How rowing prepared me for life's obstacles.
In rowing when you race, it’s a 2000m course. Now 2000 meters sounds short. When describing the race to non-rovers, it’s easy to simply say the race is just a “2 K” which stands for two kilometers. However in reality, a two thousand meter race is so much more than that. Two thousand meters is a bitch of a distance. You are racing for longer than 4 minutes, which means you break out of your anaerobic threshold. Your lungs are screaming, your legs feel like they are ready to burst. Two thousand meters is a distance that requires endurance. Yet you race at the pace of a sprint.
Racing distances that require both aerobic and anaerobic effort makes training rather unique. Practice would consist of short spirt workouts over a period of two hours. Or long rows than covered large amounts of miles to prepare us to be in the best racing condition on the day of the race. You prepare, your train long and hard for endless months all for the one most important race — The final. Blood sweat and tears go into your session at training. Friendships are strengthened and the team becoming like a family for four years.
When race day comes, you’re prepared for anything. Ready to face the other competitors in their boats. Ready to face the 200 meter course, as your stare at the finish line, which seems suddenly much further away. A fast race is about 8 minutes. Along those 8 minutes the race can be broken down into 4 sections, the beginning, the middle 500, the 1000 and the final 500. The beginning is a fast flash water moving, oars clanking and coxswains screaming at the crews. The middle 500 is a place to settle into a rhythm and hold the targeted pace. The middle 1000 is where crews make their pushes to advance on one another, and the final 500 is an all-out bloodbath to fight for that last inch of water. So why am I telling you all of this? Because even the best athlete cannot always be prepared for the unexpected challenges that can come across their path.
8 minutes. That is 256 individual strokes. 256 individual instances where something could go wrong. An example of this is during one race we had been undefeated for the entire season. At This moment our boat was coming third and one of your teammates caught a crab, (A crab is where the oar catches the water, and the oar gets flipped in the wrong direction, it’s like putting on the brakes on a moving freight train) Everything must stop, the rower must fix their oar by twisting and slamming it down, and then the crew can start up and continue racing.
When her oar caught the water, the entire boat started to turn to port side. We screamed to a halt. She got her blade out of the water, while two more crews blazed past us. We were determined to catch up. We had gone from 3rd to 5th place in a matter of seconds. Suddenly her oar was back in position, and we started back up at our race pace. With only 3 minutes to go, we didn’t have much time to catch up. The amazing thing was, we chose not to let this setback deflate us and cause us to give up.
Instead we decided to persevere. We pushed harder than we did in the beginning of the race when our legs were fresh. We started to make gains on the boats that had passed us. Stroke by stroke, we caught up to these two crews. All of a sudden we jumped from 5th to 3rd… From 3rd to second…. This unbelievable comeback gave us more adrenaline to continue onward and keep going. Faster, harder and stronger. The boat increased its speed and right down to the last 100 meters two boats were neck and neck, side by side, fighting for that first place. As both boats crossed the line and the horn sounded to signal. Our entire boat stop rowing and waits to see the final result.
The announcer yells that we had won. We managed to catch up. From third place, to fifth right back to victory. We had overcome an unexpected setback and won. That’s the thing. When life gives you a setback that you don’t expect, you can give up early, accept defeat and never achieve your full potential. Our boat was running behind and coming in third place. However when that crab hit the athletes oar, all of a sudden the attitude of the boat changed, and all the girls worked together in order to make a comeback. With the end result showing us as the victors.
That is exactly how life is, when you get an obstacle, hurdle or unexpected setback. Fight that urge to accept an early defat. Use determination and grit to overcome that obstacle in your path. That obstacle is actually there to show you that you can indeed overcome this challenge. You never know, you might end up victorious. , instead of just settling for a mediocre third.
