Hi there. I feel like I've been saying this a lot lately, but it's been a while. I think about blogging throughout the day (seriously, I compose posts in my head as I walk through the hallways at work or walk down the streets of whatever town I'm in), but by the time the day ends, I'm too tired to write. The past few weeks of work have been kind of crazy. We had a big deadline that we were all racing to meet. I even worked weekends, meaning I worked for two weeks without a day off. Don't worry, it's not a habit I intend to continue.
Last week started getting awesome again though. Last Monday, my gal pal KAOS and I had a catch up dinner at an Indian restaurant we both love. It was definitely not Paleo, but we at least stayed gluten-free. KAOS is like me: gluten doesn't agree with our stomachs or heads. My chicken tikka masala definitely contained dairy, but it's one of the few times the food was worth it. As I drove home, I debated what I should do with the rest of my evening. I really needed to pack for an upcoming trip and I needed to pack up my life for an upcoming move, but I also wanted to relax. What won? Relaxation in the form of a bubble bath and a bottle of cider. Glorious! Sometimes you just need to say "Screw it" and let yourself do the irresponsible/unproductive thing. I'm an adult. I can make my own decisions, right? So if I want to be lazy and have a Paleo "cheat" meal, then I will. I've found lately that my "cheat" meals still manage to be gluten-free, so at least I'm not completely messing myself up.
On Tuesday I went to a gourmet hot dog place on the east side of town to meet up with two of my guy friends who have been living and working in South Korea. One has been there 1.5 years and the other 2.5 years. This trip was their first visit back to the States since they left. I miss them. So seeing both of them made me extremely happy. I even completely disregarded my usual 9 p.m. "It's time to sleep" alarm and stayed out with them until 10:30. Scandalous! I yawned my way through Wednesday, but it was so worth it. Even though I was at a hot dog place, I got a very messy, mustard-covered, fried egg-topped, bun-free burger:
(Note to self: I must remember to take photos of people. It would have been nice to have a group shot of me and the guys.)
I spent my Independence Day traveling. My alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. so I could finish packing, eat breakfast, and get to the airport before 6:30 a.m. I then spent the next five or so hours flying through Charlotte, NC (and dashing from one end of the airport to the other) to Richmond, VA, where my friend Yve and I rented a car and drove and hour and a half to Lancaster, VA. Why did we drive to small town Virginia? Good question. And here's your unexpected answer: rowing camp. Yes, I attended a camp at the age of 25. As I've mentioned before, I rejoined a crew team. Some of the ladies on my team had attended this camp before and were talking about how helpful it was, so about a month ago, Yve and I decided we were going. We arrived at the old plantation house/inn/rowing camp headquarters around 2:30 that afternoon and changed into our rowing gear. Over the next hour, the remaining rowing camp attendees arrived. After a round of introductions and detailing our rowing experience, we headed to the lake for our first practice. The couple who run the camp own a lake. Yes, just the lake... not the surrounding land.
Here's the overall schedule:
6:30 Wake up
7:00 Meet up to head to the lake
7:15-7:45 Technique instruction
7:45-9:15 Row (videotaped)
9:30-10:00 Breakfast
10:15-11:30 Watch DVDs of Olympic rowers. Review video from morning row.
11:45-12:15 Technique instruction
12:15-2:00 Row
2:15-2:45 Lunch
3:00-4:30 Nap
5:00-6:15 Row
6:30-7:00 Shower
7:15- Dinner in Kilmarnock
10:00 Sleep
In summary: row, eat (talk about rowing), watch rowing videos, row, eat (talk about rowing), sleep (dream about rowing), row, eat (talk about rowing), sleep (dream about rowing). You may think I'm kidding with the dreaming about rowing, but no. I spent my nights dreaming about that perfect stroke, and dreading those not-so-perfect strokes. Obsessive? Maybe, but when you enjoy something, you might as well let yourself enjoy it, right?
I didn't stay Paleo, but I was gluten-free. I had told the coaches in advance that I didn't eat dairy, legumes, or gluten, but I didn't want to make meal prep exceptionally hard on them by saying that I didn't eat any grains. Because I appreciated the fact that they went out of their way to get me gluten-free things like gluten-free bread, oatmeal, corn instead of peas, etc., I went ahead and ate them. The meals were yummy and it's nice to have someone cooking for you. On Saturday night, we went to a place called Town Bistro where I had roasted duck in a ligonberry sauce (my Swedish side appreciated the sauce).
