Nice thing about vacation is I can take a couple hours in the morning and get a serious row in before the day gets rolling. Today’s Crossfit workout of the day was to run 15 kilometers — and given my running technique has been compared to a pumpkin with serious issues — I said to hell with that, spare the knees, and decided to row 15K — which amounted to two circumnavigations of Oyster Harbors, aka Grand Island, aka Cotacheset ancestral home of the Wampanoags.
The first circuit was brisk and focused on technique, the second rotation was spent obsessing about the various blisters and chafings developing where skin met skin or wet spandex. My hands look gnawed. I literally have a blister forming inside of a blister on my palm.
Ah, but work is not far away. Morning war room call at 7, weekly Lenovo Marketing Board, assorted email spurts. As I pack for another day at the beach the first thing in the waterproof bag is the blackberry, followed by the zinc oxide, iPod, etc. etc. etc.
I need to find a Beijing rowing club. there is a nice looking river near my hotel, it seems to run out of the lake where the Summer Palace is. I’ve seen crews rowing in Beijing in the past so I need to find out where their boathouse is. I doubt I’m going to get any time in on the Olympic course at Shunyi. (end sarcasm).