Rowing

Woke up at 630 AM...(that's a first in college) to go rowing today. The sun wasn't even up yet and it was fairly chilly outside. After washing up, I went for a quick jog to the boat house (~15 min walk). The members of my boat were all upperclassmen today, including my college "dad." After erging with the proper technique for about 1500m, we took the boat out of the boathouse.

My position on the boat is called stroke (I'm situated at the very front of the boat and set the pace). In total there are 8 seats and room for a cox. Today, we practiced drills of 4 people rowing at a time, while the other 4 stabilized the boat with their oars. Although it was a bit shaky at the beginning, we managed to set a good rhythm. Towards the second half of the outing, we managed to have 6 people rowing at once, while 2 stabilized the boat. We were moving fairly fast, when we were all in rhythm! We even managed to pass by some other novice boats which started before us. After an hour and a half, we put the boat back and had a quick coaching talk.

Afterwards, I ran back to Emma (the Cambridge River is very pretty in the morning!) and grabbed a quick breakfast at about 9am. Luckily, I have no classes or supervisions on Tuesday, so I'll probably do some reading later on. Tonight is Matriculation dinner, which is a very fancy three course dinner with various wines and drinks. It should be fairly exciting as it completes our official enrollment into the University of Cambridge!