Spring Break Rowing

Oh my gosh, what better thing to do on a free night than to post on the blog about my spring break?!? I've been dying to do it, cause there is so much to tell! Here goes:

So unfortunately I did not go with my lovely familia on the Cruise. Instead I got to go on a week long training trip with the Rowing Team to Gainesville GA!!!..... To tell the truth I had no

clue how it was going to go. I wasn't really worried about the guys or anything, cause they're all

super chill, but about the workouts or how much work we would need to do? I had NO idea what I was getting myself into(:

We got there on Friday night, arriving at our "posh" hotel... it was more like an old abandoned Super 8 MO-tel! Haha I was expecting like a Mariott or Fairfield Inn type place, but this place was a pit! Of course at first I didn't care cause I couldn't wait to row! I had been confined to an indoor erg room for like 4 months, and rowing outside just seemed so awesome to me! Of course, the best was yet to come; when I brought my stuff upstairs to my room. DOM DOM DOM!

Now you would think that being large, tall athletes who would need a lot of sleep, we would probably be paired up in a room, with big long beds to accommodate our super human length legs so we could sleep peacefully and have some space. Instead, I show up to the room to find that there are in fact 4 people in our room.

That is, a room that is probably 16' by 16', has a weak faucet and a single toilet that plugs up, a shower that would be too short for anyone over 5'10", and two questionable queen size beds that creak when you put weight on them.

Crazy I know(: Unfortunately I did not take pictures of the place cause it was, or would have been in Daddy's words "A PIGSTY", but trust me, it was crazy. Add into that that by the end of the break, all four of us had to hang up our sweaty, wet, disgusting spandex clothes that we had had to wear and rewear for a week all over the room, and you get the picture. Just four big, sweaty bodies amidst a week's worth of sweaty clothes, all contained in a room the size of a normal one person bedroom. It was a party!

Not to mention at all the crazy town that Gainesville was. I'm pretty used to ethnic diversity in Ann Arbor; we get a good mix of both intellectuals, hippies, whackos, foreigners and mixed races, but Gainesville was more like State College, except flipped. Instead of all white people, it was like 50% Mexican, 30% African American and like the last 20% was everybody else(: Literally the last night I was with my friend hanging out at the McDonalds, and we discovered that that McDonalds was the cool place to hang out for all the Mexican teens in the area! Every table was full and it was so noisy!

So on the average day, we would wake up in the morning pretty early; like 6:30 with the bus leaving at 7. I get dressed in long thermal tights and long-sleeved shirt, with a hat and everything. Of course, like I said, near the end of the week, we would have to rewear stuff that was sweaty. Yuck! Breakfast after was where I got another lovely surprise about our fancy hotel.

Again, thinking that we are big dudes, who expend on average 1000 calories for an hour of intense rowing (we were about to do three hours of rowing), you would think the hotel would provide some decent breakfast for us.

I show up in the "breakfast room" to find a couple of unripe apples, some tiny bagels with cream cheese or peanut butter, some sugary danish things I didn't dare try and Sunny D... haha besides the peanut butter (good protein) we've got processed chamicals and sugar (danishes), liquid sugar mixed with liquid sugar (Sunny D), green on the inside fruit and carbs that we'll burn off in like an hour. Great.

Not to say that I didn't appreciate that the hotel was making an effort. Turns out they actually never provide breakfast for their patrons (this totally confused me, whos used to going to Fairfield Inns and Marriotts), so good thing Mommy made sure I brought tons of snacks with me. Happy Protein Bar for breakfast every day for a week to me!

The first practice was jut as interesting. We went to Gainesville GA cause it's right next to Lake Lanier, which is where both the rowing races for the 1996 Olympics were held as well as the American Collegiate Rowing Association Championships occur every year (Michigan's won this Championships for the past four years!) It's really a beautiful location; just miles and miles of rivers and small lakes, all connected without bridges overhead and no traffic around. If it hadn't been for the few summer houses people had built around the edges of the rivers, we would have been completely alone. It was amazingly picturesque right by the river, with all the trees on the banks and the sunny weather. It was perfect!

