Life as a Logger

At a duel with Western Washington last spring with my teammates Emily and Teddi (I'm in the middle).

As a rower at Puget Sound, I have been spending the majority of my spring break practicing and hanging out with the team here in Tacoma. It’s really been great. We’ve gotten in a lot of good mornings with the best weather and water for spring break in my 3 years here. The sun is really good for morale. One of the coolest things we did as team this year during spring break was a service project with Puget Creek Restoration Society. We used our rowing muscles to liberate trees from invasive ivy. It was satisfying manual labor and quite fun to hang out with the team outside of practice. Another great part of spring break outside of practice was my wonderful teammates surprising me with a birthday potluck at my house. I got home and my entire team was crowded into my room ready to surprise me with a bunch of food and love—it was really one of my greatest birthdays ever.

As a student, this first half of the semester has been ridiculous. I have honestly never been this busy in my college career. In addition to crew, my commitments as an ASUPS senator, my job in the Office of Admission, my workload in class, and the additional process of applying to study abroad and a dramaturgy project—my schedule has been off the chain. I’m hoping things will settle down after break, especially if I get in lots of library time this weekend.

Happy Spring!

This is us in Sacremento. We're a little more bundled up than this at practice...and it's before the sun rises...but we still carry boats around...

#1: Pogies.

Pogies are rowing-specific gloves–they’re big fleece mittens that fit over both your hand and the oar allowing you to maintain contact with the oar and have warm hands. Genius. I got them from my parents for christmas and I can’t believe I went this long without them.  It’s amazing how something as small as having warm hands can improve my mood so much.

#2: Fleece Socks.

In the same vein, I also received fleece socks for christmas. My mom probably didn’t know how much she was impacting my quality of life. And it hasn’t even been that cold yet.

#3: Sleep.

The transition to waking up at 4:10 am went surprisingly smoothly.  I popped right out of bed the first morning and haven’t been overly tired, which is a huge component in how much I enjoy practice.  I’ve been good at getting in bed at the (grandma) time of 8-8:30 so far…we’ll see how consistent I can be as the semester progresses.  One of my housemates is on the team so that helps–we have a solid record of not sleeping in and arriving late to practice.

#4: Team/personal energy.

I have never been this excited about Crew in my life.  I think a big part of it is I’m happy in general with my Puget Sound life and that mixes into my crew energy, but also there’s just something different about this season.  I think everyone on the team is really feeling the positive energy and we just keep feeding each other.

#5: Testing.

We have routine opportunities to gauge our current performance levels in the form of a running/calisthenics test and erg testing. I usually lose a lot sleep over these tests, but so far I’ve been feeling great about it.  My coach told me that anxiety and excitement are the same physiological response for the body so I’ve been telling myself how EXCITED I am. It’s been working so far: I had a solid fitness test and a PR in my 20’ test.