Waiting....

Stuck in downtime here.... this is one of the hardest parts about the sport - the waiting. We were supposed to do a racing/competitive workout at 7 AM, so we dragged ourselves out of bed at 6 AM, went to the dining hall to get some food in our systems to wake ourselves up, only to have our coaches decide that they didn't like the direction of the wind on the racecourse, so they sent us back to our rooms until 10 AM. Now I've got three hours to kill and still have this workout hanging over my head...

One of the reasons sports like this can be such a time-suck is that a one hour workout doesn't take an hour - it's more like five hours between getting to and from the boathouse, stretching/warming up, cooling down, getting your water bottle/sports drinks and snacks, and recovering afterwards. I didn't really realize all this until I started grad school and I intended to keep training full-time while going to class - until I realized there was no way I could fit everything into my day.

The time-drag factor is exacerbated here at the San Diego training center because we've got nothing else to do - no jobs to get to, no wives/girlfriends to see. It's just us and the training. You can pack a lot of focused training into your camp here, but not much else.... somehow despite having several hours between practices, I can't seem to get anything else done during my day (and that's coming from someone who considers himself generally productive).

On a totally separate note, we are still giving blood to the sports physiologist. I'm really tired of getting my finger pricked. I keep hearing that I have high lactate levels. That's bad because it means my body produces a lot of lactic acid but good because it means I've got a high pain tolerance. Either way, I'm getting tired of bleeding all over my oar handle...