well: Olympic weightlifter stays focused on life
By Bob Condor

When Melanie Roach of Sumner steps up to the platform for the weightlifting competition at next month's Olympic Games in Beijing, she will be working hard to clear her mind and focus directly on what's at hand.

Given the many things going on in her life, she has had plenty of practice learning to focus.

Roach is the mother of three children, and one is autistic, which is demanding on Roach and her husband, Dan.

She owns a gymnastics studio and moved its location this month.

[attachimg=1]
Olympic Weightlifter Melanie Roach.

And, of course, she has that Olympic dream thing running through her 33-year-old mind. She battled a significant back injury to even be in a spot to make it to Beijing.

"I make it a point to focus on whatever I am doing at the moment," said Roach, talking by phone as she headed to the doctor's office for a routine blood test. "I wasn't so good at it in my 20s, but now if I am working out, then I am lifting and thinking of nothing. If I am relocating the gym, that's my focus. And if I am celebrating the Fourth of July with my family, I am enjoying that."

Well, Roach did admit to leaving Fourth of July party a bit early to get some uninterrupted sleep. The kids were on a sleepover, so Roach saw the chance to get the rest she knows her body needs.

Roach is fixed on getting eight hours of rest every night between now and Beijing, waking up between 7 and 8 a.m. with the distinct luxury of her mom living with the family right now and Dan handling their autistic son's awakenings between 1 and 4 a.m. Her mother helps with the kids early in the morning and also proves a valuable assist during Roach's ritual afternoon nap.

"She won't let me sleep any more than 40 minutes," Roach said. "Sometimes I feel like I could sleep a lot longer, but, she says, 'No, it's over, let's go.' It's like being a teenager again.

Roach sports a teenlike weight. Standing just 5 feet tall, she trains at 122 pounds and gets down to 117 for competition ("usually just for a few hours").

The Olympian weightlifter has to work at maintaining her 122 pounds. And you can argue that her nutrition plan is a calming factor in her hectic pre-Olympics life at the moment.

"I started seeing my nutritionist about a year and half ago," Roach recalled. "She told me I wasn't eating enough calories. She upped my calories and added more variety. I eat a lot more fruits and vegetables than I ever did. I always thought as a weightlifter you need lots of protein."

Roach does limit her carbohydrate grains to oatmeal, brown rice and brown rice tortillas that are at the center of her standard chicken or fish quesadillas -- with all the fixings -- for lunch.

"I eat six or seven meals and snacks every day," Roach said. "I don't go more than two hours without eating."

Roach's nutritional day starts with a protein shake when she wakes up. It includes 8 ounces of orange juice (she drinks water when she's cutting weight for competition), 1/2 cup to 1 cup of frozen berries, a full banana, and flax seed and lecithin granules in the blender. She tries to eat organic whenever possible.

Mid-morning, Roach will eat an apple (or a half on weight-cutting days) with a slice of cheese. "I always eat a balance of protein, carbs and fats," Roach said. "I try to eat the healthy fats, including cooking with coconut oil."

Roach started eating the brown rice tortillas at lunchtime because Drew, her son, doesn't eat gluten products. It turns out the gluten-free tortillas have helped Roach clear up a chronic case of psoriasis, a skin condition.

Before her afternoon nap, Roach has a Larabar energy bar (a sponsor's bar she calls yummy and praises for being all-natural with "four or five ingredients") and salmon jerky. After her mom rouses Roach from her nap, she has a craving for oranges, meat (more poultry, less red meat) and hard-boiled eggs. "We always have hard-boiled eggs; the kids love them too."

Before Roach says goodbye to her kids and heads to a late-afternoon workout, she has a half-cup of oatmeal with honey. She adds a big spoonful of peanut butter if she needs more calories or her weight is dropping below 122.

As Roach walks into the gym to hit the weights, she has the same flavor PowerBar every time.

"I have peanut butter," she said. "It's chewy and kind of hard to eat, but it works for me."

After the workout, Roach has more salmon jerky: "My nutritionist wants me to eat plenty of fish." When she gets home, she says she is eager to make "a humongous salad with everything in it," including lots of poultry or meat.

Before bed, Roach pulls out her Jack LaLanne juicer.

