Rowing

Last term I joined the Mansfield Women's Rowing team. Now, many of you are probably wondering why I would put myself through waking up at 5:45 for early morning practices on the river in the cold, and sometimes in the rain, when I had never previously rowed a day in my life. Some days I wondered that myself. But, truth be told, rowing is part of the true "Oxford experience" and I wouldn't have had it any other way. 

My first time on beautiful Thames River was absolutely dreadful. I had no idea what I was doing or what any of the commands from the cox meant. Granted, neither did any of the other novices in the boat, which isn't exactly ideal for a crew of 8. My very first time rowing I was even lucky enough to "catch a crab," which is essentially when your oar develops a mind of it's own, tries to kill you, and paralyzes you in very awkward position in the boat. 

Nonetheless, I was determined to stick it out. With each outing, I began to slowly pick up the technique and actually enjoy rowing! I began to look forward to the Christ Church Regatta, a race made for just the newbies! Two losses in the Regatta and you're out. The first race, against Trinity, was laughably horrible! We won though (by default because Trinity couldn't fill a novice boat and had experienced people in it). We had to stop multiple times throughout to prevent running into a tree or a wall. It was so much fun though, despite how horribly out of time everyone was. We were told the race was to last about 3-5 minutes, yet I am sure there were several times we were stopped on the water for 3 minutes at a time! The second race, against Christ Church, went SO much better. Granted, we still lost, but not by much and we rowed really really well as a team. Though I won't be continuing rowing this term, it was a great experience well worth doing and therefore worth mentioning in this blog! 

Unfortunately, we did not have the foresight to take a team photo, but here are photos I took at the Regatta. 

One of Mansfield's Men's boat competing