First Post

Welcome to my blog, Lake Loops. This blog is meant to help me document (and remember) my thoughts about rowing, running, swimming, training, racing, weight, family, and life. My apologies if I write anything that offends you or that you disagree with, but this blog is meant to be from my point of view. If you don't like it, then write your own blog. Sometimes in my blog, I will name the person whom I am writing about, usually because with a little Internet digging and a little context, it will be pretty obvious who I am talking about.

Lake Loops. I row on Lake Merritt in Oakland. If you run around the lake, you will run about 3.1 miles, which makes the lake a perfect 5k running race course. In fact, every month, on a Sunday, Lake Merritt Jogger and Striders will host a 5k and 10k (maybe sometimes even 15k?!) race around the lake. The lake is not ideal for rowing. A rower on the lake has to make multiple turns, most of them turns to port (starboard power up!), and the lake gets shortened every year from about October (?) to April (?) by the city of Oakland in order to set up a bird refuge at the end of the lake. Despite these drawbacks, the lake does offer a straight 1,000m course when the boom is taken down and does offer relatively traffic-free rowing. No other club rows on the lake. Every practice, we are basically doing loops around the lake. In the fall with the long distance training (think cross-country running), there's no need to ask what the workout is--we're doing lake loops. In the spring and summer with the shorter, interval training (think track and field), we might be lucky and get away with some straight pieces, but we'll probably do one lake loop at least for warm-up. Lake loops today and lake loops tomorrow. Sitting ready, attention, ROW.