Rowing practice for the corporate challenge did not go as well as planned this past Saturday. In fact, it was awful. Practice started with our boats one rower and two coxswains absent. The coach offered three high schools kids twenty bucks each to come on the water and act as bodies.
We lined up our boats with the intended race day configuration. Perez was stroking and I was in seven. The other experienced member of our crew was in three-seat. After spending twenty minutes on drills and warm ups we decided to have all eight people row. Eight different people, and eight different ways of rowing. It was a disaster. It was very typical of a crew’s first time rowing all eight, but throughout the course of the practice people just kept getting frustrated and worse. I managed to only get jabbed in the kidneys twice. After an hour of flopping around the river we brought the boats back in and our coach suggested we drop down a level in the competition from ‘intermediate’ to ‘novice’. Advice I think we should really take to heart.
I know this is supposed to be fun, but that competitive spirit keeps popping up and causing angry thoughts. 🙂