There's no Crying in... Rowing?

Nothing feels worse than quitting. I often think this to myself while I’m running and feeling my energy or my focus dwindling. And, at least for me, it’s true—there’s no worse feeling in the world than stopping before you meet your goal, especially once you realize after you’ve already stopped that maybe you didn’t need to as much as you thought you did in the moment. So, I often think of that feeling when I’m trying to keep pushing myself during the more difficult portions of my runs.

 It applies to rowing too, maybe even more so. When I’m fighting through a long or especially challenging workout on the ergs (rowing machines) alongside my teammates, the pressure to keep going is twofold. First, there’s an internal desire for personal accomplishment and that feeling of achievement that comes from finishing the piece, completing a workout, hitting a personal best. Second, there’s an external pressure to continue. It’s different than running—if I stop during one of my runs, nobody really knows but me. I don’t have to tell anyone [although I usually do when I lament about it on my Instagram page]; in fact, I could prettily easily lie about ever having stopped at all. In an environment where you’re exercising with others, however, that’s obviously completely different. Not only will everyone know if you quit, but you’ll have stopped while other people are still going, meaning that it must have been possible to keep on pushing through the pain.

 Pain. What an interesting and topical concept. Alright, Quinn, you may be wondering, where are you going with all this nonsense about quitting? Well, I’m heading towards this idea of pain. When I talk about rowing and running, these two sports (especially when considering rowing in its indoor, erg-based sense) have some intrinsic commonalities. I’m going to categorize running, rowing, and other sports in this bunch (swimming, skiing, etc.) as “race sports.” Race sports are more individualistic than their opposite, what I’ll call “score sports,” like soccer, basketball, hockey, or lacrosse. I suppose there’s also a third category that includes things like figure skating and horseback riding that I’ll call “performance sports,” in which you receive points from judges based on some performative aspect of the activity and which are especially technique-heavy. Score sports mostly have their respective foundations in teamwork, coordination, and center around scoring points (usually with a ball or like object) against one other team or opponent. Race sports, then, measure success in terms of who completes the designated activity (2000 meter row, 10 mile run, etc.) first. This means that race sports are rooted in pushing yourself (you, not your team) to your absolute maximum threshold of pain in order to achieve your best speed.

 So, now that we’ve digressed into my lengthy exploration of different types of sports, we’ve reached pain again. In a sport where the goal is finding your personal max and performing at it—not scoring a goal, not performing well for judges—what kind of pain is too much pain? In the world of rowing [as far as I know from the context of my own team], the 2000 meter test is pretty much the ultimate barometer of a rower’s strength and success on the erg, which ideally translates well onto the water. For women, it takes somewhere around eight minutes, give or take a minute or so on either end to account for the whole spectrum of rowers. This is to say that it’s not an all-out sprint, but it feels like one. After about 500 meters in, you feel like your legs are on fire and simultaneously so impossibly heavy. I often spend pretty much the whole eight minutes of the test questioning whether or not I’ll be able to finish. And then, with 250 meters left (about a minute), you actually do end the piece in a true sprint, putting everything that’s left in you out there to finish out the race. There is nothing like the entirely drained feeling that comes over you after a 2K. But it’s muscular soreness and fatigue, pain that you expect. If it doesn’t hurt, you’re honestly probably not doing it right. You want to feel exhausted afterwards, because that indicates that you’ve tried your best, that you’ve performed to your maximum.

 That’s what I mean when I say that some types of pain are good. Some types of pain are combined with the elation of accomplishment, the astounding feeling of surprising yourself in what you can do. I feel it in running all the time—I start scaling a steep hill and suddenly my quads are burning and my calves are cramping and I wonder if I should just stop. But then I get to the top and I feel as though I’ve got the world at my feet, as though I can do anything. In race sports especially, however, it can be difficult to distinguish that type of pain from the type of pain that is your body genuinely needing you to give it a break.

 Here's another fun rowing story. During my novice [freshman] year on the team, I got hit pretty hard in the back with an oar during a fast-paced drill. It bruised badly and felt very sore for weeks, but I didn’t think anything of it and continued rowing as usual, pushing through the pain as I had been taught to do in this type of sport. A month or so later, I developed an asthmatic cough from the lungs, but only when exercising. The varsity women’s coach, overhearing my wheezing, advised me to take a few days off from rowing and get my chest and back examined by a doctor. I did—x-rays showed hairline fractures in two consecutive lower ribs, fractures which would have likely already healed themselves, the doctor informed me, had I listened to my body when it signaled to me that it needed to stop.

 When I found this out, our national championship regatta was quickly approaching, and I wanted more than anything to be able to participate. So, I pretty much ignored the doctor when he advised me strongly to take at least a month off [I know, my infinite wisdom cannot be surpassed]. I figured I would just do that once the summer started. We trained for nationals with two-a-day practices outside in sometimes ninety-degree heat. In order to keep my ribs from shifting around and not lining up properly when they fused back together, I had to wear a tight elastic corset that wrapped around my abdomen and Velcro-ed shut in the front. It quickly got sweaty and hot and difficult to breathe while contained in the corset, so [I’m sure you can guess what fantastic choice I made] I opted not to wear it for most practices. I made it to the championship regatta, and my boat placed third. It’s a day and a race that I’ll never forget, so it’s difficult to say that I have regrets about rowing through two rib fractures. That said, my ribs didn’t heal properly because I didn’t give them the opportunity to remain still and fuse back together in correct alignment. One of the ribs is slightly offset. It doesn’t affect my life right now, but as I get older it might. I genuinely do wish I had listened to my body so that I could have kept it prime condition so to as prolong my years of an active lifestyle as much as possible.

 Importantly, not all encounters with your pain threshold always have to be this drastic. Yesterday while training at practice with my rowing team, my back began to hurt on the erg. I finished out the first piece and the next one, but opted to move on to the stationary bike for the third portion of the workout to give my back a rest. Could I have physically finished the workout remaining on the erg? Probably, but it wasn’t worth it to me to risk genuinely injuring myself again. In sports that encourage you to push yourself through pain, even embrace the pain as part of the goal or experience, it’s important to understand when you’ve reached the threshold of too much pain or the wrong kind of pain that signals a problem beyond just physical exertion.

 So yes, my sage words of the day: learn when to say no. There’s a difference between [John Mellencamp’s] Hurts so Good and [Lil Wayne’s] I Feel Like Dying.

 [More lighthearted posts coming soon, I promise!]