Chiltie's Musings

I woke myself up at 4:30 this morning and forced myself out of bed to go rowing again. I’ve keep my membership at Lake Union Crew current for the last year and a half, but I haven’t been actively rowing since December 2006. This is a significant void in my life and a contributing factor in not insignificant weight gain in the last two years. Since i first stepped into a shell in the fall of 2001 (in Chattanooga), rowing has been my my connection to God and nature. I feel best when I’m gliding along the water with 7 other men pushing it as hard as we can. Every day for the last 18 months, I’ve looked out at the lake, or driven over the bridge and thought “I should be out there.”

This morning I was intending to sit on a rowing machine for a while and start getting back in shape, but they needed a sub and I was suddenly on the water. It hurt like hell, but it was the greatest feeling hurt ever. Damn I’ve missed rowing.

The Mocs officially have a winning season now. This is awesome. Its the first one since 1997, and is a definitely new to me, since 1997 was the last time I was a student when my school’s team had a winning record (I have a habit of bad football schools). Congratulations guys, this kicks ass. I’m really disappointed I couldn’t make it there today.

On another note today was the running of the Head of the Hooch Regatta here in Chattanooga. It’s the second largest fall regatta in the country, and it packs in around a 1000 boats with around 4000 competitors. Great for the tourism of the city, showcasing our downtown waterfront quite nicely. This is the first year for the race to be in Chattanooga, it used to be at Lake Ranier in Gainesville, GA - the same place they had the rowing events for the 1996 Olympics - but Lake Ranier started charging too much to use the course, so they moved up here. I think its awesome. Chattanooga is an awesome city for rowing, not many places in the south have this much rowing, especially with 3 prep school rowing programs. Most youth rowing programs in the south are community programs not tied to a school (we have one of those too) but here in Chattanooga we have three high school programs. On top of that the McCallie School rowing program is one of the best youth programs in the country.

I raced the Men’s Club 8+ today. We did well, 3 mile course in 16:13. Unfortunately the top boat was 15:45, and we ended up in 6th out of 12. But when you consider we were facing Georgia, Clemson, Virgina Tech (we passed them, they started ahead of us), Florida, and other gigantic schools, thats a good showing for a small school that barely has enough heavyweight rowers to have an 8, much less a fast one. (Heavyweights weigh more than 165 pounds).

My boat, the Men’s Championship 8+, got a silver medal at this weekend’s Head of the Tennessee regatta in Knoxville, TN. This is the first time since I’ve been on the team that the Varsity 8+ has gotten a medal, not counting the one race in which we were the only boat. This is really cool. Just about every boat medalled and we won the collegiate team points trophy, which rocks. Good job everybody.