My Road [see: Row] to Fitness

Before I sat down to write this post, it seemed like an obvious, maybe even lazy topic: inform my readers about the roots of my fitness journey. I expected an easy write because, of course, I know this topic better than anyone—and we know how much I love talking and writing about myself. It’s proven much more difficult than expected, however, to pinpoint the origin of this interest in my life.

 Instinctively, I think back to the Running Club that I was part of through late elementary and middle school. The “running” part of Running Club might have been a slight exaggeration, as we really did a lot of walking through the wooded trails of the nearby park where we met. While I engaged in such [sometimes faux] active pursuits as a child and teenager, I was never as athletic as some of my siblings, who excelled in team sports and possessed actual hand-eye coordination, areas where I definitively floundered.

As a senior in high school, I purchased my first gym membership with a friend, and we went to Planet Fitness together a couple times a week. I distinctly remember our first time there, during which we spent around twelve minutes on the arc trainer and then *maybe* did a brief ab workout. I would estimate ten sit-ups maximum. The summer between high school and college led to an increase in my gym attendance, and although I never had a particular plan in mind when I showed up to exercise, I tried to experiment with a new weight machine each week so that I could gain some knowledge and confidence in the gym. And yet, this still doesn’t feel like the true beginning of my enthusiasm for fitness.

 The more I reflect on this topic, the more glaringly obvious the answer becomes: rowing. As a freshman in college, I impulsively joined my school’s crew team. Let’s step back for a second. Here I am at a new school 600 miles away from home, having never touched an oar or rowing shell before, and deathly afraid of open water – wait did she say...afraid of water? Yep. Any body of water that’s not a crystal clear, chlorinated pool pretty much terrifies me. So why, you might ask, would I choose to subject myself to a sometimes precarious position perched atop a slender boat with definite flipping potential doing a sport I had no connection to? It’s a very valid question. I have no idea. But here I am, almost three years later, still rowing away.

 While I can’t explain what brought me to rowing, I can explain what it gave to me. I’d never before felt confident in an athletic situation. I may have showcased some horrifically bad novice technique as we learned the stroke on the water, but so did everyone else. Rowing is a unique sport in that many people learn it later in life—you can’t, in fact, learn it all that much younger than middle school, because the equipment is sized for adults. Luckily for me, my rowing team is a club (like much of the collegiate rowing world) rather than a division team, so there were a whole host of freshman like me who had never even tried it before. Starting on the same baseline level as everyone else and struggling as a group with my novice squad gave me the confidence that I wasn’t the only performing below peak.

 When winter rolled around and we left the boathouse and the river behind to devote quality time to training in a humid basement room full of ergs (rowing machines) in the rec center, I found another surprise waiting for me: I wasn’t slow. I’ve never really been agile or lithe, and certainly not thin, which had discouraged me in running sports where I couldn’t keep up with other girls. On the erg, however, I learned to leverage my weight and strength from my summer at the gym to my advantage and pull splits (you measure rowing speed in terms of the time that it takes to complete 500 meters; you call this number your “split” time) that I was proud of. I certainly wasn’t the best on my team, and I’m still not, but being in competition for seats in the top boats and seeing my scores improve each time I got on the erg, especially during my novice year, encouraged me to continue with rowing and push myself to get faster. With that goal, I was able to tap into my current excitement about fitness.

 This process almost came to a screeching halt upon the advent of the dreaded unisuit, or “uni.” If you have never seen rowing uniforms, they consist of a one-piece connected tank top and shorts essentially made of thick spandex material. Basically, the worst nightmare of someone with low body image. My freshman year, I avoided this outfit through my position as a novice, which meant that I wasn’t invested in the team enough yet for them to buy me an expensive uniform, and my boat wore cotton tank tops stamped with our school’s logo instead. Much more forgiving on the abdominal region. I knew that the days of the uni would be imminent, but by the time I reached my sophomore fall, I had fallen too deeply in love with the sport to abandon it because of the spandex uniform.

 It’s been difficult for me to get used to wearing my uni around at regattas, in public, where anyone can see me. But my commitment to rowing and the fitness that comes with it forced me to get comfortable with it. Do I like wearing my uni? I don’t always love the way that my body looks in it, but I do love representing my school and my team. I love that rowing allowed me an opportunity to feel like I was good at something, for pretty much the first time ever in an athletic sense. I love that rowing catalyzed my pursuit of a more well-rounded fit and healthy lifestyle.

 Exceeding my expectations of myself as a rower has pushed me to challenge my expectations in other areas as well, hence my running adventures as of late. I’m very grateful for everything that rowing has given me. While I haven’t conquered my fear of water (catch me crying about manatees when we train in Florida), I have conquered my fear of the uni, and I feel more comfortable in my body because of it. All in all, this confidence is the most important thing that I’ve gained through fitness.