Seeing the Silver Lining

Making the adjustment from active teammate to active benchwarmer, of sorts, has definitely been difficult. I went out for the first water practice of the season, only to sit in a launch and watch everyone else row. They looked so nice. Their technique is definitely improving and the progress—even from the beginning of spring training—can be seen. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to witness.

But I’d like to further explain my idea of the “active benchwarmer.” Clearly, there is no bench to warm in crew, as there is in other sports, but I will use this term to refer to myself as an injured member of the team who cannot participate in regular activities of the sport who is still active.

The day after I was prescribed the wrist brace was a land practice, so my only option for the day was the cardio machines. Now, I really do not like running. In the past, I have forced myself to do it, but I certainly do not like it. Hence, I do not use the treadmill, seeing as that’s as close as you can get to running indoors at the gym. But my little ailment gave me some sort of mental strength that involuntarily put me on this machine. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I didn’t want to do it, I just found myself there after walking into the cardio room—I didn’t have to push myself to run on it. I did the treadmill for about 20 minutes and then moved on to a few other machines. But apparently, this was just the beginning for me.

On Saturday—just two days later—the car that I was in for practice had technical difficulties, which ended up making us late to practice. When I finally got there, some of the women who could not form a boat (because some of their boatmates were in my car) quickly asked me to join them for a run. I thought twice about this. I was kind of, sort of, maybe planning to run on my own, but I hadn’t actually convinced myself at that point. And running with others is always difficult for me because I jog more than I run so I get left behind pretty quickly. Regardless, my newfound determination to continue to keep up with the team made my decision for me. I ran yet again—this time, with others and I kept up.

The most pivotal point, though, was the next day. A friend of mine had been asking me to go on a run with him since he found out that running was my new focus. I was declining him left and right because he ran cross-country in high school and I thought it would just be impossible to run with him; it’d probably be embarrassing, more than anything else. But finally, for some reason unbeknownst to God, I agreed to let him take me for a run.

Here I was, getting my sneakers on, thinking it would be like every other “run” I have ever gone on in my entire life. We stepped outside and after walking for a few yards, he ran, and thus, he made me run. I was forced to actually run. It was different than my version of running, which is essentially jogging. He took me on a loop that was approximately three miles, affording me breaks when they were absolutely necessary and pushing me at the appropriate times. Despite feeling awful for most of the run, I felt great afterwards.

I was pretty happy with myself, but I did not think it was that big of a deal. People run everyday. Big deal. But the morning after that, my team was scheduled to erg and lift at practice. So I grabbed my iPod and went on the same route my friend took me on the previous day. Not only was I able to run at a solid pace, by the new standards I learned, but I made less stops. Upon completion of my run, I felt like I had improved even more, all in a span of twenty-four hours. This is something that I have never experienced with running because I always jogged at the same, slightly pathetic pace.

So when it was too foggy to row this morning and it was announced that we would be doing the alternative workout, I was happy. This meant that I would get a chance to work on my running in a setting with many other runners, who I usually cannot keep up with. It would give me the chance to gauge my progress and see where I am in relation to the rest of the girls. To my surprise, I kept up with them, over every hill and around every turn for the entire hour that we ran. I also got to do that entire workout with the team.

I guess you could say that I am starting to see the silver lining to my setback.