And Life Goes On

If you have been counting, which there is no reason you would be, it has been 216 days since we moved away from Oakland and since I started a new job, 83 days since my last post, 27 days since my last row on the water, and 7 days since the Princess turned two years old.  

The Princess sits next to me as I type and we both eat grapes;
please note the door behind her and the stickers--lovely

The longer I spend away from the water, the more I worry that I am losing the feel for the water, the smoothness up the recovery, the softness at the catch, the consistency through the drive among other things, such as fitness and strength.  I worry that for every three steps forward in rowing that I had made, I am now taking two steps back.

Instead of worrying if I am training correctly or what is my race plan for the next 2k, I now worry that I am not going to have enough     (time / energy / motivation)      to workout.  Somewhere, rowing has become a struggle in a mix between the new job (i.e. new skills, more hours, travel, different work style, and unpredictability), a less convenient location to the boathouse, an older and more independent-but-really-more-dependent-in-some-ways Princess, and a husband who gets to be single parent when I travel.

The erg at home has proved to be helpful for a short workout or two.  Not so long ago, i.e. 216 days ago, I begrudged doing short interval workouts, such as 6x500m or 4x1000m, because first, I hate intervals and if you did these intervals right, it is a world of pain.  And second, I felt like I did not get the best mileage for the amount of time spent.  I generally preferred 45 or 60 minute steady state pieces.  Now, I am simply grateful if I have the time, energy, and motivation to erg for a simple 20 minutes--usually still steady state.  Erg splits are becoming less and less relevant beyond reminding me of how far I have "fallen."

Here is what my recent ergs look like.  It is 6:30 in the evening and I am just getting home from work.  Sometimes, the Princess and the husband will already be home and sometimes, it is just the Princess and me.  If the husband and the Princess are home, we try to eat dinner together like a normal family except for the food-throwing by the Princess.  Sometime after dinner, I might erg.  While I erg, the husband tries to entertain the Princess and knows to stay far away from "Mama" while she ergs.

If it is just the Princess and me, well, things might not go as smoothly.  I might turn on the TV to occupy the Princess with Elmo or Caillou (thank god for streaming Netflix even if the selection otherwise is not spectacular).  Unfortunately, with the erg and the TV in the same room, you cannot really hear the TV over someone erging.  The Princess usually loses interest fairly quickly.  She did once take the TV remote and turn up the volume until she could hear her show.  I had to stop and turn the volume back down before our neighbors could complain.  And I had thought she only knew how to use the remote to turn on and off the TV.

The erg in the corner of the family / living room;
barely enough room to clear the elbows at the finish

Usually though, the Princess might do puzzles or wander around, looking bored and waiting for me to stop erging. She generally knows not to bother "Mama" while she ergs, although there have been a number of times when the Princess will come up to the erg speaking in some gibberish (not English or Chinese).

In the book Assault on Lake Casitas, Brad Lewis describes some of his mental preparation for the 1984 Olympics.  He and his doubles partner, Paul Enquist, did "shadow rowing" on an erg, practicing their mental focus by executing different scenarios--pretending that they were leading or that they were behind the pack, but making sure they stayed focused.  They even had other people try to distract them in different ways, from shouting obscenities, reading provocative passages to pouring water on them.  No matter the distraction, they stayed focused and it paid off.

Well, my erging at home has been anything but what Lewis and Enquist practiced.  I was really surprised at how distracting the Princess can be just by running around, eating, whining, or making a mess.  Sometimes, it is really hard to just hold a stroke rate or a split, plus or minus two seconds (which is not really consistent or "holding a split"), never mind technique.

One time, I had my eyes closed for a few strokes when the Princess came up and tapped my leg to ask help with her Mr. Potatohead.  I nearly jumped out of my skin.  I managed to not send the handle flying and then, told her to wait until I was done.  She eventually lost interest and found something better to do.

This is probably not an example of good parenting nor is it an example of good erging .  For now though, it will have to do.

I have not yet found steady footing in this new situation and I know that very soon, I am going to have to face the facts and determine what are my goals for right now and what can wait.  I am afraid those 27 days off the water might become 270 days.  In the meanwhile, life goes on...

A Family Affair

Our Thanksgiving week was spent in a chaotic whirlwind of events, largely dominated by my close friend’s wedding. 

