I love driving to any destination that takes me towards Lexington Reservoir on Hwy 17 and the Santa Cruz Mountains. Despite driving this road for years, the scenery here never seizes to amaze me.
On any given day the mountains are beautiful with clear blue skies or with the gentle mist of the Pacific Ocean Fog. The scenery is always awe-inspiring.
So you can imagine what a smile I must have had every morning at 8am when I had to take my daughter Rani to a rowing class off Hwy 17 😊.
Though it’s just a 10-minute drive to the rowing club, the road is so beautiful that I would leave a little early just so I could enjoy a leisurely drive and be able to slow down to admire the nature around me.
My daughter Rani has been wanting to take rowing for a long time, but the time commitment is huge – a minimum of 3 hours a day after school. She wasn’t sure she could do that and keep up with her grades. Instead she decided to take recreational rowing over the summer break.
Every summer her job lasted all the way till school began, so rowing never seemed to happen. But this year, her summer job ended early and Rani promptly sighed up for a one week rowing camp right here off Hwy 17 and Lexington Reservoir.
How did she like it? She absolutely loved it! She said she wished she had done this every summer and described it as a great workout with beautiful nature, and her time on the water calm and peaceful.
Los Gatos Rowing Club
The Los Gatos Rowing Club is a premier rowing club with students coming for training from all over the Bay Area. Coached by young rowing champions, this rowing club is situated in a beautiful enclave off the Lexington Reservoir at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Summer Rowing Camp
In the summer the camp is open to both novices and varsity students who can sign up for weekly rowing classes. Each class starts off with stretching exercises and interval training and then lessons on rowing and rowing as a team. The rowing boat shown below is a docked stationary rowboat that is used for initial training before the students head onto the water.
On the last day of the rowing camp parents and friends are invited to watch their kids row and compete in one-minute races. To see the rowers in action, parents are taken on a speedboat onto the water!
Here is a look at the Los Gatos Rowing Club and the rowing competition that Rani and her fellow rowers participated in.
First, a look at the boat shed and the extremely long rowboats
Here is an interesting tit-bit, I found out from Rani
Rowers don’t wear any shoes as there are shoes attached to the boats that they slide their foot into. One can choose to wear sox or go bare-feet. She laughingly informed me that her feet are so small that they kept sliding out of the boat-shoes 😀🥾.
Getting ready for the rowing competition! Kids remove their shoes before getting into the rowboat.
Parents head out on speedboats to see the race.
The race was between an 8-seater row-boat and a 4-seater rowboat. As our coach pointed out when I asked him about the uneven number of rowers on the two boats, it’s harder for the 8-seater rowers because all 8 have to by synchronized to be able to row fast. In the case of the 4-seater rowers they actually have a slight advantage.
The rowers competed in a total of 5 races! What stamina on these young kids!
After the races, the rowers head back on shore and begin the process of bringing their giant oars and row- boats back to the shed.
A successful race deserves pizza and water!
Both my eldest daughter Sri and I have never seen a rowing competition except in the movies, this was a unique and fabulous experience to see it in person! In fact, it looked so appealing that when Hitesh saw the pictures he thought of signing up for their adult rowing classes!
