WEST WINDSOR, N.J. - Senior Alicia Kapjian-Pitt will be writing a blog about the team's activities leading up to the IRA Championships Friday-Sunday. Here is her first entry.
The Final Countdown Begins
By Alicia Kapjian-Pitt
"Don't call it a comeback, I've been here for years." (Four to be exact.) - LL Cool J, and me. Today we embarked on our journey (my final one) to New Jersey to begin training in Princeton for the lead up to the IRA National Championships. We seniors have one more week of rowing and two more races and then, caput! It feels like a mere month ago that we showed up for our entrance physicals only to be told we needn't be there for two more hours, it was 7 a.m. Luckily for us, we were all morning people, or at least we have tricked ourselves into believing that over the past four years.
Flash-forward to May 24, 2015 and a troop of ambiguously athletic young women make their way through SFO. They are sporting their grey Stanford crew sweatshirts, mandated compression pants and footwear of their own choosing. This is where team members tend to exhibit creative expression in their outfits. First you have your Sperry-wearers, Converse high-tops, Converse low-tops, Nike running shoes, and then there's the Birkenstock crew (with membership numbers growing larger and who also believe themselves to be a "more fashionable" Croc) and then you have your Croc wearers (a group I am proud to belong to). Creatively clad feet and Co. find their way to the terminal and wait for takeoff.
This year has been different for many reasons, the most obvious being the debut of Derek Byrnes as our new head coach. We were introduced to new workouts and if we were really lucky we played ultimate frisbee, a game which, if played in the correct manner, can actually be a more daunting workout than our tough erg workouts. (Think stealing the frisbee from Christine Cavallo and facing her competitive wrath for the rest of the game."
We took a training trip to San Diego and one to Santa Cruz, and met members of the Byrnes family, notable Sadie who was most interesting in winning at everything and challenged a yoga-master's daughter, Bailey "Baitey" Yuro, to a headstand competition. *Spoiler Alert: Sadie Wins.* We met Liam, a loud and proud proponent of Happy Jackal salsa (but who can blame him because we all love salsa, or so Katherine believes the song goes.) Derek's wife took us on a "pleasant" morning run - 45 minutes out and 45 minutes back into the Santa Cruz mountains. Switchback after switchback left me sucking wind and contemplating whether we would ever reach flatland, we did not. MIraculously I made it back and was not surprised when my walking abilities were seriously impeded for a solid 5-day period.
Anyways, I digress and New Jersey is calling. Tomorrow marks the beginning of training and just as important - my BIRTHDAY! If I thought flying on my 21st was a blast, rowing on my 22nd has a lot to live up to.
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