pb

wool socks long undies 17" of snow etc.

2009-12-10T17:26:00.000-08:00

spontaneous one-way trip to Wisconsin last weekend...

reblog from madden, cause the world needs to hear

2009-11-28T13:08:00.001-08:00

dear kate hoff

can we start a facebook group entitled: “maybe i’m just too tired to make that light, OK?? aka athletes who commute by bike.”

description: “to all you hipster morons who speed by me on your fixies and glance menacingly as you blow through the stale yellow, remember that i probably just finished 2 hours at the gym/a 6 mile run/erg golf, and the last workout you had was lifting your $2 pbr to your mouth. also, get a bike with breaks.” or similar.

new plan

2009-11-28T13:01:00.001-08:00

just row like a man. It looks so easy when they do it, like it doesn't even hurt. Additional pros of rowing like a man include finishing 2ks in 6 instead of 8 minutes and being able to pee in a water bottle at the starting line.

you may be a rower when

2009-11-21T15:01:00.001-08:00

you get the following text shortly after 11 pm on a Friday night:

"Kate are you alright? Its kind of late for you not to be home or answering your phone. Im gonna file a missing persons report at 215"

-my roommate, bless her soul.

another day full of lessons

2009-10-28T22:15:00.000-07:00

- try active recovery the day after a race instead of full day off, then full day off two days after the race
- do high-intensity pieces with the screen down
- do not row without bow lights in enormous bodies of water.

only in california

2009-10-21T08:05:00.000-07:00

OK, I understand that the water here is liquid year-round and one rarely needs pants to row. But I firmly believe that this should not change the definition of a hard erg workout. As a particular example, I would like to assert that 3 x 1k is not a legit workout. Yes, it feels awful. Yes, you may want to vomit afterwards. However, the East coaster in me wants to force these people to play erg golf and then see how they feel about 3 x 1k.

living the dream

2009-10-11T19:31:00.000-07:00

1) "He picked the wrong girls to get in a toilet paper standoff with." -my roommate, re: our bathroom-sharing bouncer and the fact that we haven't had TP for about a week, which may or may not be influencing the fact that i have been spending a lot of time at the boathouse, school, library, or at cafe 976 recently.

2) "Stand there like you're trying to make money," novice coach to the Jrs. on how to correctly do a squat. (Picture a 25-ish year old man telling this to a bunch of 13 year olds. Also he has a thick Spanish accent. He followed this up with "Drop it like it's hot.")

3) Meal for dinner almost every night this week: split peas with salt, pepper, ketchup, sriracha (cock sauce), and a fried egg. Carbs via massive amounts of chocolate milk. Gotta work on the nutrition thing.

4) I am in love with the feeling of moving a boat across the water. Really, it's like when you have an eighth-grade-style crush - you try not to think about it too much, but it keeps popping back into your mind and making you smile when you are busy doing other things like being in class or church. Additionally v. excited about possibility of helping other people to someday also have this awkward problem.

5) Speaking of church, I started playing violin at St. Brigids this weekend and it was basically the funnest thing ever. The choir director talks about Guinness a lot, is tall with blond hair down to her waist, tan and tattooed, and a grandmother. She looks like she's about 30. Her daughter is in the choir too, and I met the grandkids today. I separate faith and religion in my life and although I'm not religiously faithful, I have recently been faithfully religious, just because the church makes me feel at home. I mean, you do something every Sunday for 17 years and it kinda provokes that feeling. It's nice to play music with a lot of people too, and feel like I'm part of something.

so that's what jr rowing is like

2009-10-01T19:05:00.000-07:00

An unknown (to me) pressure: recruiters. Today, coach Dave from Cal was riding along in the launch to check out the team. This was obviously a Big Deal to the girls, and understandably. I think many of them put a significant amount of pressure on themselves in addition to the pressure that they already have from their parents. This pressure is both to get into a good school and to be recruited by that school's rowing team in particular. In addition to that, there's the potential of scholarship money in it too, which adds a particular element of urgency for parents, probably, in times like these. I think a lot of people in SoCal are having to cut back right about now .. I just can't imagine having to think about all these things as factors in choosing a school. I don't know if I'm glad or sad that I didn't start rowing before college...

model organism review for BGGN 220

2009-09-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

In math, there are things that you could memorize, like the multiplication tables. But instead, you might choose to learn how to multiply, a simple rule that takes up little space in your brain but allows you to generate this big multiplication table whenever you want. Or, even better, you don't have to generate the whole thing, you just generate the little part you are interested in.

