I am inordinately proud of my rowing calluses but lost them in Beijing due to three weeks without an oar or an ergometer to keep them healthy and tough. Three consecutive days of sculling this week, some vigorous pull-ups on the chin-up bar, some hang-power cleans with the Olympic bar, and my hands have turned into hamburger. Nothing to be done but suck it up and keep abusing them until they scab up and go hardcore again. Some Rhode Island Soapworks gardener’s healing hand salve is next (I cannot abide Bag Balm) but will turn my keyboard into a slippery mess.
It is time to get serious about the fall rowing season and mail off some regatta entries today.
Fall races I should enter
- Megunticook Mini-Marathon: Camden, Maine. Ten miles. Supposed to be beautiful course. Got to make my mind up now, the race is next weekend, the 6th and Maine is a long drive from the Cape. http://www.echorowing.com/Megunticock_Mini-Marathon.pdf
- Coastweeks, Mystic, Connecticut. Awesome course, head-style (running start, race the clock) best maritime museum in the world. Two hour drive. Happens just after I return from Bangalore and before a week in Raleigh. I dunno. Excuses, excuses.
- Green Mountain Head, Putney, Vt, Sept. 28. My favorite. Just gorgeous scenery. World class rowers. Prizes are bag of apples, block of Vermont cheddar, bottle of maple syrup. Also it’s a stake race, so there’s the fun of trying to turn a boat around a buoy which is like making a cow dance.
- Textile River Regatta, October 5. Lowell. Merrimack River. Never done it. Might be tempted. http://www.textileriverregatta.org
- Head of the Connecticut: Connecticut River, Middletown, CT – home of Wesleyan. Heard it is a good race. Dunno. This is turning out to be too long a list I think. Wife is not going to be into watching middle-age crisis man slog down autumn rivers of New England.