Back to Oakland (Rowing?)

I've done a bit of hopping around since I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area two years ago; I've now worked four jobs and I just moved to my third home two weeks ago. This time, I moved from Walnut Creek to the much-less-suburban Oakland.

There's a sort of sense of home I get in Oakland. It might be that I have a sister who lives a few blocks away, the great food, unpretentiousness... who knows. But one big thing they have is water. The house I moved into is a mere two blocks away from Lake Merritt. Better yet is that Lake Merritt has a masters rowing program.

I almost couldn't believe it the other day; I was in downtown San Francisco when I noticed a tall gentleman standing behind at a burrito shop me wearing a Willamette Rowing sweatshirt. He looked close my height and age so I thought it was quite the coincidence (I happened to be wearing my Cincinnati Rowing sweatshirt - both mascots are the Bearcats). His name is David and it turns out he also works in Marketing and studied History in undergrad. He also mentioned getting back into rowing in the East Bay at Lake Merritt Boat Club. So, maybe I'll have a pair partner when it's all said and done.

I'm in no way any kind of shape. Not even close. But it'd be nice to get back into it for sure, especially now that there's water so close. I could walk to practice!

I almost forgot to mention - it's only $200 a year!

Dad Vail 2012

Super awesome showing by the Bearcats at this weekend's Dad Vail. The men's 4+  and the women's pair both took silver. Many congratulations to the athletes and coaching staff for doing such a great job.

What's cool this year is ESPN3 got in on the fun and broadcast the event. Now you can see the Bearcats kicking butt streamed over the internet.... It's a good time to be a Bearcat!

ESPN3 Showing Dad Vail Regatta

Something New

First let me say thank you to Coach Keith Young and the University of Cincinnati rowing team for letting me watch a practice two weeks ago today. It was hard getting up at 5 a.m. again, but it was great to see so many people working so hard to achieve a common goal. And the team looks great.

Secondly - I've started a new (and likely idiotic) quest to learn to dunk a basketball. I've started a new blog for it: http://chadverticallimits.wordpress.com/

Enjoy!

Also... I started erging this past week for the first time in over a year... ouch....

Update - belated

I realize it's been a while since I've posted (TWO YEARS!). Life has taken me away from rowing a bit, which is a shame. I moved to California in October of 2010 for a job coaching at the nonprofit Jack London Aquatic Center in Oakland. I was separately coaching middle schoolers and high schoolers and getting some strokes in myself. Unfortunately, four months after moving to California this happened: ABC Report on Jack London Aquatic Center Closing.

I was given one week's notice before we closed down.

But - life happens. I work in an office now doing marketing. The problem I face now is that I live nowhere near rowing. But I hope that changes soon. That way I can blog some more!

A New Year

So far so good for Twenty Ten. We hit the recruiting trail hard when we came back to school January 4th and have been steadily getting stronger since.
Also, we quite fortuitously landed smack dab in the Campus Rec Center for practices. I can't even begin to stress how much it means to have the team practice in actual workout rooms, on campus. It's been years since the teams have had that (my freshman year, to be exact).

Race against Dayton

The novices had their first race/scrimmage today against the University of Dayton Flyers. We had them race three, one thousand meter pieces. Dayton had a four and we had two fours.
For the most part, we matched up very nicely against UD. The guys controlled the rating, rowed fairly long and stayed poised through the workouts even though we were at a lower rating. The Bearcats ended up winning the majority of the pieces.
This is always a great rivalry for us and it was great to make it happen. Hopefully we'll be able to pit these two squads against each other this spring to see how far we've all come.

Fall Begins

Yesterday was the first day of school for UC, and the gettin' was good for recruiting. As it stands, we have about 150 names for interested recruits. We have one of the best recruiting setups we've ever had (I'm blogging while I'm running a recruiting table right now). The inside table has a projector playing rowing videos above a table with rowing shirts, medals, posters, an oar, fliers and a sign up sheet. The outside table has a UC rowing banner and oars. Pretty fancy stuff. 

We haven't wasted any time tapping into this year's freshman class, the biggest class to ever step foot on the University of Cincinnati's campus (more than 6,000 students). 

Still on the agenda is finding additional assistant coaches, finalizing our fall schedule and continuing the recruiting efforts.