For the third year in a row I spent my spring break in Gainesville, GA training for crew. The whole team takes a bus down and spends the week doing two-a-day practices on water to get ready for spring racing season. The boathouse that we row out of all week is the Lake Lanier Rowing Club, which was the host site of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics rowing, canoe, and kayak events. There is a 2k course that we can use for practices as well as many thousands of meters of rowable water. Our daily schedule went something like this: 6am - wake up, breakfast at the hotel 6:45am - depart for the boathouse 7:30-10am - morning row 10am-1pm - lunch break, rest 1:30-3:30pm - afternoon row 3:30-5:15pm - bus back to hotel, showers 5:3--6:30 - dinner at Brenau University's dining hall 7pm - evening activity The days were long but lots of fun, and my favorite part of this trip was being able to eat lots of food at lunch and dinner. Rowing twice a day made my stomach a bottomless pit, which I took full advantage of. Next to the hotel we stayed at was a Cookout, which is a southern fast food chain that has awesome milkshakes. The whole team made trips to cookout many times. Throughout the week we had a number of evening activities that kept the trip laid back. These included a trip to wal mart, mini golf, a basketball tournament, and team bonding, as well as optional trips to the movie theater and bowling. The week is a great opportunity for the whole program to get to know each other better and bond, and in that sense it was definitely a success. For the actual rowing part of spring break we made great lengths as a program. We spent a huge amount of time on form and rowing well together in order to become more efficient on water. While our indoor winter training was spent building speed up by working on the ergs, spring break is when we get faster on water simply by taking better strokes and working together efficiently. We also did many sprint pieces and workouts to prep for the 2k racing season. Two-a-day practices were exhausting for our bodies but especially for our hands, which have not touched oars in a few months. I took extra special care to wash my hands after every row to prevent infection, as well as to stretch to prevent injury. My hurt hands on just the second day are pictured below. Despite hurting hands and muscles and unfortunately low temperatures, spring break was great. I love being in a boat and hanging out with my friends all week especially without classes to worry about. Now back on campus, we can't row on water yet because it is still too cold, but hopefully in the next week or so we will be off the ergs and back on the lake. Our first race is on March 31st in Philly, and I am very excited to take on another season of 2ks.
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