From LBPOSTSports.com
Our own Mike Guardabascio and J.J. Fiddler have been on some pretty difficult assignments before, but they’ve never been required to beat the sun in order to get them. Earlier this week, that streak came to an end as our sportswriters braved the morning to spend a workout session with the dedicated men and women of Long Beach State crew. Enjoy the story by Mike and the video by J.J., and be thankful that you didn’t have to be there with them.
“I can’t feel my lungs”
Driving to JJ’s house at 5am, something is gnawing at the back of my exhausted mind. I haven’t slept, because I just finished putting out that day’s edition of the site about ten minutes ago, so at first I dismiss it as a side effect of work-induced insomnia. Then I realize what’s bugging me: the streets are empty, deserted. Long Beach looks like the set of some post-apocalyptic zombie movie right now.
I pick JJ up and we head south, towards the water. Sprinklers blur the meridians, and a thin vapor clings to the streetlights down Studebaker. JJ and I communicate primarily through grunts, and one of us realizes, about halfway to the shore: “These kids do this five days a week.”
The kids we’re thinking about, the ones we’re on our way to visit, are the hardy student-athletes who make up the Long Beach State Crew team. There are over fifty members of the team, and as we cross through Spinnaker Bay, we’re suddenly part of a caravan that seems to include all of them. “This is like Field of Dreams,” JJ says, as we’re swept into the boathouse parking lot with about ten vehicles in front of us and another ten behind. We climb out of the well-heated car into a blast of frigid ocean air. Standing on the shore of Marine Stadium, we can see people jogging, or walking dogs across the water. “Jesus,” JJ says, with a mild note of distaste.
Don’t get me wrong—it’s not that we aren’t motivated, hardy young men. Between us, JJ and I put in about 200 hours of work a week on this site. We’re nearly as dedicated to Long Beach sports as it’s physically possible to be. But: five in the morning? I cough, and JJ shivers, and we turn to look inside the boathouse, where members of the Crew team are working the weights, laughing, and generally looking as if it weren’t, you know, five in the morning.
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