Anyways, the first practice. Actually I guess I could describe all the practices one way: painful yet productive. The first couple were fine I guess, but as the week went on, with two practices a day culminating in 16 3 hour practices overall, it was a lot of rowing. I think Coach said we got in around 300,000-400,000 meters in over the whole break. It was A LOT! The practices

really helped me though, cause although ergs do a fine job of mimicking rowing without actually being on the water, nothing is as good as the real thing.

It helped too cause the amount of practices really allowed each of us on the team to bond more and gel together more as a team. One issue with rowing is that it's a completely team sport. You could have a breakout star receiver or quarterback in football, or a crazy three point shooter in basketball, but besides pulling harder, rowing is all about becoming one big unit. If one person messes up, it messes up everybody. The nice thing about all these practices is Coach really seated us all in one of three boats based on how well we did, and so unless you had a really good or bad practice one day, you were in the same boat with the same guys

basically every practice.

Of course with all these practices, as with all sports there were some occupational hazards that took some getting used to, principally getting my hands shredded. This has always been an issue for beginning rowers, because most coaches in rowing don't let their teams either use gloves or tape their hands cause you eventually have to get calluses. Literally Coach tells us that unless an opened blister on our hand is bleeding, we shouldn't cover it up or protect it. The first couple days, this was absolutely horrible for me. By the end of the first practice I already had four blisters, principally on my outside hand (right) on my fingers. I opened up the blisters and drained them, but this didn't help. With the amount of practices, they just got ripped open even more, even while the number of blisters multiplied on both my right and left hand. Not to sound like a sissy, but sometimes I had trouble sleeping at night cause my hands would still be throbbing at the end of the day.

I learned to deal with it though, and so did everyone else. Halfway through the week I started putting ice on them at the end of the day, which felt AWESOME! No to mention

I kind of indulged myself every night by walking about 50 yards to the McDonalds down the block and getting a milkshake(: I have to say that the first time I got a shake was a great experience cause my hands were hurting so much, and as soon as the lady handed it to me, I just froze for a second cause it felt so good on my hands! I'm proud to say though that now they have healed up very well, and I'm getting big fat calluses where there used to be raw, bare skin. Nor do my hands hurt anymore! Woot!

On a side note, on Thursday we got our one and only afternoon off! I was so excited for that day, cause we were allowed to go into Atlanta! I honestly hoped we would see the streets where they filmed the Walking Dead, but unfortunately we didn't get to do that. We did do some pretty cool stuff.

We went to the Coke museum first, which unfortunately turned out to be a tourist trap. The best thing about it was that you got free samples of every Coke product from around the world at the end. To say it shortly, some countries have some nasty pop! Then my friends and I (notice the

grammar Mommy(: ) linked up with some other guys to look for this "underground mall". Turns out it was in the primarily black part of town, cause literally we we

re the only white guys for about 3 blocks! Pretty scary, but we had the biggest rower on the team, Frank, with us so we figured nobody would mess with us. We also went to the CNN center, where they do all the

CNN Broadcas

ting and stuff. We even saw Anderson Cooper!.........jk, but we saw where he reports(:

Haha but by the end of the week, I was just about ready to drop and melt on the floor. But Gainesville still had one surprise for me.....

An allergic reaction. And not just any allergic reaction. The last two nights, I would wake up in the middle of the night with hives all over my body that itched like crazy. Then if that wasn't enough, the MORNING THAT WE WERE LEAVING I wake up to find my top lip swelled to double it's size. That'd be bad enough for a normal person, but for me (a brass player) who has a concert in two days, and who doesn't have any access to any medication??? AHHHHHH!!!! Luckily most gas stations carry some good old Benadryl, and I've got Dr. Papa lookin on speed dial!

Funny note: on the last day of practice, which was super hard, I came back to find out that the Penn State Crew was there starting their spring break training camp! WHat are the chances??? Anyways, I met up with one of my old friends from High School, Kristina Drago, right as we were leaving; that was pretty sweet!

I'm happy to say though that despite all the craziness, I came out of that alive and a lot stronger! We've been rowing outside for two weeks and my hands continue to heal and grow bigger calluses, AND my endurance is forever now! Woot! I know it wasn't nearly as fun as going on a cruise, but thanks Mommy and Daddy for letting me go! Should be fun heading into spring racing!