Remember how I said I was a reluctant rower? Then I became a reluctant coxswain, now I’m a reluctant racer. This has clearly spiraled out of my control.
Since the end of July when I officially became a seasoned coxswain (I use those words very loosely), we’ve been training for other regattas. There was one just this past weekend in Toledo in which I was part of the crew for not one…but two races.
In our first race, I was in an Open Womens Novice 4 category. That is a lot of words, and to be honest, I’m not sure I put them in the right order. Basically it means that there were 4 women in the boat who had started rowing this season who were a variety of age. The age range in our boat was 15 to 68 years old and we figured we would be racing against high school girls. We figured right. I will just cut to the chase and say that we beat down these high school girls by a full minute. They even asked one of the race marshals before the race how old we were. They thought they could beat us just because they were younger. Uh…No.
In the second race, I was the coxswain. Now…this one did not go as well. The category for this race was a Mixed Masters 8, which meant there were 8 people, 4 guys, 4 girls…who were older than 25. I managed to keep us on a straight course. So straight in fact, that I didn’t stay to the right of one of the buoys. I decided to make our path shorter by going straight. Sure, it added a 15 second penalty to our time, but I was going straight. No zigzag slalom course for me. Well, our end result was dead last, but I think we made a strong effort.
All in all, it was a long day, and the constant running around of rigging and de-rigging boats was not all that much fun, but I know it’s a necessary evil and every person is important and needed to get the job done.
And hey, at least I kept the cox box safe!