I was really looking forward to this momentous, joyous occasion.  My friend and I lived in the same dorm freshman year, joined the same sorority, and throughout the years, have grown closer and closer.  She has seen me in my best and worst moments, including those tough times with rowing.

Group of friends, including the new bride; old photo from college

My friend is Indian, and she most certainly had a traditional, week-long Indian wedding.  A wedding is supposed to be an once-in-a-lifetime event.  So, what is one week of ceremony, celebration compared to the rest of your life together?

I have been to an Indian wedding before and had some idea of all the events and ceremonies, but every wedding is different, depending on the couple, family, customs, and religion.  Ready for a peek into this Indian wedding?

Day 1.  Hindu ceremony on bride’s side to mark the beginning of the wedding (no idea what the ceremony is called).  Women only. 

The ceremony was held at the bride’s house.  The bride sat in the front of the room, facing a wall lined with religious items and offerings.  A Hindu priest led the ceremony.  He chanted various prayers and spoke to the bride in a mixture of Hindi and Gujati.  My friend is from a northwestern province of India called Gujat. 

Halfway through the ceremony, the priest offered the bride a few important words on marriage.  Important enough that he repeated them in English.  Marriage requires two things—sacrifice and understanding.  Sacrifice to put the other person ahead of yourself.  Understanding that your marriage and the other person are more important than you being right all the time. 

Although the rest of the lecture on marriage was in Gujati, before I knew it, all the other women especially the mother, aunties, grandmothers were all reaching for the Kleenex box.  I could feel my eyes watering because I have been married for only the smallest amount of time and I already know that I lack a little in the sacrifice and understanding department.

The ceremony concluded with each of the women taking two sticks, one dipped in a yellow paste and one dipped in oil, and touching the bride’s feet, knees, shoulders, and head four times. 

Day 2.  Mehendi ceremony on bride’s side. 

Mehendi is a fun, more casual event where the bride and other women have their heena done.  In this case, the bride’s heena on her hands and feet took almost six hours because of the complex patterns and delicate lines. 

An example of heena

When applied, heena appears like a black puff paint that has to dry and will eventually flake off, revealing a dark brown pattern or “tattoo.”  The “tattoo” is not permanent, but takes about 1-2 weeks to wash off.  The longer the black puff paint stays on, the darker and supposedly more beautiful the heena will be. 

The bride had to walk around carefully and had little use of her hands in fear of ruining the heena for a number of hours.  Yes, this means that she was got the ultimate princess treatment—sister, cousins at her beck and call.  Luckily, she did not drink very much water beforehand.

Indian weddings are true family affairs.  Not only do extended family near and far spend the whole week consumed with the wedding, but they are all involved somehow.  Here at Mehendi, many of the older women sat around a HUGE bucket of carnations, singing while snapping off the flowers and threading them to make a wreath to be worn at the final wedding ceremony.

Day 3.  “Rest.”

This day was Thanksgiving and thankfully, we got this day off.  The groom’s side, however, did have their Mehendi on this day.

Day 4.  Ceremony and Garba and Raas Dandiya.

The bride had a small, family ceremony on this day followed by larger, celebratory event with music, food, drinks, and dancing.  Garba and Raas Dandiya are specific forms of Indian dancing.  Garba involves hand movements and specific step sequences.  Raas, which I believe is from Gujat, involves dancing with two sticks and in a large even-numbered group.

Even the Princess made an appearance at Raas Garba

My short fling in college with Indian dancing was a mixture of the two forms, often called Raas Garba.  Luckily, all that learning then was not completely wasted.

Even the dancing is a family affair.  Everyone partakes—men, women, siblings, parents, cousins, aunties, uncles, long lost relatives, grandparents, children.

Day 5.  Pre-wedding and wedding ceremony.

For the bride, this day started at 3AM with hair and make-up.  Imagine that.  There was hair and make-up done every day and all the women looked beautiful in their colorful, sparkling outfits. 

The first ceremony on this day began in the morning with the bride’s side women giving the bride various gifts.  The Hindu priest led the ceremony again, and there was some form of a sing-off between the women.

After lunch, the next ceremony was at the groom’s temple since the groom was Sikh, a separate religion from Hinduism and originating in the Punjab region. 

