Getting active

September 4, 2022

With classes now in full swing, life has begun to fill up with work and things so there has been less time for fun and other exploration. In spite of that, though, I’ve definitely still had a very productive week! Most significantly, I joined a rowing club! And a running club!

I’d reached out to this new rowing club per a suggestion from someone from the previous club that I’d been in touch with, who told me about this one located just a few minutes away from where I am living. On Monday afternoon they got back to me and said I could drop by and row, so I did! I happened to be attending during the open rowing session, so there were around 20 people in total at practice. I was greeted warmly by some of the coaches, and ended up going out in a double with a man named Charlie from Glasgow. In spite of the fact that he was quite new to sculling (having done sweep rowing in college roughly a decade ago), we had a jolly old time! To round out the evening, we were treated to an absolutely stunning sunset over the water which truly made that night one of the best that I’d had in months.

Lovely sunset as seen from the grassy area just outside of our boathouse.

I rowed a couple more times at the club this week, taking out a single and a quad (my two favorites), which were especially exciting because I was able to row so much further inland than I had when I was rowing in the double. Hopefully soon I will take my phone with me on one of these rows and more thoroughly document my exploration of Stockholm’s many archipelagos. It’s fascinating to view the city and surrounding area from water, instead of on land.

In addition to joining this rowing club, I also joined my first running club! I was able to sign up for the Stockholm Half Marathon which is taking place in just under two weeks, and this running club put on a group run in connection to the race! I met up with one of my friends (and a professor from the study abroad program that I’m a part of who initially told us about the Half Marathon) at this group run in a local park, and was surprised to find a crowd of over 100 people!

Stockholm Running Club group run!

We were led through a warmup as a group, and then split into different pace groups and ran a 10k around one of the larger islands in the city. I really enjoyed chatting with people as I was running, as I’ve found the population of the city here to be more diverse than anything I’ve experienced before! I was running with people from Sweden, France, Germany, Uganda, and so many other places! I love learning about everyone’s story about what brought them to Stockholm, and so far everyone has been quite willing to share!

I’m looking forward to traveling to Lund, a city in southern Sweden, next week as part of my core course on Engineering Sustainable Environments where we’re going to explore some of the infrastructure in place in the region and learn how it has been constructed such that it minimizes environmental impact and maximizes individual quality of life. Hopefully I will also be traveling to either Germany or Estonia before the month is done for some sort of weekend trip, though no tickets have been booked yet.