Rowing: Winter Training

5am. My alarm goes off. Did I set it for the wrong time and I actually have to be up at 7? Nope! I wish. I look out my window and everything looks frozen. Too bad! Practice starts in 30 minutes. Rowing isn't an easy sport. The 5am winter practices in the freezing weather don't make it any easier. 6 days a week, 12 weeks straight. No days off, no breaks. Because champions train everyday. The erg is the most hated of them all. Actually it's a love hate relationship. The pain makes you dislike it so much, but the reward is so great that you forget the pain and you get back on it the next day. 2500m pieces, 6000 pieces, 1000m sprint pieces, and the deathly 500m all out sprints can transform a boy into a man. You really do discover a lot about yourself when you are on the erg.

Considering the toughness of the erg workouts along with the multiple weight training sessions during the week, water days may seem like a break from the craziness. If only that was the case. Water workouts are 90% the same intensity but now add in the -10 degree Fahrenheit windchill. Your oar gets wet from the splash... the water freezes. The sides of the boat and the rigors collect ice.
Definitely not a fun experience.

One could ask... why do I go through this? Wouldn't it be so much nicer to be able to sleep in everyday till 8am and not have to practice for 3 hours at the crack of dawn? Wouldn't it be easier to not have to push my body through so many grueling sessions?

Maybe, but I'm not about the easy life. Good things in life don't come to those who chose the easy path, they come to those who worked their ass off and achieved greatness.

You may think I'm crazy, but in reality I'm just a rower.

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Rowing

So, I decided to join the rowing team at UC Davis. Kinda a radical choice for me, you might say. Let me explain. I met my friend George at a core group meting on campus and he told me about crew and what its all about. I decided to come out and try it out. So far it has been a blast... Not going to lie, getting up at 4:55 every day for practice isnt very fun. Doing intense crazy workouts every morning while most people are still asleep isnt very fun. But if would I ever quit? Not a chance. This has to be the best part about college so far. The guys on the team are pretty awesome, and most of them are my closest friends. We are truly one huge family. We practice together, eat together, study together, party together. All the good stuff. The best part by far tho, is racing together. In the fall racing season our team has participated in 3 regattas (boat races, for those not familiar with boats). Our first race was in Sacramento, CA where we raced Berkeley, Stanford, Washington State, Arizona State.  That was our first race and it was a blast.

Our second major race of the season was in San Diego, CA at Mission Bay. The trip there and our 3 night stay was crazy, and we bonded as a team so much. Mission Bay was a really amazing course as well. This is a picture from our practice at Mission Bay the day before the actual race. In San Diego my 4-person boat actually got 1st place in our event which was awesome.

Our last regatta of the fall season was BIAC (Bair Island Aquatic Center). This was in San Mateo near San Francisco. It was a very challenging course with many difficult turns, but UC Davis managed to win the top 4 spots in the race. We practically destroyed every other team in the race with us.

Thats a picture of my 4 boat that got 3rd place in the race. I am bow seat (the last guy).

Now we head into winter training, meaning there are no races, just training on the ergs(rowing machines) and on water training to get ready for spring. I will try to keep this updated with more photos and whatever happens.

Till next time guys.

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Midterms: The Rude Awakening

Well, I had my first real awakening in college so far. Midterms. Not so much midterms as the score I received on my Calculus midterm. Taking the test I felt pretty weird about the whole thing. I skipped 2 questions because I didn't know how to do them. I ended up getting a 53 out of 102 points on the midterm. Yeah... not my proudest moment in life. When I told my mom she basically went pretty crazy saying she wasnt paying 15 thousand a year for me to fail my classes and such. Honestly before I didnt stress so much in college. I would have movie nights with friends all the time, would always go hang out with people, and as long as I knew the basic idea of what was going on I thought i was fine. Well.... I wasnt..

Now I dug myself into a pretty big hole I would say. The midterm was worth 20% of my grade, so basically if I want to get an A- in the class I have to get 98-100% on the other three midterms and the final. If I want to get a B or a C i still have to average at least a B or a B+ on every test from now on. This is definitely doable for me, as I have the capability, I just lack the structure, organization, and discipline.

I hope I can pull off a B in this class, because the engineering program at UC Davis is really tough, and I need to keep my GPA afloat, meaning no C's. At least not in any lower division classes.

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UC Davis: Bikes

So I have been at Davis for almost three weeks now, and it has been a blast so far, to be honest. The people here are all super chill and super friendly. My room mates turned out to be really cool guys as well. My classes have been alright, so its all gucci for the most part.

One crazy thing most people don't know about Davis is the bikes. And by bikes I mean close to 40,000 bikes. Yup, pretty much every student at UC Davis gets around campus by bike, as there are no car access on campus. It is really cool because there is no traffic and its really quick to get from one side of campus to another. Even though I live off campus, it takes me approximately 5-10 minutes to get to any class, and if you ever been to Davis you know its a pretty big campus, with all the buildings spread out. To make the flow of traffic easier around campus there is a bike circle at pretty much every major intersection to direct the bikes so there are no accidents.

On the first day of classes all the non-freshmen sit on the quad near the most congested bike circle to watch freshmen navigate through the hundreds of bikes there. It is actually pretty funny, and is an UC Davis tradition, to watch freshmen fall on their bikes during the first week of school.

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Apartment

So I finally got my apartment at Davis! About time I know. Moving in this Saturday. I am really excited to be honest. Finally moving out, and living on my own. I honestly do not even know how I'm going to handle it. My biggest fear is starving and failing all my classes because I spend too much time just trying to survive... Then I would have to drop out and live at home and go to a junior college. Just a random thought for the night. I would appreciate it if I could get some feedback from you guys who read this. Just drop a comment, telling me how Im doing, are my post too far apart, should they be longer, shorter, more photos? dont be shy haha.

-Peace

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San Diego Trip Part 2

So my trip to San Diego was pretty cool I would say. We had a lot of fun. My best friend went with me, along with some of my cousins and some friends from Los Angeles. I made a pretty cool road-trip playlist for the car ride. Macklemore, The Neighbourhood, Kid Cudi, J Cole, were some of the artist on it, and it was really cool. (sneak peek into my music tastes) My parents found this really cool hotel right on the water. Our room had an ocean view and you could go down to the water in like 2 minutes. We went to the beach a lot, visited the random parts of San Diego and Oceanside. Met a lot of new people, some pretty weird ones at that. Ate at some interesting places. One day we went to a night market type of thing, with a bunch of live music, and food vendors. The food was really good, and the music was good as well. There was one band which was made up of a high school science teacher and his 10 yr old son who played drums. The father sang and played guitar. At night I went out and took a bunch of sunset pics just for fun, and some of them turned out pretty good, so I put them down below. It was a really great time, and I cannot wait to go back next year.

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San Diego Trip

So, all of next week, Im going down to San Diego with some friends and family. Just gonna hit up some beaches, probably go to Sea World. It should be fun, meeting new people down there. Some pretty close acquaintances of ours are meeting up with us there. They're pretty chill, somewhat typical Southern California people, really laid back, and pretty much live on the beach. The day after we come back from San Diego, I have my freshman orientation at Davis, so that should be interesting as well. Gonna meet my room mates for the first time, plus get to meet alot of new people. we pick our classes on that day too, so we will see how that goes.

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