"My weightlifting friends make fun of me," she said, laughing. "But I can get really tired and the bedtime juice makes me feel less tired the next day. I juice a whole orange (peel and all), a whole lime, one big carrot, a whole beet, a celery stalk and I ball up some wheat grass inside the citrus so it runs through the juicer slowly and I get all of the wheatgrass nutrients. I'm looking to help myself every way I can."

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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2008 Summer Olympics Profile: Melanie Roach

(Sports Network) - Aspiring Olympians sometimes find it difficult to juggle their daily schedules - from training, working a full-time job and maintaining a family life. That's taken to the Nth degree for weightlifter Melanie Roach.

The 33-year-old from Bonney Lake, WA, about 40 minutes southeast of Seattle, is going to compete at her first Olympics after a long road in two different sports.

A gymnast during her childhood, Roach dislocated her right elbow during a training accident while in high school. After reconstructive surgery, and at the urging of a gymnastics judge she knew, Roach decided to try weightlifting. That was in 1994. Four years later, Roach, the first U.S. woman to clean and jerk twice her bodyweight, was ranked No.1 in the nation. She was well on her way to the 2000 Olympics, but just three weeks before trials she suffered a serious back injury and underwent surgery to remove small fragments from her spine, keeping her from traveling to Sydney for the Summer Games.

Not only did she overcome that, but with three children, including one with autism, Roach has exhibited tremendous patience. She somehow finds time in her schedule to train while taking care of her children in a high-profile family. Her husband, Dan, holds office as a Washington state representative. Also, her mother-in-law, Pam Roach, is a state senator.

During her time at the Olympic Media Summit earlier this year, Roach described that when she travels to meets like world championships and other tournaments, it's like taking time off...a much different view held by the younger lifters.

"I'm traveling with these younger athletes and they're all exhausted from traveling," she said. "It's a vacation for me, even traveling because I'm not chasing these three little kids, I'm not juggling dinner and making sure they're on the bus on time. The list is endless."

There are three children in the Roach family - Camille, Drew & Ethan with each nearly two years apart in age. Drew, who is approaching six, has a mild case of autism, which puts mother and father to task each day.

"He has to be watched 24 hours a day," Melanie Roach said of Drew. "We have locks on all of our doors. You can't get out of our house without a key. You can't get into a bedroom without a key. We have to keep him out of all the rooms so he doesn't hurt himself. He really is like a one-year-old in a five- year-old's body."

Drew was diagnosed with autism at two and one of his favorite things to do now, according to Dan, is taking the cushions out of the liner in the sofa, something that can obviously get very messy.

"When he was first diagnosed it was easier for me to accept it," Dan Roach said. "For Melanie it really was devastating. Your son's not going to go to the prom, he's probably not going to move out of the house. It's either something that can tear a family apart or bring it close together."

In the case of the Roach family, it brought them closer than ever. Melanie is a member of "'Athletes Against Autism", which promotes awareness and finding the cause and treatments for the condition. Dedicating time to the cause, making sure her children are ready for school, creating meals, etc., it seems overwhelming.

"I was kind of on my own," Melanie Roach said. "My husband's profession, those were trying times. He's down in Olympia every day from 7, 8 in the morning until 9 or 10 at night, sometimes even later, so I'm on my own. It's hard to balance, but we have so much support. It's about priorities, but it works."

The support includes a lot of help from Melanie's mom.

"She actually lives with us part-time during the week just to help pick up things around the house, to keep my laundry going, make sure we have food. She helps prepare meals," Melanie said.

After missing the 2004 Olympics to start a family, Roach said this is her final opportunity for weightlifting glory and it couldn't come at a more opportune time as she grabs the bar in the 53kg category.

"This is my last dance," Roach said. "This is it, the end of my career and I have a chance to go back and finish it. It's such an exciting time for me."

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Living the dream
Bonney Lake local will compete in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing
By Shaun Scott

Melanie Roach saw her biggest dream in the world become a reality.

Roach, a 33-year-old resident of Bonney Lake, put up 178.2 pounds in the snatch and 239.8 pounds in the clean and jerk at the U.S. Olympic weight lifting trials in the 117-pound weight class on May 17 in Atlanta, advancing to the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, China. Roach will compete on Aug. 10.

