Weekend Recap

So this past weekend I headed out to San Diego for a little reunion with my old team... the Notre Dame Rowing Club. It was a little bit like time travel where we've gotten a bit older/grown-up, but are still pretty much the same as we were in college. There's a whole slew of fun that we had that makes for good stories to tell, but with my story telling ability would take a few hours to tell and a very confusing plot with no real climax or point.... so I'll refrain from story telling.

A little recap with how the collegiate varsity 8 did. This was the big race of the day (for ND at least). Prior to this year, the best finish Notre Dame has had was 3rd place, which was last year. This year, the team has had even more training and a lot more fine-tuned workouts and testing (lactate threshold testing, for example) to become much faster than years before.

Lactate Threshold Testing - something similar, but a little different... get the idea?

The race started with a slow start by Notre Dame, but were keeping up with the field and their top challenger, Grand Valley State (GVSU). About 300 meters into the race (out of 2000 meters), there was some equipment failure (kinda like a wardrobe malfunction but different... something happened to the oarlock and clam (for those interested)) causing Notre Dame to lose their momentum and be down in the race by an entire boat length (which is a lot to make up). Towards the final stretch, Notre Dame was giving it all they've got (said like Scotty from Star Trek). It was pretty exciting watching from shore because we were yelling with excitement while chasing the boats along to the finish. Unfortunately there wasn't enough juice in the guys' legs and couldn't hold off GVSU's sprint... ND ended up getting 2nd by a few seconds.... sometimes the most heartbreaking kinda loss. They'll be back to prove themselves the remainder of the year, though, so don't worry.

I too got a chance to race with my old teammates. We weren't nearly as fast as the Varsity boat, nor (as it turned out) were we as fast as the rest of our heat. We could've used some more practice, but I think in the end we got a nice chance to race and then relax and enjoy the remainder of the weekend.

This is a picture of the Alumni A boat as they are heading out to their race. Something humorous about this beach is that it gets deceptively deep very fast. A few times, the bow seat (front of the boat) would jump out to stop the boat, but would promptly disappear.

Launching the boat from the shore

These are some of the blades that we have as a team. They look pretty stellar.

Below is the shell that we raced in. It's got a great name... Steak Dinner.

Speaking of food... there was also lots of eating and catching up. I forgot what it's like to be around other people that can eat the same amount and much more than I can... that ask for other people's food, and know you have to eat as quickly as possible so your stomach doesn't tell your head that it's full (although it does lead to trouble later).

We got a great view of the ocean from our hotel (which I forgot to grab some pictures of). But we did get to hang out in a hot tub and just chill and probably reach the hot tub's people capacity (which we deemed man soup since there were mostly men there (and some significant others who are females (4)).

All in all a pretty awesome trip. Left me sunburnt and extremely exhausted. Gotta keep up the training for my tri at the end of the month though!