I wish I had something to share besides rowing news, but alas, it's all there is...

We had a race in Maine last weekend. Two races, actually. It was bitter cold and snowing. No one wanted to be there, and it showed in our first race. We got brutally beat by UNH. Tensions were high coming off the water. There was a bit of a blow out fight that went something like:

Meghan: "This is rediculous. We gave up out there. I'm f*%^*$@ sick of losing! We're stronger than every boat out there but none of you can get fired up enough to beat them."

various girls: "I pulled my hardest!"

"No! you didn't. If we had pulled our hardest we would have won. That's a bad excuse, you're just trying to make yourselves feel better."

So Meghan walked away angry and some girls started to cry and I was very discouraged but running around trying to convince the crying girls of their worth on the team and Meghan that she shouldn't give up on us, we'll find the fire.
A good tongue lashing was all we needed, because in the second race we rowed our hearts out, finally got the stroke-rating above a 32 (we've been trying, unsuccessfully until this race, to row at 35 strokes per minute) for the whole 2K, and won the race. We needed to get angry, and whether girls wanted to prove Meghan wrong or were just sick of losing, we finally got it together and rowed with more intensity than I've ever felt rowing with Middlebury Crew. To give an idea of the difference in effort: In our first race, we were 19 seconds off UVM's time (we didn't race them, but they're our biggest competition so we use their time as a measure of how we're doing). In our second race, we were a second FASTER than their time. Noel had ridden the launch behind us for both races, and said it looked like a different team. He gave us quite the pep talk on Monday, and said how proud he was of our boat that we were finally able to dig deep and push ourselves. He said:

"Racing is hard. Racing is F*&%^* hard," he never swears so we knew he meant it, "I used to be terrified of racing. It took me over 36 hours to prepare myself, mentally, for a race, because I knew that when the starter yelled go I was going to be asked to do something harder than I wanted to do, and the only way I'd have any self-respect getting off the water was if I left everything out on the course. It hurts, and it's not easy to ask yourself to give that much effort, which is why most people are not rowers. But if you ask it of yourselves, and you put all your energy into each stroke, than racing is the best there is. You decide now what you're going to do at New Englands. You have 4 practices left."

After that, we had the best practice I've had with Middlebury crew in my 3 years rowing. The boat was intense, and focused, and every girl was exhausted after each piece. Now we have New Englands in 3 days! I leave Friday at 12:30 for Massachusetts. I'm so excited! I think we finally get the difference between racing to get it over with and racing to win, and we're ready to KDB at Worcester! (KDB is our super secret cheer that we do before each race. I can't tell you what it means, but I can tell you that when we KDB we win medals).

Now off to the library to work on that other really important part of my Middlebury Experience...academics.