So at the beginning of my sophomore year of college, I once again thought about how I miss being in shape and running cross country, and how I really wish I could be a part of some athletic team or competition. I'm no good at basketball, football, soccer, tennis, or any other sport offered here, I don't like the guys on the rugby team so I don't want to do that again. My answer? Another potentially misguided expedition into college sports...this time it's varsity lightweight crew. Fun facts about crew (you should probably note that I haven't attended practice yet, so these observations are my own, based off what I've been able to gather thus far): --it was invented sometime long ago at some obnoxiously pretentious school (probably Ivy League) because that school was tired of losing every other sport --crew is not interesting to watch like football or basketball or soccer or any other sport that people watch, thus the sport itself is highly pretentious, and so most non-pretentious Ivy League schools either don't have crew teams or don't talk about their crew teams --lightweight crew has a weight limit of 160 lb (I think, although I have also heard 165), so the general idea of training is to starve yourself down to 1% body fat, while maxing out muscle and maintaining incredible cardio shape; for these reasons, crew may require a love of pain that doesn't just flirt with the line between determination and masochism, but actually crosses far over that line into the perverse realm of fetish. Anyways, if any of you seniors this year are considering applying to any obnoxiously pretentious schools and aren't going to be on their cross country team but are masochists at heart, maybe check out the crew team.

im not saying that crew never has an audience, just that it's not fun to watch unless you know a thing or two about it...and im sorry if i offended you clare, that first post was meant as a joke; its a pretentiously worded post commenting on how pretentious something is and being pretentious about it the whole time, made especially pretentious by the supposed "fun facts" which I obviously completely made up...i just had a few minutes to spare and decided to entertain myself by writing a bit which makes fun of itself anyway, i practiced with the other walk-ons all last week as well as running or doing a second rowing workout every day, and i find out if I made the team tomorrow, but after my dismal performance at the final 2500 meter test on friday im pretty sure im not going to make it...if not, i plan on running a 5k in two weeks

sadly you won't be seeing me on the charles...i didn't make crew, which probably had something to do with how, instead of getting in shape over the summer, i tried to get in shape over two weeks by doing 2-a-days before I was even in half decent shape. On another happy note regarding me being an idiot and doing 2-a-days, i have increasingly bad pain in my right shin...it started on the side, right above my ankle on the outside of the leg, but now the pain has moved up into prime shin splint location. I'm not sure if it's shin splints...it's a kind of dull achy pain...im not sure what shin splints feel like. Also, Bill, I am hoping to run a 5k on saturday the 27th. What kind of training would you suggest? I've been mostly doing easy runs and longer rowing machine workouts; this morning I woke up and tried to do circuits, only to find that I am in far worse shape than I thought. Any suggestions on speed work I should do? Also, motivation is especially hard because I generally have to do speed work alone.

thanks bill, i'll try and take it a little easier/longer distance the next couple weeks.