I'm a novice rower. I'm not an especially sporty person, I have / had problems with my knees and never found the one thing I wanted to do.
In my mind, it was rowing - the one thing that was IMPOSSIBLE to do at home. So I didn't do anything except the odd gym session here and there. Some people at school told me I was fat, lazy and whatnot.
About ten weeks ago, I got into an eight for the first time.
Two weeks later, I was in bow seat for the first time.
Four weeks ago, bow seat became something like a regular thing. Apparently, this is MY seat now, my job, and people tell me I'm good at it.
On the last weekend of November, I was in a sub crew for a race, because only one novice crew could go down (and my 2k was not the best, due to a mean cold.). It would have been my first race, probably, and it was cancelled - bummer.
Last weekend, though, I won my first race. It was for fun, a mixed scratch crew, and "only" 500 metres - they felt endless in the first race.
To cut the long story short: There were two novices. The guy in stroke seat and me, in bow seat. The crew bookends, so to say. And we rocked. We won two out of three races - the third one was lost to a nearly all-senior crew, most of them from my club. But we kept up with them. It was half a lenght, maybe. We crossed the finish line while the other crew's cox was playing the Star Wars-theme via the coxbox.
I've never gone this fast. I've never been able to keep up with a rate of 37 - 42 for more than 15 seconds. I've never been this confident and this proud of myself when it comes to sports.
Rowing does that to me. And it feels like this is the one sports that could be more than a hobby. In fact, if I'm honest, it already is.
