To escape the continual control room chaos, I decided that a little mini-break to back to California was in order. I always go back at this time because the first weekend of April is San Diego Crew Classic, one of the biggest crew races on the west coast. And every year my old rowing teammates from college get together and race. Usually people’s response to this is, ‘You are going to fly 15 hours back to California for eight minutes of racing?’ And the answer is Yes! Absolutely. Without hesitation. I love racing but racing with old friends who I once spent four years training with is priceless.
In college, Crew Classic was a very important race for determining standing and rankings. But now, as alumni, we’re all about just finishing respectably. And finishing respectably means not being so far behind that we are beaten by the official’s motor boat which follows slowly behind the race. These days we take our mantra from a Toby Keith’s song which proclaims, ‘I ain’t as good as I once was but I’m as good once as I ever was’. In other words, we might be good for eight minutes but don’t ask us to race for nine.
But despite the low standard of ‘just finishing respectably’ that we set for ourselves, we managed to do very well. We took 5th place out 15 teams (9 of which were collegiate teams). Including beating our own UCI JV team (which the JV team understandably was not very happy about. Sorry guys). The fact that we can beat any college team is really amazing. Now if, heaven forbid, we were to actually train before the race (compared to showing up completely jet-lagged from a 15 hour flight for example), imagine how well we could do. We promise that every year though: ‘For next year’s Crew Classic, we will train!’. Never happens.
Tags: crew
