london town

Its been a while since my last post. I would say that a lot has happened since then, but that would be a lie.  well sorta.  We had a weekend training camp in Nottingham, with a full-blown pairs matrix on saturday, and then seatracing in 4+'s on sunday.  Pretty brutal.  My results were pretty mediocre in the pairs matrix, and I didnt get directly raced in the 4+s.  After four pieces on Sunday, what had been a nagging strain in my bum turned into a full, wrenching, spasming, back blow-out.  Ive now been out for two weeks, hanging out on the spinbike for 180 minutes a day, watching every Cambridge-Oxford boatrace for the last 20 years.  Needless to say, I am pretty tired of both spinbikes and watching rowing.  

Fortunately my back is feeling pretty much better, and I am going to try rowing tomorrow.  Good timing on my back's part, because trial 8+'s the annual inter-squad scrimmage on the Thames in London.  Because I have been out, I will probably be rowing 2 seat of one of the 8's.  I am pumped.  We watched Oxford do their trial 8's on thursday, and my former U23 coxswain Adam won, which was fun.

I went with my teammates to the Cambridge-Oxford rugby match yesterday, which was pretty fun.  Rugby is a really fun game to watch, although I must confess I was a bit disappointed with the fanbase.  Lets just say that Oxbridge alumni werent really the brawling type.  At one point, a Cambridge alumni 'fan' behind us disdainfully said to us: "nooo!  what are you doing!? we dont boo in this country, dont you know that?".  And I thought Stanford alumni were snooty.