Everything has a start and an end. In almost all cases the start is the hardest part to overcome. The start is the most stressful part, and it takes time to get past it. Starting out as a freshman in college, there is a lot to get used to; many things to change and to be aware of all at once. Being aware at the start is the most important. You must be aware of everything so you don’t miss your stroke, the most important stroke, the one that starts you off.Once you’re off you can do anything but stop, you can’t stop, if you stop you fall behind and catching up is a hard battle to win. Remember though not to run yourself thin. Learn to pace your battle and conserve your energy. There are plenty of things in life, and we need to enjoy them while we still can. Stay focused at all times though, catch water and pull, don’t stop until the finish.
You can’t see your finish, but you see all that is going past you, pay attention to the white buoys, when they turn orange your stretch is about to begin. The coxswain yells “300, this is what we worked for gentlemen, take it up.” Now it’s here to the finish line, every bit of energy comes out on these last 30 strokes, quitting is not an option. The people on the shore are chanting your hometown and boat name, you want to look but you can’t. “Power 10 guys,” 100 meters to go, our hardest gets even harder. It starts to hurt more and more, stroke after stroke. 10 strokes seem like 10 years, then you finish.
Everything has a finish, but you decide how.
“You notice one thing at the finish line, the boats that lose look tired, but the one that worked harder, looks like they can row back and do it again.”
Head Coach of The Westerville Crew Rowing Team.
2 comments:
I really enjoyed reading your blog. It sounds like you have a love for it. When you talked about how your sport wasn't that popular in high school, I can really relate to that. Although, the weird thing was, on my team we had some of those "popular" people on it and is still wasn't a sport talked about. Mainly because it wasn't football. My school was small so people really only enjoyed those games on Friday nights. Anyhow, it was neat to hear that you met some of your closest friends by doing this. I played volleyball with my best friend and also met some great friends because of it.
I love that saying you have, "Everything has a finish, but you decide how." That is really inspiring. I love how you put great detail in your blogs. It really feels like the reader is in the action. Great job on that. Reading some of your blogs it makes me want to be apart of your team. It sounds like a lot of fun and the joy you get out of it is really neat. I think it's neat that you have that much love for the sport. Some people never find that so it's neat that you write about it so that in a way, other people are able to experience that with you.
My volleyball team was big into team bonding. When I read your one post about becoming a family, it reminded me about what we used to do. We really hit that hard to, we would spend a lot of time together. And I think it helped us with our season. Because we were all so close and used to each other, we were able to trust one another out on the court. I think that team bonding is a very important thing to a team and it’s sad that your team now has lost that.
Overall, I really enjoyed your blog. Again, it sounds like you have a lot of memories and love for the sport. It was nice to read your experiences with it all.
Very nice analogy, David. You do have a knack for creative writing, and I hope you continue to pursue it. Rich post, here.
5+/5
Post a Comment