15 years ago yesterday I went to my first rowing practice with my high school team. To quote Drake, “started from the bottom now we here”.

Yesterday I posted the speech given by the alum we honored at our annual banquet last month – if you haven’t read it yet, definitely check it out. Lots of pearls of wisdom in there. I also posted a couple new recordings last week as well. If you’re a high school coxswain, I recommend listening to the first one (and reading the post linked below it) if you anticipate racing any time trials this year.

I’m flying to Oakland tonight for winter training with the lightweights (shout out if you followed the JFK shitshow on Instagram yesterday) and we’re rowing out of the Strokes boathouse so I might see some of you over the next week – definitely say hi if you see me around! I also think I’m doing a very chill and super informal clinic/Q&A that’s tentatively scheduled for Wednesday evening so if any of you are interested in coming to that, hit me up and I’ll share the details.

Thinking ahead to our Oakland trip and the small amount of free time I anticipate having – what questions do you guys have about training trips? I’ve gotten a handful of questions about them over the years (what’s a typical day like, what to pack, what should you do during the down time, etc.) but I’m thinking I might try to film a quick Q&A while we’re out there to answer any questions that come up between now and then. Feel free to leave a comment or email me if you have one!

Posted some gift ideas last week so if, like me, you haven’t started Christmas shopping yet, hopefully this will help jump start that process. I also added a thing to the contact form so you can indicate whether you want to keep your question private or if I can post it on the blog. Either one is totally fine but if there’s nothing super identifying, definitely consider allowing it to go on the blog – you’d be surprised how many people have the exact same question, even when it seems like it might be something specific to just you or your team.

I am what can only be described as “catastrophically behind” when it comes to replying to emails but I’m going to try to catch up on them over Thanksgiving so if you’ve emailed me at any point since … late August … and haven’t gotten a reply yet, you should get one soon. Many, many apologies that those had to take a backseat to work and other stuff throughout the fall – I should have anticipated that but didn’t to the extent that they did.

On the flip side though, I’ve been having some really good conversations lately with coxswains over Skype and Google Hangouts so if you have anything you want to go over and would prefer to actually talk about it, check out the “work with me” tab and sign up for a one-on-one. Since the majority of us are in winter training now, this is the perfect time for this – especially if you can get permission from your coach to do this during practice, assuming you don’t have any other actual responsibilities to tend to. Getting on my calendar is a for sure way to guarantee that any questions you have will get answered ASAP (especially when we’re in-season) so if you’ve got stuff you want to go over or get feedback on from the fall season, hit me up!

Dallas coxswains (and heavyweight rowers): I’ll be at Dallas United, Dallas Jesuit, and possibly White Rock Rowing Club next Tuesday and Wednesday. If you’re interested in coxing/rowing at Columbia, definitely introduce yourself! (Or even if you’re not, it’d still be great to meet you!)

Yesterday I posted about what not to do when emailing college coaches, all based on an email I got last week. Pro tip, whenever you’re emailing coaches, re-read it and ask yourself “is this something that could potentially get talked about and/or passed around as a cautionary tale for future prospective recruits”. If you’ve been to any of the big camps the last few summers then you know this is something all the coaches love talking about so if you wanna avoid being one of those people, definitely check out that post.

Busy, busy weekend ahead. I’ll be around the course a bit on Saturday and most of the day on Sunday so if you see me definitely feel free to say hi! In the mean time, if you want/need to do some last minute prep, make sure you check out the “Head of the Charles” tag, specifically the posts on the bridges, turns, Weeks, landmarks, calling your race, and of course,  yesterday’s post on what to race in if you’re not sure what to wear/pack. Good luck to everybody racing and uh, stay away from those bridge piers.

So the blog turned five this past Sunday, which is wild. Thanks for sticking around this long!

The old site is officially no-more so if you try to go to it, it’s just going to redirect you here. I’m in the process of updating all the external links (in each of the 1800+ posts) that pointed to the old site so if you see a link with a strikethrough through it, that just means I haven’t gotten to that post yet. There’s a few thousand to do and it’s a tedious process but I hope to have it done by next week (ish). In the mean time though, know that the post itself isn’t gone, all you’ve gotta do is search the title in this blog and you’ll be able to find it.

Second bit of news, if you’ve been to HOCR in the last four years you’ll know that I usually do some kind of walking tour on Thursday and/or Friday with coxswains who want to get an “insider’s point of view” of the course. It’s still up in the air about whether I’ll be able to do it this year since I’m obviously not in Boston anymore but if anyone’s interested I can definitely try to make it happen. It would most likely be sometime on Friday so shoot me an email if you might be into doing that. If you don’t think you’ll have time for that on Friday but you still have questions, feel free to hit me up.

Last thing – new recordings post went up last week with some HOCR audio so check that out if you wanna hear some quality coxing. The St. Joe’s alumni race is amusing and a perfect example of how to take a race seriously without taking yourself too seriously. Also last night I posted about why “preparedness matters“, which I borrowed from one of the lightweight coaches.

We’ve got two weeks (and two blog posts) until HOCR so if there’s anything I should post about that I haven’t already talked about over the last five years, comment below or send me an email.

Couple good posts up this week and last week, including yesterday’s post on how to steer through wake and last week’s post on shortening the learning curves (aimed at younger coxswains but applicable to coxswains at any level). Also, if you didn’t watch Monday’s video, check it out and share it with any new coxswains on your team so they’re familiar with the tools they’ll need when rigging/de-rigging the boats.

Hope you guys are enjoying the new look of the blog! If you haven’t yet, check out the “work with me” page – it’s probably the biggest addition to the new site and what I’m most excited to get up and rolling. Any questions, feel free to shoot me an email!

Yesterday I posted a new “coxswain skills” post on tips for running a smooth practice. Like a lot of what’s on the blog, it’s all simple stuff that is easy to overlook because it’s so simple. Varsity coxswains, I really encourage you to spend time over the next week while we’re still in the early part of the season to go over this stuff with the new coxswains on your team and review it with anyone who just moved up from novice to varsity so that they’re familiar with how your coaches run practice, what the expectations are, etc. so you can hit the ground running when the pace of practice starts picking up.

Guys, I am cautiously optimistic that I’ll have the new site up by September 1st, which is reallyexciting. I’m trying to take my own advice and not let perfect get in the way of good so as far as the big stuff goes, I’m on track to have all that stuff completed by the end of this month. If you haven’t been following my Instagram stories, keep an eye on them over the next few weeks because I’ve been sharing sneak peeks of what the site’s gonna look like and so far, the feedback has been pretty solid.

The final big project is tackling all the coxswain recordings. There’s a lot that have been removed from YouTube or Soundcloud and some of the early posts from 3-4 years ago just have way too many recordings in them so I want to re-do those and make each post a little shorter and more straightforward.

If there’s anything you wanna see on the new site – literally anything – I’m all ears! I really want to make this site work for you guys and be less blog-y and more actual website-y so any suggestions you’ve got, I’d love to hear them.