One crazy day.
Well this morning, I woke up in a panic because I realized I had forgotten to renew my library books, which meant I had to walk to the library and would have to pay a fine. I was not happy. I was also very stressed about rowing, even more stressed about my essay due for Friday, considering I haven’t even started the reading, and feeling like my stay positive attitude was crumbling quickly. I got up and wanted to cry all morning, did a little bit under my sunglasses as I walked to the library. Didn’t really even notice that it was a beautiful day outside. I renewed my books and had to pay 80 pence, which isn’t bad, but it still made me mad at myself. Then I came back and finished my essay for tomorrow’s tutorial. He really wants us to keep it to 4 pages, so I was working really hard for quite a while to cut out as much as I thought possible before I realized that my fifth page was my works cited page, and it had started out 4 pages. So then I tried to add in a little bit so it didn’t look quite like 3 pages and a paragraph. Then I quit, e-mailed it, and made some pasta for an early lunch. I didn’t feel like eating, but we were supposed to carb-load before the race.
I sent Amanda and facebook message to tell her when we were racing and say I was having a bad day. She called me while I was making my pasta, and helped make me feel better. It really is nice to have an old friend from Georgetown around. I love all my new friends, but sometimes it’s just nice to have someone who had known you for a while call and tell you it’s going to be okay. So that made me feel a little better, and after I forced some pasta down, I headed down to the river to make sure I got there to see the boys race.
Hanging out by the river was nice. It was sunny, and everyone around was nervous, so I didn’t feel like it was just me. We put face paint on Ray and tied a red ribbon around his wrist to make sure everyone would know he was our cox. We all had matching shirts and looked like a team.
To explain this racing a bit, all the boats start a length and a half apart. Then when the gun goes, everyone goes off with a racing start to get the rate up and go really fast. You try to go fast enough to catch up to the boat in front of you, and “bump” them. Now this can be an actual bump where you hit the boat, or the cox of the other boat can concede if it’s clear that you’re going to overtake them. Once you’ve bumped or have been bumped, you stop and get out of the way until everyone is done. The boys bumped pretty quickly, one of the first to bump in their division. We didn’t see them, but heard that they had from the commentary. We all cheered and got excited and then started our team talk. When the boys got back to the raft, we switched blades, adjusted footplates, and got in the boat to go off.
Our situation was a little different because we were at the head of our division. This meant we weren’t chasing anyone, only being chased. It also meant we had to row the whole course and hope we didn’t get bumped. So when the gun went off, we did a pretty good start. And we rowed hard. We were ahead, but it didn’t seem like the distance was that much. And I was getting so tired, but then it dawned on me that the boat behind us had to be getting tired too. We were fine, we didn’t even wind it up at the end. Our coach, Simon, said he thought we were about five lengths ahead. Which is awesome. We did it in 5:40, according to Simon’s time. Since we didn’t get bumped, we had rowed over to the next division. We were in Division 5, and now we’re in Division 4. That also meant we weren’t done, but had to go on and row with Division 4 and try to bump. This time, we would start as the very last in our division. We got off the river and got to rest for about 30 minutes. Simon brought us popsicles, which were the perfect snack for in between races, cold, sugar, and liquid. By the way, it was quite hot outside in the sun.
When it came time for Division 4, we got back in the boat and went off again. We went to the very end, and parked it where we would start (well not really parked). Then there was a bit of crowding with everyone else trying to get in their spots, but we were already where we needed to be, so we just sat and watched. Then when the gun went off, we did our start. If we hadn’t settled into our race pace, Ray said we probably would have caught the team in front of us within a few strokes. Even without that, we caught them pretty quickly. It was a little confusing though. It looked like their cox conceded, so Ray started to say hold it up so we would stop, but then the boat kept going, so we started going again. We were on opposite sides of the river, so we wouldn’t hit them, but we practically overtook them before the cox conceded again. Then we stopped, and they tried to stop, but not soon enough, and they ended up running into us a bit sideways. So our boat still got hit. But we bumped, and that means we’re still in Division 4. If we stay there, which we should, that means next year, we have a fixed position and won’t have to do rowing on, which is great. It was the first time Hannah had bumped, and she’s done 9 races. It was exhausting, but awesome. So my day had gotten better.
You have to admit, we look pretty good, even if you don’t know what we’re supposed to look like. As we were rowing back, we had to show off a little bit. So just as we passed the boat houses, Ray called a hands-away, which is where you do a stroke and then just push your hands out and hold them there to make sure the boat is balanced and no blades are on the water. So we did that, and everyone cheered. It was fun. So we can’t get complacent. We have to bump three more times to get blades. But it would be so awesome if we could do that. I could bring home a big blade, how cool would I be? Haha. Okay, I need to start reading, and then I have a feeling I’m going to sleep well tonight.
Oh and there are more pictures up on flickr.