Cleveland.

This weekend I was back at Cleveland for the Head of the Cuyahoga regatta. This is the 6th year that I've been around for this regatta and the FIRST year that it was miserably rainy and cold. I'm not sure if I've seen a regatta with more rain than this one, and thankfully it was in the upper 50s and low 60s for most of the bad weather. By the time we could barely stand it anymore, the sun came out and the day turned out to be bright and 70 degrees!

My race wasn't what I would've hoped, but it was great to see my family and friends, and of course to visit my home boathouse. It made everything worth it :)

I was only at home for a matter of hours, really, but found some old giant birthday cards that my mom had put in my room. This one is from my surprise 16th birthday that Alex put on for me. It was one of the nicest things I think anyone has ever done, and it took months of collaborative and detailed thought and planning. He had everyone sign this big card for me; reading over it made me miss my friends from home so much!

Seeing everyone made me even more excited to go back for a bit of a longer stay in 3 weeks for my half-marathon. It felt like my little Rumbleroar and me had to pack up and leave a little too soon this time!

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In the future this week I have rowing every day except Tuesday, and our practices will mostly be long hard pieces (20 and 30 minute-intervals with drills in between). We have several weeks until our regatta in Indy so we have some down time to prepare for that.

Today I did an extraordinarily slow easy run, which was needed. At the end of the week I hope to do one last long run and then taper. I'm hoping to do the 7-mile run to the boathouse tomorrow afternoon with my Running Friend. I've had some weird running days recently, which I'm hoping is just a phase that I snap out of this week!