A weekend reunion part 1
This weekend - March 16th - will be the first race of the 2013 season. And honestly, as much as I've been hoping that this week would get here sooner, we could use a little more time.
The last two weeks we've been hit pretty hard with illness. We managed to avoid last year's debacle where it seemed like half the team was down, and the other half was just recovering, but we've still be hit pretty hard. It doesn't help that midterms fell the last two weeks so all the athletes are staying up later than they need to, studying, but it's something that every team must go through, and we're working through ours.
The good news is that we've been getting bigger in the mornings so it appears we've come through without too many missed days. Still, I am glad that this first regatta isn't one of our bigger ones. With the river levels flirting with dangerously low levels, and the illness, we'd be in a bad spot if this were WIRAs.
On a more interesting note, this will be somewhat of a reunion for me. I'm looking forward to seeing Aaron Benson, the head coach at UPS, and I'm glad he and his family are back on the west coast, but I'm also looking forward to seeing a former athlete of mine who is helping coach. This is the second athlete from UPS who has jumped into coaching, and I'm looking forward to seeing her for the first time since May 2008. I've never found it easy to coach against people you're friends with, or whom you coached, but that seems to be how this sport operates - close knit family. I'll set aside the personal feelings, but it never really feels as though you're coaching against a rival when you've shared water time with the person across the way.
The last two weeks we've been hit pretty hard with illness. We managed to avoid last year's debacle where it seemed like half the team was down, and the other half was just recovering, but we've still be hit pretty hard. It doesn't help that midterms fell the last two weeks so all the athletes are staying up later than they need to, studying, but it's something that every team must go through, and we're working through ours.
The good news is that we've been getting bigger in the mornings so it appears we've come through without too many missed days. Still, I am glad that this first regatta isn't one of our bigger ones. With the river levels flirting with dangerously low levels, and the illness, we'd be in a bad spot if this were WIRAs.
On a more interesting note, this will be somewhat of a reunion for me. I'm looking forward to seeing Aaron Benson, the head coach at UPS, and I'm glad he and his family are back on the west coast, but I'm also looking forward to seeing a former athlete of mine who is helping coach. This is the second athlete from UPS who has jumped into coaching, and I'm looking forward to seeing her for the first time since May 2008. I've never found it easy to coach against people you're friends with, or whom you coached, but that seems to be how this sport operates - close knit family. I'll set aside the personal feelings, but it never really feels as though you're coaching against a rival when you've shared water time with the person across the way.
Comments
-Charles Barkley, about playing against Michael Jordan, 1993