[attachimg=1]
Melanie Roach trains vigorously in Sumner on July 9, getting
ready to compete in the 2008 Olympics on Aug. 10 in Beijing, China.
Roach pushes herself through workouts five times a week in
preparation for the biggest competition of her life.

“It was the most fantastic experience of my life,” Roach said. “Afterwards I did an interview with NBC and they ushered me down to the media room where all of my friends and family were. When that happened I instantly had tears of joy. It was a magical moment. My 7-year-old son Ethan asked me, ‘Mom, why are you crying?’ I told him I was crying because I was happy. It was a fantastic day.”

Not even Roach could have envisioned this day happening after suffering a career-threatening back injury eight years ago prior to the opening of the 2000 Summer Olympic trials.

“At the Olympic trials eight years ago, I was just sitting in the stands crying. At that point I didn’t realize I would be competing competitively in weight lifting again,” Roach said. “Making the Olympics eight years later after having three kids is a pretty special feeling.”

After missing her opportunity to compete in the Olympics in 2000, she spent the next five years focusing on her family and her career. Roach and her husband Dan had three children and opened up their own business, Roach Gymnastics in Sumner. Dan Roach is a member of the Washington State House of Representatives, as well.

After talking it over with her family, Roach decided to return to competitive weight lifting again in July of 2005. After suffering reoccurring back pain, Roach paid a visit to Federal Way chiropractor Greg Summers in March of 2006 in an effort to ease the pain she was experiencing. After getting two to three treatments a week, Summers recommended Los Angeles doctor Robert Bray Jr., who specializes in back surgery. Roach had the surgery done in October of 2006. Since the surgery, Roach said she’s felt as good as new. One year after the surgery, she earned a National Championship in 2007 in the 117-pound division.

Roach is hoping to bring home some hardware from Beijing in August, but stresses that it isn’t her ultimate goal.

“If I’m on the medal stand at the end of the day that’s great,” Roach said. “More importantly, I want to give it my best and represent Bonney Lake as well as I can. I’m having the time of my life right now.”

Roach’s weight lifting coach John Thrush was ecstatic to see her dream finally come to fruition. Thrush has coached Roach for the past 14 years.

“Mel has been through a lot in the past. From her injury (in 2000) to finally getting where she wants to be instead of the wheels falling off is great. It’s extremely hard to get to the Olympics. I’m pleased it’s going to happen.”

Thrush believes Roach’s work ethic is the primary reason why she made the U.S. Olympic team.

“Her ability to focus on a goal and find out what it takes to get there is very impressive. When she wants something she goes after it. She’s so focused and that’s not only in weight lifting, it’s in all aspects of her life. She does things the right way,” Thrush said. “There’s a lot of athletes out there who want something but aren’t willing to put in the work; Mel puts it all on the line every single day.”

Roach credits Thrush for getting her to where she is today.

“He’s taught me everything I know,” Roach said. “He’s been coaching for 35 years and I’m his first athlete to go to the Olympics. I told him after I qualified at the Olympic trials that this was for him.”

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Pint-size lifter carries extra weight
By Mark Maloney

At first sight of Melanie Roach, there's no way to guess what makes her different. At 33, she is well groomed and dressed, somewhat on the small side (5-foot-1, 117 pounds). She is a mother of three, one of whom is autistic. From Bonney Lake, Wash., she is married to Dan, a Washington state representative. Dan and Melanie operate their own business, Roach Gymnastics Inc. And Melanie will compete in the Beijing Olympics with Team USA.

In weightlifting, Looks can deceive. Melanie is the first American female weightlifter to clean and jerk more than double her body weight. Competing in the 53 kilo (117-pound) division, she lifted a world-best 113 kilos (250 pounds). She holds the longest-standing American records in the clean and jerk, as well as snatch, clean and jerk. Seven national championships. Five U.S. World teams. Pan American Games bronze medalist in 2007. ”Poster girl“ for weightlifting's new strong-yet-feminine look.

Most strangers are skeptical upon being told that Melanie is a weight lifter. ”They just say I'm lying. I mean, I have to prove it sometimes. I have to pull out a picture or something,“ Roach said during the U.S. Olympic Media Summit in Chicago. ”There was a gentleman on the airplane (last March) that, even after my mom told him I was, he argued with her for 10 minutes. ... Then we showed him a video, actually popped out a (World Championships) video. He put it in his laptop. Even after watching the video he's like "that's not you.'“

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Melanie Roach, at 5-foot-1 and 117 pounds, holds the longest-standing American records in the clean and jerk, as well as snatch, clean and jerk.

