Saturdays should be for lazing around.

The weekend proved too much for me, and I had to scale it back. My weekend just became Saturday and no Sunday. I lost Sunday to the cold I've had all week and some much-needed sleep. My cousin and I were supposed to go to the Renaissance Festival on Sunday, but between the cold and a meeting I'd forgotten about, that didn't happen (but should next week!). I also didn't make it to the meeting, what with the coughing and the phlegm.

Saturday:

7a The Pike Island Challenge at the Minnesota Boat Club
13-mile "fun" row. Oh, yeah. 'Cause rowing for 1:30:23 (you read that right: one hour, thirty minutes, twenty-three seconds) nonstop is "fun." By nonstop, I mean our boat never stopped moving. The Pike Island Challenge is supposed to be fun and a big social event, but it always turns into a grueling race between the rowers and between the rowers, kayakers and canoists (who join us this one time each year for the fun of it - the rowers always walk right through them, but the physics of our boats are so completely different, it's understandable). I was in a 4+ (four rowers, one oar each, plus our coxswain, who is about four months pregnant with twins, so technically we had 7 people in our boat, not 5 like you're supposed to have), and our cox gave each pair of rowers in the stern and bow about 10 strokes to get water twice during the challenge (while the other pair kept rowing). It's sad - it's like the Sahara Desert on the Mississippi River. All you want is water, but you're racing other boats, so you can't stop, and there's water all around you, and if it weren't such gross and dirty water, it would look awfully tantalizing.

Anyway, there's also this little tiny channel to navigate when you go around Pike Island, and it's highly entertaining. Our 4+ barely fit through - I don't know how the bigger 8+ boats made it. There's a little bridge back there, and you have to pull in your oars a bit to make it through, and then there's a couple spots where you hit mud with the end of your blades. That part was actually pretty fun.


View Larger Map (That's Pike Island right there in the middle at the bottom, where the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers converge.)

After an hour and a half, though, you're exhausted. You have no strength left in your legs. You didn't quite row at a race pace, but fairly close, and all full pressure. You get to the club and dribble out of the boat onto the dock, grateful it's over. I cannot tell you how much your legs and butt hurt. It hurts to walk up stairs. (Not fun when you then go to the stadium - see below). It hurts to sit. Everything just hurts.

But then everyone gathers together and eats bacon and pancakes and all things breakfast, and the different clubs who've come together socialize, and it's all worth it. Every year the prizes awarded are wrenches. I have yet to collect mine (pretty sure I got one, but I'll admit it's because I think we were the only coxed four out there!), 'cause Emily and I had to leave to go the Gophers game...

11a Gophers Football Game
This also felt grueling. Being at a game that goes into its third overtime with Miami of Ohio is not the most fun ever. Especially when you'd been up by 16 points at one time during the game...But it was still fun, and not the worst game ever. Brewster is still new, and I never really expect much of a new coach in his first season with a team. You've gotta give the guy a chance to be here, implement the new system, recruit. all that. All I can say is, at least we're not Michigan.

4p Food and Friends
Some friends and I went out for pizza at Psycho Suzi's after the game, and I managed to stay awake the entire time I was out. This was quite a feat. By the time Emily dropped me back off at home (she'd also rowed in the Pike Island Challenge and gone to the game), we were exhausted. I cannot remember the last time 8p felt like 2a. Of course, it is getting darker out earlier now, so maybe that had something to do with it. Or maybe not.