The last, final, and largest ceremony was the official Hindu wedding.  The groom arrived atop a horse, heavily decorated with jewels and colorful fabric.  The groom’s family and friends led the horse around in the parking lot while dancing and celebrating.  Eventually, the music and dancing faded and the groom dismounted and entered the building.  Before he could approach the ceremony stage, the bride’s side women provided him a variety of religious or traditional offerings.  This ended with a fun tradition of the bride’s mother trying to pinch the groom’s nose. 

The actual ceremony began with the groom and his family sitting on one side and the bride’s family sitting on the other.  The bride was escorted up the aisle by two of her uncles.  She was seated across from the groom with a cloth separating them and a red thread connecting them.  The Hindu priest conducted several prayers or traditions before the cloth was dropped and the couple could see each other.  Then, the couple placed the carnation flower wreaths, which were made at the Mehendi, on each other. 

The ceremony continued with the several customs involving the groom’s and the bride’s fathers, symbolizing the joining of the two families. 

The bride leading the groom around the fire

The last part of the ceremony involved the bride and groom walking around a fire multiple times, each circle had a specific meaning.  The priest reemphasized sacrifice and understanding here.

The ceremony ended and gave way to dinner (although I doubt if the newly wedded couple even managed to get a bite to eat) and gift-giving.

The very long day concluded with the bride bidding good-bye to her family and leaving with the groom, marking her new life with his family.  The couple drove off slowly with several of the bride’s male relatives pushing the car, symbolizing the bride’s departure from her family.

Day 6.  Reception.

Despite Day 6 falling on a Sunday, the reception (of 400 people) began in the evening and went well through the night.  Filled with short speeches, a special dance performance, lots of picture-taking, delicious, rich Indian food, and a whole night of dancing, the reception was a joyous celebration end to a long week. 

With the beautiful bride

 The wedding was quite a marathon of events, but it was a good time to reflect and to learn a few things too.

1. Family is important.
2. Marriage requires sacrifice and understanding.
3. Weddings are as much about joining two people as about joining two families.
4. Customs and traditions are often symbolic of greater things.
5. I think I have eaten enough Indian food to last me a whole year.
6. There is no age limit to dancing.
7. Celebrate the things in life that matter.

Vegas

Only one closet of several, lined with dresses
and shoes, none of which belong to me

In the Bay Area, this past weekend was the Head of the Port, held in Port of West Sacramento, hosted by River City Rowing Club.  Results are posted here.  It looked like a good day for Lake Merritt and the Cal Lightweight men who raced several heavyweight crews.

Instead of doing anything productive, such as racing at Head of the Port, the weekend was spent in Las Vegas for a good friend's bachelorette party.  Living it up in style at the newly-built Planet Hollywood Westgate Tower suites, there was plenty of sleeping space, alcohol, junk food, and bathroom space for ten girls.  If you have not figured out by now, I am an old lady who is married, has a kid, and just struggling to get by with a clean house.  Partying and Vegas are not really ever in the cards.  So this trip was a trip to see how this whole Vegas thing is really done.

Going out to town required a three to four hour getting-ready, make-up period and the experienced party girls made it look like a controlled massive production line--shower, make-up, dress, hair.  Apparently, for girls, it is key to look the "part" in order to cut lines at clubs and get free admission. To my chagrin, my one-and-a-half inch black heels that I normally wear to work was not going to cut it.  After much peer pressure, we went shoe shopping (luckily, the Miracle Mile shops were right downstairs).

I have this bad habit of acquiring new shoes when I travel.  My husband who owns maybe three pairs of shoes and who wears his shoes until the soles are falling apart, always has this skeptical look of when accosted by the latest shoe acquisition.

Latest and greatest (and absolutely non-function) pair of shoes

Unlike the last pair of shoes I brought home from Colorado, this pair from Aldo were wedges, which, as I was informed, are quite in-style now, and had a heel about three-and-a-half inches.  Trust me, there were many other more extreme choices, but this was the pair in which I would not break an ankle and which I might possibly where on another occasion.

The first night was spent at two clubs.  By the third hour, I felt like Cinderella who had managed to squeeze her foot into the glass slipper, but found out that the more she stands, the larger her feet become.  Every other woman was wearing shoes like mine or even more ridiculously taller and uncomfortable.  If there was a woman there who said that her feet did not hurt, she is LYING.  The absolutely stupid things women do for beauty.

