The First Race

I won't go in to all the gory details of each rowing experience. Suffice it to say that we improved from our first. We went out in the four-man boat a couple of times and had some good experiences, then we got Thursday and Friday off.

And then, we raced. Just like that. We thought, “No. Surely he won't put us in the race after only three practices!” But he surely did. He also put us in the novice women's eight. The eight-man boat. The one we had never even seen in motion in our entire lives.

On Friday, we picked up our team uniforms from Coach in the cafeteria. That was the day that it became clear that he intended us to enter the race. Up until that point, we had clung to the hope that it wasn't so, but when he handed us the sleek black shirt and shorts with the yellow speed stripe, we could no longer deny it.

I called the uniforms sleek, and I suppose they are; they're that shiny sportswear material. The kind that hides sweat so your opponents can't see how hard you're sweating. More to the point, though, they are aerodynamic. I think that's what they were going for anyway. Beneficial for racing, I suppose, but I can't help but think that we were aerodynamic in the same way that meat is aerodynamic when it is stuffed inside of a sausage casing.

Leaving you with that image, I'll move right along to Saturday. Race day.

Sister and I awoke at the gloriously late hour of 7am. We had really been looking forward to that sleep-in. For breakfast, we microwaved pancakes that were left over from the family reunion this summer. Treat your body right, you know? We're athletes now, so that's important.

The docks are only about a half mile from our house when we walk, and more like three miles driving, so we've decided that it's best to walk. We got down there at 8:30 and piddled around with setting a few things up, hauling oars down, and generally being on call. The first draft of boats went down the river at 10:30; about twenty boats in various categories, and then they start rowing back, staggering the starts (so it's a timed race, not a neck-and-neck sort of thing). I was not in that draft, so this only serves to explain what went on. Obviously, if I was not directly involved, then it is of very little importance. I'm kind of the big deal.

Anyway, it took them a little over an hour, from when the first boat left to when the last boat got back. It's about a twenty-minute round trip; two kilometers up, two kilometers back. I had certainly never rowed that long or far; none of the novices had, actually.

Our turn came at 12:00. we hauled that big-as boat down to the water and lowered it in. When we were off, it became quickly apparent that it was going to be an even more difficult feat than we had thought. Not only were we contending with our own inexperience, but we were also battling the waves that the wind was stirring up. The waves caused the boat to be a little more difficult to keep level, but that wasn't the main problem. The main problem was the fact that it was extremely difficult (at times, impossible due to the lean of the boat) to get one's oars out of the water to recover for a new stroke. We would turn our blades and push, but the oar would get caught in the water and be sucked violently forward.

We were a wreck.

It was quite a relief to get to the start line, because it meant we were done paddling against the wind. It would be better on the way back. Or so we were told.

It was better on the way back in most ways. Unfortunately, I was outside of the realm of people who got to appreciate that. I lost my seat a few strokes into the race. My oar had caught in a wave and been pulled forward violently enough to push me back and off my seat, leaving my seat uselessly in front of me. I remained this way for a good number of strokes, reaching as far forward as could and laying back as far as I could at the finish, trying to make my stroke as long as the other girls'. It wasn't pleasant; one side of my rear took a licking from sitting on the hard, unforgiving platform between the tracks. On the other side, on my upper rear/lower back, I would hit the rigging behind me as I leaned way back. That bruise has held its vigour quite prodigiously. I also chafed on both low, outer calves along the slides. On top of that, my left hand has three ruptured blisters from that day. Yay. Now they are dry, cracked blisters. Double yay. In the end, we didn't have that bad of a time. Something like 16:50 or so; it was a matter of twenty seconds between us and the other novice eight boat. And, we made the front page of the local paper, so we're kind of a big deal. I'm going to leave it there, because I picked it up a few days after I started it and that train has left the station. We are off to the big city this weekend for another competition. I will try to keep my seat.