Roach says she gets a kick out of such reactions. She likes disproving stereotypes, with hopes of ”growing“ women's weightlifting in America. ”I, like most people, had the misconception that women weightlifters were these huge, bulky Russian women, right? Which is funny because I'm a quarter Russian,“ she said.

Roach says she did not choose weightlifting. Weightlifting chose her. She competed for eight years in gymnastics, but fell off the higher of the uneven bars and dislocated an elbow when she was a junior in high school. She competed as a senior, knowing that she would need reconstructive surgery when the season ended.

Rehabilitation included upper-body weight work. That fall, when she began to coach, Roach was encouraged by a gymnastics judge to give weightlifting a try. No thanks, she said. Throughout the season, the judge persisted. And when the season ended, Roach gave it a try. That was 14 years ago and, she says, she ”fell in love.“

Although she saw weightlifting as a way to get in shape, she was competing after six weeks. She took a bronze medal in the 1994 American Open. By 1996, she had her sights set on the 2000 Olympics. In 1998, she broke the world record for the clean and jerk.

Back problems

Eight weeks before the 2000 Olympic Trials, a severe back injury put her in misery. ”I tried to compete in the snatch. Didn't too very well. It was too painful,“ Roach said. ”I sat in the stands and cried, and watched as everybody fought it out for my Olympic spot. It was torture.“ Roach was named an alternate, behind two lifters whom she had regularly beaten. That was that for her lifting until 2005, when comeback thoughts bloomed.

Back pain returned. Out of desperation, she turned to Dr. Greg Summers, her former massage therapist who had since become a chiropractor. Not a fan of chiropractic, Roach asked for a massage. The doctor suggested an adjustment. The adjustment intensified the pain. But a second adjustment gave relief. So Roach lifted weights and, three or four times a week, had back adjustments. She would lift for five or six weeks, then need a week or two to ”calm“ her back. Every time she had to stop, she thought of quitting.

But she made it through the 2006 World Championships, making five of six attempts and placing 12th. ”I was obviously very happy with that but I knew I couldn't make the Olympic team if we couldn't get that back pain to go away,“ she said. ”That's when we decided to have surgery.“ On Oct. 30, 2006, at Los Angeles, Dr. Robert S. Bray Jr. operated.

”I knew instantly that it worked because the deep, heavy ache in my low back was gone. I never even took pain killers after the surgery. Because the pain that I was in (before) was worse than the pain that I felt after surgery,“ Roach said. ”It was amazing.“ Melanie was walking the next day; in the gym five days after surgery; lifting Olympic weights within eight weeks; feeling 100 percent at seven months; and doing double body weight at nine months. Two months ago, in the Olympic Trials at Atlanta, she clinched her trip to China with combined lifts of 190 kilos (419 pounds).

Dual-support marriage

So how does a mother of three find time to train for the Olympics? For one, she's determined. A typical day begins with getting her boys, Ethan and Drew, fed and off to school. Ethan, 7, rides one school bus. Drew, 5, is autistic and rides a separate bus. Daughter Cammy, 3, is next with breakfast. Cammy then accompanies Melanie to the gym, where mom works out for an hour while Cammy gets supervised play time. Then it's back home, where Melanie will take a nap while her mom, Bonnie Kosoff, or a friend takes care of Cammy. Bonnie comes by three or four days a week to help with chores, including laundry.

Melanie is up in time to fix dinner and meet the boys at the bus stop. Once Dan gets home, Melanie's off for another workout of about three hours. That lasts until about 8 p.m., when she returns to help get the kids to bed. While Melanie's day basically ends there, not so for Dan. He recognizes that his athlete-wife needs her sleep. He makes sure she gets it. ”Our son who has autism has major sleeping problems,“ Melanie said. ”He doesn't just get up and go to the bathroom and go back to sleep. He gets up and he stays up for two to three hours in the middle of the night.“ Every night, Dan takes charge so that Melanie can sleep. He doesn't complain.