The second night, I ditched the new shoes and wore my plain black, grandma shoes.  Much more comfortable.  Thank goodness.

Picture with the bachelorette and grandma shoes

Everlasting Youth

Copyright http://wooshwoosh.tumblr.com/

A new place, new people, new job. New should be fun and exciting, right? If fun and exciting are euphemisms for petrifying and "outside-of-comfort zone", then that sounds about right.

The secret to everlasting youth (as if I would know) is fear. Fear is usually associated with learning something new or pushing yourself to a new level, like high rates or racing. You do not have to go skydiving to experience fear. You can find fear in the most ordinary things.

As a teenager, I feared driving. Truly, deeply feared. But I feared driving not because of the possibility of dying. I feared driving because it made me feel dumb, real dumb.

My learn-to-drive experience began the same as the experience of many other kids at school. My parents had sent me to the local driving school where the class spent three whole Saturdays watching driving videos from the 1980s and listening to the old cranky instructor gripe about life. The driving school package also included three driving with an instructor sessions in those awful cars with “Student Driver” written all over them.

These sessions were the beginning of my fear of driving. My instructor was a nice middle-aged woman who, in the long-run, was totally unhelpful. I escaped each session unscathed, but with very little confidence in my abilities. I truly believe my instructor thought her job was not to teach, but to sit, lay back, and pray really hard that “Student Driver” signs on the car were a fair enough warning to all other cars on the road.

Three of these sessions went by in a fearful, anxiety-filled blur, and I was now on my own. Correction--I was now on my own ..with my parents, that is, with my dad. My mom is not the most confident driver and  probably secretly suffers from some of the same fears of driving that I do. So driving with my mom was out of the question.

I feared driving, but it wasn’t until I had to practice driving with my dad did I passionately hate driving. Not only was I not a confident or really, to be honest, competent driver, but now throw in the typical parent-teenager tensions and we had an explosion that was barely containable inside of a 1994 Toyota Camry. My dad who had every reason to be fearful for his life only exacerbated the tensions by sitting in the passenger seat, ready for impact with his hands tightly gripping the door handle and his legs locked and jammed against the front. He would bark orders to turn here, drive slower, brake earlier, and ask, in a nagging tone, “Did you check your mirrors first?”

Although our car didn’t have any “Student driver” signs, I felt as if it would have been better with those signs rather than have all the other drivers peering into our car to get a glimpse of this person who clearly didn’t know how to drive.

The best lesson with my dad came one weekday evening when he insisted that I practice driving. We drove around town for ten or fifteen minutes with no incident. Then, somewhere I missed a turn, and we were driving on a one lane backcountry road, which was actually Dougherty Road before they developed and expanded the road. By now, it was dark and this road had no lights.

The road had several curves and with each curve, my dad, still holding his impact-ready position, would tell me to slow down. Soon, I was driving at a snail’s pace, but that didn’t bother me. What I had angst about was the number of cars following us. I could see their headlights in the rearview mirror, and I saw the car behind us flash his headlights, signaling me to pull over. He did this several times. Each time my dad told me to ignore him and to keep driving forward. I really wanted to pull out, but everytime I saw a turnout, I was either too late or too timid to act.

This drive continued on for at least a lifetime and a half, with me feeling dumber and more embarrassed every minute. Finally, I saw light, a traffic light, at the end of the tunnel. Welcome back to civilization. As the road widened and split into two lanes, all the cars behind me now passed me, and I was too timid to see whether  the drivers were glaring at me. I breathed a sigh of relief and thought I was in the clear when I realized that a police car was following me with flashing lights! Oh no! I didn’t even have a driving license and I was getting pulled over already?! I felt horrified and deeply embarrassed.

As I rolled down my window, the police officer peered in and was surprised to find a daughter and father duo in the middle of a perfectly-innocent learn-to-drive lesson. The officer explained that someone had phoned in a drunk driver, and the officer had positioned himself at the end of Dougherty Road, ready to catch this drunk driver, that is, to catch me! After a few understanding glances at my dad, the officer wished me safe driving and let me go. At the time, I was simply miserable. Who gets pulled over for driving sober and driving so poorly as to be mistaken for a drunk driver?