What did I take away from the camp? The technique I had learned in college was wrong. I sit up too straight, my arms are too straight, my hips act too much as a hinge, I dig my oars, I'm too aggressive at the catch, 15-degree layback is too little, I feather with the wrist too much, I grip the oar handles too much, arms away is bad... the list goes on. On the bright side, I'm "very coachable," so by the time the camp was over, they were getting super picky about my form because overall they were happy with what I was doing. I also learned how to maneuver my way back into a boat if you accidentally flip the boat. That was one of the things that made me the most worried about rowing in a single: that I would flip and not be able to get back in. But it was relatively easy. And I did not flip my boat. My dip in the water consisted of unstrapping my feet from the foot stretchers and dangling them over the edge before hopping into the water. How do you get back in? Simple. Get your oars lined up so that they're perpendicular to the boat and fully pushed against the oar locks. Grab the oars in one hand and rest the corresponding elbow on the oar and rigger. Then push yourself up and into the boat as if you were climbing out of a pool without using a ladder. Once you're on the boat, you're ready to get back to rowing.
Because I love rowing so much, camp was generous enough to give me something else to take away. No, I'm not talking about the embroidered t-shirt or the video of us rowing. I'm talking about wounds from an alligator. Yeah, an alligator attacked my boat while I was rowing and knocked me out of the boat. As I hurriedly climbed back into the boat, it nipped at my calves, but I managed to jump in and row away, knocking it in the head with an oar - kind of like punching a shark in the face, but using the oar instead. Haha! Just kidding, though that would be much cooler. Instead, I'm actually talking about the staph infection that I got from the tracks of my boat.
Track bite looks like this normally:
In case you want to know what a staph infection looks like, mine looked like this one over to the right:
Yeah, you're welcome for that loveliness. I had noticed Friday morning that my track bite on my left leg didn't seem normal, but I just figured it was some weird reaction due to heat and humidity. So I covered the red area with a band-aid and kept rowing. By Friday evening, I had to use 3 band-aids to cover most of the infected area on my left leg, and my right calf was showing the same signs. It got worse by Saturday, and some of the other rowers were commenting on how strange it looked. I kept it covered, but I bet jumping into the lake Saturday evening wasn't the best idea for already infected legs. Anyways, by Saturday evening, it was pretty painful if anything touched it. Just resting my calf on the bed while laying down hurt. And I had to take a few minutes of light rowing at the beginning of each session before I was able to ignore the pain.
As Yve and I were climbing into our rental on Sunday afternoon to trek back to Richmond, I nonchalantly said "We're gonna stop at Walmart to pick up some gauze. I think I have a staph infection." She was shocked that I hadn't been complaining about it all weekend and she had to convince me that I should get it checked out that day. I was going to wait until I returned to Texas. After a brief call to my dad for his CDC medical advice, I hit up my health insurance nurse advice line. The nurse I talked to was adamant that I go to a doctor that day. "The sooner the better." Because there weren't any 24-hour clinics nearby, I drove the hour and a half back to Richmond to a 24-hour clinic the nurse had looked up for me. He also told me "If they give you antibiotics you must take them exactly as directed. If they say twice a day that means every 12 hours, not just breakfast and dinner; three times a day is every eight hours, not breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's very important you do as they say. Don't do any strenuous exercise (Whoops, too bad I had been rowing three times a day.) and keep your legs elevated." Yikes. Way to make me struggle a bit more to stay calm. Thanks, buddy.
Though Yve and I joked how I narrowly escaped death or the loss of my legs, it could have happened. There was an instance a few years ago of an Ohio high school rower who got necrotizing fasciitis and had both of his legs amputated: Click here for the article. He didn't necessarily get the flesh-eating bacteria from the tracks of the boat, but the track bites allowed the bacteria to get into the tissue of the back of his calves. And staph infections associated with track bites is not unheard of. So be careful people. There is now a product you can buy specifically for your calf in order to prevent track bites. See rowdock.com for this. Or you can make your own track bite guards out of tube socks - just chop of the toe end of the sock.