Helpful husband

Dan's support is, well, of Olympic proportions. ”We prioritize with family, weightlifting, politics,“ Dan said. ”It goes down in that order. And we also bring in help, too.“ That includes family, friends, fellow churchgoers. Politics runs in Dan's family. His mother, Pam Roach, has been serving in the Washington state senate for 18 years. Dan first ran for office in 1998, when he met Melanie. Although he narrowly lost that election, he came back and is serving his fourth term. A Republican, he is in the minority. But he says that ”over all of my eight years, what I'm most proud of happened this year.“

That would be his work on autism. In coordination with a Democratic senator whose grandchild has autism, ”we brought some legislation forward so we were able to at least get the ball rolling in the right direction. We've got some good first-step results.“ The legislation calls for a book to educate teachers, pediatricians and parents about what to expect with autism — what to do next, where to go, how to get help, how to find insurance, etc. The legislation also deals with school districts in the IEP — Individual Education Program Training. ”It's basically a program for your child in school, to be able to set goals and try to achieve those goals,“ Dan said. He added that he wants to secure insurance for applied behavior analysis which ”has been shown as most effective in helping these kids to actually progress, and some of them even progress to where, when they're teenagers or what-not, you wouldn't even know they had ever been autistic.“

Such early intervention, he says, will be worth the investment by reducing tax dollars needed to provide adult care. For the next few weeks, though, the Roach family focus is on Melanie in Beijing. Yes, she can lift more weight than Dan (and most of us). Just don't ask her to rearrange the furniture. ”If it's not attached to a bar, I don't lift it,“ Melanie said. ”The one thing that could keep me from Beijing would be an injury. I'm very, very careful.“

[Roman Hunt]

Awesome! Dan Roach is def. a cool husband!

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Best wishes for an Olympian: Roach gets ready for the Games

Community holds rally, warm send-off party for Beijing-bound Melanie Roach

Friends, family and dignitaries gathered Friday evening at Roach Gymnastics in Sumner to send Melanie Roach to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing with the best wishes of the community.

The 33-year-old Roach, a Bonney Lake resident, earned the No. 1 spot on the United States’ weightlifting team

May 17 in Atlanta. She will compete Aug. 10 in the Beijing Olympics.

Roach’s return to the world stage of weightlifting is a remarkable testament to her strength, both physical and mental.

After she was knocked out of the 2000 Olympic qualifying competition with herniated disc, it appeared her weightlifting career was ended. The back injury might have ended her dream in 2000, but not her desire and drive.

[attachimg=1]
Melanie Roach, right, autographs a T-shirt for Janice Harlor
and her daughter Nikki at a rally for Roach before she departs for
Beijing China to compete as a weightlifter. Harlor is the teacher for
Roach’s son Drew. Photo by Gary Kissel.

She is the oldest member of the weightlifting team and only one with three children.

Along with the challenges of the injury, her child, Drew, who is 5 years old, was diagnosed with autism when he was nearly 3 years old.

Despite the many hours involved in caring for Drew, her other two children and operating Roach Gymnastics, she found a way to fight back to the top.

Roach said her children and her husband, Dan, a state representative for the 31st District, played “a huge part” in her comeback.

“Thank you Dan for all the nights you didn’t sleep and for giving me this moment,” she said at the party Friday. “Thank you for giving me this chance to go back and pursue my dream.”

Melanie Roach was a gymnast at Auburn High School and switched to weightlifting after leaving gymnastics.

“My mother drove me one hour ever day to gymnastics,” Roach said. “It was those hours I spent in the gym that prepared me to be an Olympic weightlifter.”

Roach also credited her coach, John Thrush, as the person who kept her on the path to the Olympics.

“This is a long trip down a long hard road,” Thrush said. “She will get to do something that few get to do.”

At the send-off party, Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Auburn, who represents the 8th Congressional District, read a statement of support for Roach that was entered into the congressional record. Mayor Dave Enslow presented her with a proclamation from the City of Sumner.

A beaming and emotional Roach signed hundreds of autographs and welcomed all who arrived to wish her the best.

“This is the most amazing experience ever,” Roach said. “This is a dream come true to go to the Olympics, and to share it with everyone is overwhelming.”

Roach said she will begin the trip to Beijing on Friday when she flies to San Francisco for credentials. Saturday she leaves for Beijing. Once in Beijing she will train for one week, then rest one week before competing.