That was the lowest point in my fear for driving. From that point, things started to look up. I failed the driving test twice, but passed on the third try. With enough time and practice over several years, experience and confidence began to replace my fear of driving. I no longer have to ask my passengers to help me keep an eye on the road and let me know if I am clear. In fact, now I actually enjoy driving. As for parallel parking,
however, that’s a whole other story.

Thank You, Lake Merritt



Goodbye and good luck card.  Thank you, LMRC!
(There was delicious banana chocolate and walnut cake associated with the card,
but I could not wait and already ate all the cake...)

It has been over a week since my last row at Lake Merritt, and it already feels like a distant past.

In Moonwalking with Einstein, a story of remembering and the US National Memory Championships, the author describes that the more dramatic, memorable events are, the better you remember them, and thus, the slower time passes for you.  This is the opposite of the idea that "Time flies when you are having fun."  A week packed with "fun"--moving, traveling, a new job, new faces-- feels much longer than just seven days.

When you are young, life is good.  You are fresh, always improving, learning new things.  You are invincible, on-top-of-the-world.  You can handle anything and everything that life throws at you.  You are hungry--you want everything right now.  You are the epitomy of "bright-eyed and bushy tailed."  Moving?  New job?  New house?  No problem.

In a span of a day and a half, my husband and I stripped our old place bare and officially "moved in" to our new apartment, filled with boxes, bags brimming with our worldly posessessions (some of which we did not even know we had).  The next four days were spent traveling, meeting new people, learning new things for the job.  Ever felt really stupid and slow?  Ever felt like you are holding on by a nail? 

Maybe my constant memory loss, which sometimes does apply to other things besides rowing, ages me.  Maybe when people say that a new job, a new city, is a big chance, they are not kidding.  Maybe everything is easier when you know what you are doing, when you have your anchors--friends, family, rowing, swimming, goal, purpose, life--in place.  Maybe my amazing ability and huge appetite do have a limit because I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

Just like the things I have learned from swimming with Marcia, here are a few things I have learned from rowing at Lake Merritt:

1. A really good coach is worth his or her weight in gold.  Coaching takes time, energy, patience.  Masters coaching is even more difficult.  Trying to get rowers of different ages, backgrounds, abilities, goals to row together, race, win is hardly an envious responsibility.
2. I am probably not the easiest athlete to coach.  I do not trust coaches easily.  Many people coach, but few actually know what they are doing.  I have my days when I disagree with the workout, line-up, people, life in general, etc. and have a few not-so-nice things lined up in my head.  As a friend pointed out to me, "Yes, you are a HUGE 'I'," I do not like to be pushed by a coach, coxswain, or anyone or anything else.  Who are you to tell me how far I can go and where my limit is?  Luckily, at Lake Merritt, I have met some really good coaches who do know what they are doing and who have helped me go farther than I had imagined.
3. Sometimes, I am just a kid with an attitude problem.  I may appear to be an adult with a real world job, a husband, and a Princess, but some days, I am really just your typical teenager, snappy and pissed off.  Forgive me.
4. I am a small boat person.  Big boats can be fun, but what I love is small boats.  There is not always strength in numbers, which is why small clubs can do BIG things. 




LMRC Women's Team...I have no idea what they are trying to do...


5. On a team, everyone brings something to the team whether it be a fast erg score, a good atttiude, humor, competition, maturity, rhythm, experience, etc. 
6. Rowing a single requires a lot of time, dedication, and patience with yourself.  Ever want to feel stupid and slow?  Remember rowing a single for the first time?
7. Erging can be less tortuous--sometimes.  Haunted by old erg tests, I hate the erg.  If the sport was erging, not rowing (like during the winter in the Midwest), I would just quit.  An former Cal Lwt Crew coach and friend would constantly tell us, "The erg is your friend.  You love the erg.  The erg will make you stronger."  Sometimes, the erg will be your only honest friend.  Think of the erg as a tool.  Work with it, not against it.  (I still hate it though.)
8. Be grateful for what you have and the people you meet along the way.  Thank you, LMRC.




Copyright http://wooshwoosh.tumblr.com/

Last Day of Swimming

Farewell treats and card from MEMO:.

Thursday:  Last day of summer swim session and last day of swimming with Marcia.  And of course, Marcia had to end it all with a big splash of a 4x100yd swim test!

