Ladders and HoneyBadgers

Well, it’s Wednesday. We’ve made it through more than half of the training camp already. Kind of alarming when you think about how fast time is going by. But at the same time, my body and hands have been reminding me that it’s not a bad thing we’re already this far through the camp. I have started to help sustain my energy levels by the usage of multiple Starbucks Frappuccino’s every day (the bottled kind you can buy from WalMart, I’m not that rich). Fortunately, they are not ‘light’ on caffeine, and so provide a nice amount of wakefulness – until the crash.

                This morning it was nice and sunny when we set out to the lake. Yet again there was debate about taking this afternoon off instead of tomorrow, due to a warm day forecasted for tomorrow. We are not doing this, we are sticking to our workout plan. The 12x250m ladder was pretty well run this morning, given a spread of abilities from novice all the way up to ‘been rowing since the dawn of time’.

                We have received a number of comments via facebook about our Harlem Shake video, or as it was also put ‘the worst Harlem Shake video ever’. What I can say is this: by the standards of my youtube account views, 200 views in less than one day is pretty much viral. So thank you for watching.

                Continuing with our usual tradition, I felt like I was driving behind Sebastian Vettel while following Matt from the boathouse to lunch at the Brenau University cafeteria. While there, as per usual, we all stuffed ourselves an awful lot, Matt specifically likes to enjoy an ice cream cone to cap off a filling meal (they do have waffles there but he manages to resist that during lunch and dinner). The cafeteria staff don’t seem to mind the way most of our team virtually runs into the dining hall to eat.

                The afternoon rolls around and I find myself sitting down here in the lobby while the others do things like nap, homework, nap more, watch tv, film random videos, do whatever the lightweight women are always doing while definitely not studying, napping or watching tv. I have heard rumours of pillow fights and crock-pot cooked food in their room.

                For the trip back to the lake for second practice, my car was again invaded by Alex and Lenore. The result – DMX and Ke$ha blasting through the stereo (not at the same time – boy that would be a weird mash up). This also meant multiple selfies and dance parties, etc were taking place while I was driving down to the course.  

                It had unfortunately clouded over and gotten a little windy by the time we reached the lake. Fortunately not windy enough to force us off the water.  After a quick row it was off to dinner. Dinner was the usual entertaining smorgasbord. This evening, those of us who had the pleasure of sitting with Matt got to enjoy a discussion on HoneyBadgers, and other things of that nature. 

Random Circuits and Cherry Coke

This morning we awoke to a beautiful sky, though a brisk temperature right around the freezing point. After a quick breakfast, which was slightly prolonged and agonizing due to the toasters which pretty much require the piece of bread to constantly be held down if you want anything other than ‘slightly warm bred’.  We were antagonised by the presence of large jars of peanut butter placed on each table which we were not allowed to touch due to a small peanut allergy in our group. Jill especially seemed to find this very irksome due to a little bit of a fetish (dare I call it that) for PB. Oh well, we will all survive.

We arrived at the lake all very excited to get the boats rigged up and get on the water. Unfortunately this wasn’t so doable because of the not so little white caps on the water due to the wind. This meant we got to go do a circuit training/erg/core/whateverMattfeltlikeatthetime circuit. It was a pretty good training session, but we still weren’t on the water. That means that thus far this trip we have driven through snow in the dark, slept, and done land training because the water was un-rowable. Remind me again why we left Ontario, it seems to me that all of these things could be accomplished staying at home.

Oh, right, now I remember why we’re here – the all you can eat dining hall at Brenau University. Good food and for an awesome price. This is a place which still has Cherry Coke, which I think says pretty much all that needs saying. However, I think I can talk about this a bit more. Matt was highly disappointed by the ice cream machine being out by the time he got there (I seem to remember something from last year to the effect of ‘I think later I’m going to hook my mouth up to that ice cream machine’).

Later this afternoon we headed back down to the lake to go for a second row, well really a first row, but I like calling it a second row more than an afternoon row after a random erg, circuit, random workout thing. Anyway, the wind had come down a bit, though it was still rather rough at the dock, which made pushing off rather difficult. There’s also a contribution from the odd orientation of the dock relative to the shore/wind/ramp/universe.  Suffice to say, we got out for a nice row which I think everyone enjoyed, or lied about enjoying, or put themself in the lead for this year’s dolphin award. After we got off the water there was a bit of a dash to get to dinner because we were hungry and tired and the food place is awesome.

I forgot to mention a highlight from yesterday’s travel. When we stopped to get gas in the town of Lima, Ohio, Jill found white Resse’s cups. As one might expect, they are regular Resse’s cups, but with white chocolate instead of milk. They were a cool novelty, but I can’t really say they were better than the regular cups.

Dolphin Award Tally:

Maria: 1

Everyone Else: 0