In biology, there are things you could memorize, like every single gene and protein and pathway ever involved in developmental processes. Have not yet come up with a way to get around this. I think I just need to read all the information and store it in some way-back layer of my brain, so that when I hear a gene name I can ping that section of my mind and bring the info back to the front layer. Alternatively, I could just welcome myself to the 21st century and use google/pubmed to do that. It just seems like that strategy is not widely accepted yet. As in, I think I may have to take some sort of test without the internet.

lessons from more days in the launch

2009-09-28T08:24:00.000-07:00

1) "You see how his stroke is really slow at the catch and strong at the finish? It's a sign of rowing by yourself a lot, because it feels really hard since you are finishing so hard, but the catch is still so slow, and really, you're just slow." - Guillermo on visiting elite-looking single sculler

2) 5500 meters, every time you pass 1000 do a 20 at 26, otherwise go 18-20-22-20-18-max switching every 1000m (i.e. 4500, 3500, etc. last 500 is all out)

lessons from day 1 in grad school

2009-09-23T21:07:00.000-07:00

1) Grad school will be a lot easier if I can keep on rowing after classes get out... my mind clears out so fast when I do.

2) I cannot sit still and pay attention, at all

3) I am extremely frustrated with bioinformatics. It needs revamping. I'll write a longer, irate tirade about this later.

lessons from day 1 in the launch with G

2009-09-23T20:57:00.000-07:00

1) "In the launch" may not actually mean in the launch right away. First the girls did a 3k erg piece, and then he made them redo it because they didn't do it correctly - was supposed to be 70%, 80%, 90% for the k's, respectively, with the goal of ending up at a 2:16 average or lower at an 18. Everybody went out at a 2:16 or lower and did a total fly and die, by the end only four girls made it. What did I learn from this... halfway through the first piece Guillermo asked me if I thought he should make them stop, since they were doing it wrong. I said if it were me, I'd make them stop, get off the erg for 5 minutes, and then get back on and start over. He ended up telling them about halfway through the piece that if they weren't pulling below their average for the last 1k they would have to get off the erg, but didn't really enforce it at all. It was only after the end, when they counted numbers and didn't have 8 girls under 2:16, that he said they would have to redo it.

And it was amazing... they totally did it the second time... not really well with the pacing, a few of them made it just by pulling like a 2:05 for the last 500 or something, but they made it. It was crazy to watch - I'm so used to physical limitations, not "knowing how to train or pull a piece" type limitations. It was cool to watch them go so much faster due to basically two things, one, a little bit of advice on how to go out ("slower") and second, just the motivation to get 8 girls under. I mean, they cheated all over the place on the rate, and half looked like they were going to break their backs technique-wise, but I was still super impressed.

Mainly, I learned that the limitations of junior rowers come from different sources than the limitations of collegiate rowers. This is something I never considered - in college, if you can't make the split, it's because you aren't fast enough, not because you didn't know how to pull the piece. It gives me a good perspective on the kinds of things you would want to teach novice rowers.

2) Pacific Beach girls are REALLY relaxed - it shows all over the place in their rowing. Their boats weren't perfectly set, or even stable at all in some cases, and the water was pretty crappy at times, but they are just unfazeable. They just keep on rowing. Pretty awesome.

3) Guillermo has the cutest dog in the world. I have never been one for tiny dogs but now I'm converted, in this one exceptional case. His name is Opie, and he crawls inside G's jacket for the launch ride and just sits there being ridiculously adorable.

sdrc

2009-09-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

Back in the day: Renegade Squadron.
Down by the bay: SDRC

oh dear

2009-09-22T20:10:00.001-07:00

I am a chronic blogger. I try and try to stop, but it will never really go away.

The moral of the story is, it can all be summed up with pb:

peanut butter
pacific beach
ph.d. bioinformatics
pura bahía