This morning, I was the antithesis of "waking up like a tiger."  I must have hit the snooze button three times.  Once I was actually physically in the pool, wet and cold, there was no going back to bed.  Trust me, I have dragged myself out of bed before, driven to 5AM rowing practice, decided that I was not going to have any of this rowing shit, drove right back home, and went to bed.  Granted, I was also pregnant at the time, and I had the hardest time getting up in the morning, even for work.

The 4x100yd swim test was not as bad as I had feared.  I managed to stay aggressive for all four pieces.  On the last piece, I knew that I lost time on the flip turns, not holding a tight streamline off the wall, but it happens when you are tired and oxygen deprived.  4x100yd:

1. 1:10 min.
2. 1:09 min.
3. 1:09 min.
4. 1:09 min.

Consistent, but not able to go 1:08 min like I did the last time, two months ago.  I had feared the swim test because I knew I was not in as great of swimming shape as I was in May.  Almost two months of training for SW Regionals will make you faster rowing, but probably slower swimming.

Why should I be anxious for a swim test?  Same reasons why I get anxious for an erg test.  One, because I know how much it will hurt.  And two, fear of personal disappointment.  Cool if you can swim fast, but Marcia could careless if you swim a 1:50 or a 1:05 as long as you are doing your best and digging deep.  Marcia will care if you fly and die, e.g. 1:30, 1:35, 1:40, 1:45.  She will say, "(insert name here), what's happening?!  You are getting slower!!"

I am sad to leave Marcia and the awesome swimmers and lane mates from MEMO:.  Here are a few things I have learned from swimming with Marcia:

1. A really good coach is with his or her weight in gold.  Most masters swim teams have a coach, but you are mostly swimming on your own.  You swim whatever workout is written on the board.  Trust me, 200yd warm-up, 200yd kick, 200yd pull, 5x500yd, etc. gets old real fast without Marcia yelling at you.
2. I should never race backstroke.  Or, if I do, race "unaffiliated" so I will not embarrass anyone else besides myself.
3. Fast swimmers come in all shapes and sizes.  But if you want to be national team/Olympic fast, you might need to start looking like Michael Phelps.  
4. It is always easier to improve when you are relatively new to a sport.  Not so easy when you begin to plateau or when you have already been at it for many years.  
5. It is always more fun when you are fast or are getting faster.  
6. You always swim better, faster, farther when there is competition around.
7. A week off, a month off.  You might be still be fit, in-shape, but you will have to re-build that edge again.  Athletes worry about peaking at the right time.  You cannot be at your peak all the time--that's called a plateau.
8. Details do matter.  Keep your eyes on the bottom of the pool, head tucked in.  Tight streamline and four dolphin kicks off the wall.  You need less air than you think.  
9. When tired, hold onto that technique and KICK!
10. Masters swimming races are divided into age groups of five years, e.g. 30-34, 35-39.  Triathlons typically have similar age groups.  Running has age groups of ten years.  Cycling tends to only have three age groups, but has different ability categories.  On the other hand, rowing has these AA-G(?) age handicaps.

Thank you, Marcia for so many things!  And, go Lane 3!!

The Princess attacking the goodies...

Wrong Side of the Bed

Saturday:  Last Saturday marked the last hard Saturday workout before Southwest Regionals.  That morning, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

The night before, I went to bed late.  Somehow through the night, I got sick and had a low-grade fever and mild chills.  But the true culprit of my restless night, however, was the Princess.  The Princess used to sleep in her brand new, expensive, fancy crib that is so large that it does not fit in the doorway.  Now, she refuses to sleep in anything except our bed.

The world's worst bedfellow

Sure, this two foot tall, 25 pound creature looks really cute and cuddly, but the Princess is the world's worst bedfellow.  In her sleep, she travels all across the bed, kicks blankets, pillows, and people, even snores, and often sleeps like a king with her arms spread out wide.  In the morning, if she wakes up before you, you can be sure that you will not be sleeping in for very long.  She sees you sleeping peacefully and will come up and start hitting you in your face until you wake up.  In fact, the Princess is so bad that my husband has permanently migrated to the couch.  So every night now, the Princess and I battle it out for every last inch of the bed.

Needless to say, after six hours of being sick and being constantly kicked in the ribs, I was quite cranky Saturday morning.  Being an "I", I was not looking forward to talking to anyone.  And I was most definitely not looking forward to a workout of 3x1000m race pieces.

