Wet roads, good company

Solid fall weather up on Palatine Hill today; wet fog, misting rain, wet roads all the way up on the ride to work today. I debuted my new, longer ride-- my old route was 40-44 minutes, depending on traffic lights. I've been wanting a slightly longer workout, so I plotted a new route and tested it today- sixty minutes on the nose, with less time spent sitting at lights, and a nice stretch along the river to keep me in touch with the water as we close up shop for winter.

Before the ride I met with most of the women's team for a winter training breakfast and distributed our recommendations for a solid winter program. This is Division III-- we cannot require anyone to train outside of our playing & practice season. There are downsides to this, most notably the lack of contact between coaches and the team (sad!). But the upside is the great educational opportunity for our athletes to develop their own work ethic and knowledge of training over the course of the next three months. I've done my best to provide the team with all the tools they need; now it's up to them to run with it. I was very encouraged today by how many small training groups were forming within the team; we also had a report that the whole men's team was at it in the weight room this morning. Good company makes consistent training easy.

Next task: clean up and prepare the erg room for the winter season!

Portland Fall Classic

I had a great time at the Fall Classic on Sunday; Station L Rowing Club and Rose City Rowing Club ran a fantastic event. We provided three launches and ran the start marshal area; the best part was being able to stay on shore with the athletes for the duration of the event and ride my bike down the Springwater Corridor, following the races from the start to about halfway down. I took plenty of photos but they didn't really turn out, so I'll direct you instead to Row2k's excellent gallery.

Our crews rowed well, which was the primary goal for the event. The men's team choose to boat up a fast four as their priority boat and raced to within eleven seconds of Oregon State's top four freshman- a solid performance. Our women's team took on the open eight and faced up to some very quick competition, but we succeeded in our goal to stay composed, stay long (rate ~26 throughout), and maintain our technique. Maybe not the absolute fastest piece we could have rowed but we 100% succeeded in capitalizing on the learning we've done this fall and set ourselves up for a great start to spring season.

The athletic department write up is here.

And now fall's done, and I woke up this morning with a huge rainstorm to announce the start of winter. Time to spend some days in the office, clean up the erg room and fix up all our ergs, and meet with folks Thursday at breakfast to talk about winter training.

I'll be posting less frequently for the next month or two, but will try to keep the updates coming 1-2 days per week.

Pioneep Novice Women

Photos from novice practice today; one of our novice women's mothers was out and proved rather talented with the camera. We did some nice racing pieces vs the novice men's four, but somehow she only got pictures of the women's eight.

Keep Portland Weird

Offered without comment, from the northern end of Ross Island, photo taken around five today.

Time for Class

Having a cup of coffee at home, just back from the office and some productive recruiting e-mailing with prospects. With the November 1st early action deadline coming up it's time time of year when I like to make solid connections with folks and try to help them communicate their strengths to the school as best I can. If there are any of you out there we haven't talked to in a while please do drop us a line and let us know what's up in your world.

Next on my schedule is the sculling class this afternoon; the above picture is from Tuesday. We've had some interruptions in the class (wind, fall break, and illness) but are back on track this week and looking forward to some good rowing. I've enjoyed working with this group-- in particular teaching one of our men's team coxswains how to row. Sculling is a great vehicle for getting smaller folks into the sport; it's more balanced and much easier for them to match, and the overall load on the body is much less. All good things.

Portland Fall Classic coming up Sunday, and with it the end of our fall season. I'll do my best to be an excellent journalist for the event.

Scrimmaging

Looking forward to Saturday we were confronted with an epic forecast; some of the projections called for up to an inch of rain between 3 AM and 6 PM. We girded ourselves, packed extra rain gear, loaded the trailer and drove to Tacoma regardless. Sure enough, as soon as we arrived the skies opened and we rigged our boats in a torrential downpour.



Luckily, the rain did not last as long nor prove as bad as forecast. After about thirty minutes things largely cleared up and we proceeded with the day. Puget Sound hosted and we proceeded to race three flights of competitive pieces; roughly 2 x 1500 meters for each grouping. It was a very nice day out on the lake.



Some of our boats did very well, some were certainly challenged. Most importantly for the nature of the event, everyone learned a great deal about what we need to do to race well against those that are some of our chief competitors come spring season. Our novices had an excellent day and were very excited to get some solid racing done.

Back to work this week with the Portland Fall Classic on tap for Sunday. Just six rowing days left in the fall season!

Bonus Movie! Getting ready to head over to novice practice this afternoon; final "race" preparations for our fall DIII scrimmage up at Puget Sound tomorrow. Here's thirty seconds from this morning; the sunrise as we docked was unreal. Do I sound like a broken record? Maybe, but it's worth it-- wish I'd had my camera.

Sunrise 10-16 from Sam Taylor on Vimeo.