At practice, we had 1 eight, 1 quad, and 1 mixed double (me) out on the water.  We had a long warm-up.  In the double, the boat felt good, but a little heavy and not as smooth.  As bow seat in a double, a lot of the smoothness of the boat comes from matching up well with your stroke seat at the catch, but especially in and out of the bow.

The race pieces were hard, but the double actually came together pretty well in the pieces.

After practice, I came home with another fever, took NyQuil, and slept, leaving my husband to fend for himself and the Princess.  There really is no wrong side of the bed.  No matter how bad the night is or how little sleep you manage to get, every day can be a good day and every practice can be a good practice.

"The only difference between a good day and a bad day is your attitude." --Dennis S. Brown

Welcome to Oakland

Monday morning:  Due to the Memorial Day holiday, practice started later.  We had 1 quad, 2 women’s singles (including me), 2 men’s singles, and 1 pair out on the water.  It was great to see two brave souls trying out the pair, one of my favorite boats! 

Pair at Canadian Henley 2007;
copyright Digital Sport Photography

For non-rowers, a pair is a two person boat in which each rower only gets one oar.  As you can imagine, this is a challenging boat to set, and the two rowers must match in every regard.  This is one of my favorite boats because if you find a good pair partner, you can make this boat fly!

The workout this morning was:

1. 1 full lake loop, 24spm, 75% pressure (about 20 minutes)
2. 1 full lake loop, 24spm, 75% pressure
3. Half of a lake loop, 24spm, 90% pressure (about 11 minutes)

After practice, we discovered that two of our cars, parked in the parking lot, had been broken into.  In one car, many valuables were taken.  In the other car, only a pair of prescription sunglasses was taken.  Most auto insurance policies, especially if the policy is comprehensive, will cover the damages from car break-ins—here, it was the shattered windows.  Other valuables, such as iPods, laptops, CDs, are usually not covered by auto insurance, but may be covered by your homeowner insurance policy, if you have one. 

Sometimes we get caught up in our training, wondering how fast we are going, how are we going to make it through practice, when is the next erg/swim test that we forget about life and shitty things like car break-ins.  In my hurry to get to practice, I have been guilty of leaving my gym bag in the backseat or my out-dated pay-as-you-go “burner” phone in the cup holder.  Sometimes we forget where we are.  Welcome to Oakland.

Tornado Tuesday

Tuesday morning:  With no swim this week due to spring break, I got to sleep-in this morning.  Trust me, after yesterday's near disaster row in the single, I was looking forward to any extra hours of sleep that I could muster.  I slept until 6:30 when I woke up not to workout, but to CLEAN the house.  Trust me on this one too.  It looks like a tornado ran through our one bedroom condo.  I am not going to embarrass myself by showing you pictures, but you can imagine toys all over the ground, dirty bowls sitting on the coffee table, and unfolded laundry sitting on the rocking chair.

Before I got married and before I had the Princess, I used to have standards.  Nothing fancy, just basic standards, such as folded laundry, vacuumed floors, clean dishes, neatly lined books.  My hamper could be piled with clothes, ready to be worn one more time before washing and my desk could be disorganized with open textbooks, homework papers, post-it notes, but I managed to meet my basic standards. 

After I got married and had the Princess, my standards are probably the lowest possible standards before "tornado-wreck" status.  I mentioned before a quote from Oprah Winfrey, "You can have it all, just not all at once."  I totally, completely, wholeheartedly agree with her, but I still want it all and I want it NOW.  In my attempts to have it all, all at once, somethings have to give.  Sleep is the first to go.  Not far behind are my standards--standards for clean dishes, vacuumed floors, dusted bookshelves, clean laundry, general house cleanliness.

I am afraid next to go are standards for the Princess.  When the Princess was first born, we were the typical new parents who fussed over the tiniest things, making sure that everything was dusted, washed, disinfected, cleaned twice.  We changed her diaper whenever it had the slightest hint of pee, we bathed her everyday, and we made sure she always wore a bib when eating.  Since then, we have come a long way.  The Princess is at an age where she is mobile, smart, and strong enough to demand to try things on her own, which usually means creating a big mess for someone to clean up. 

Eating applesauce with a spoon and feeding her shirt

Sometimes feeding herself too 
(Yes, that is chocolate pudding on her forehead...)

 I spent this morning before work, cleaning up after the Princess from her applesauce party the night before.