Nibble

I have a feeling that I'm writing more about knitting (and therefore less about everything else) than usual (and also generally less, because I feel busier. I'm not sure what it is, but rowing seems to generate fewer stories than biking. Possibly because I don't fall out of the boat nearly as often. That's probably a great relief to my boat-mates, since they'd pretty much have to fall out too. Although it's apparently possible to be thrown out of the boat by the force of your oar (in which case, I'd be the only one in the water), I don't think we've rowing hard enough yet.

But we may find out on Sunday, as we're racing in the Coastweeks Regatta (whose website is not very informative at all), near Mystic CT. The race is 2000m, and my boat is in the mixed open 4+ event (mixed because there are both men and women, open because one of us is under 27, 4 because there are four of us, and + because there's a cox). It should be interesting--my boat is rowing much better than we were even last week (when you've only been doing something for about 31 hours total--plus 22 hours sculling at camp--you're still improving dramatically from one hour to the next), but that's mostly made it clear how much we still have to learn. As someone pointed out last night, we'll have 5 or 6 good strokes in a row, think "hey, we might be real rowers someday!" and immediately mess up.

The other way you can tell that I might be a real rower someday is that I have a track bite (a scraped spot on the back of my calf, from hitting the end of the track every time I straightened my legs... the reason there's a track, remember, is that the seats (and upper bodies of the rowers) move forwards and backwards while the feet are attached and the oars pivot around a fixed point). Actually, it's more of a track nibble, because it's pretty small--and almost entirely overshadowed by a large mosquito bite right next to it. But I know it's there, and I'm inordinately proud of it (but also glad we'll be using a different boat on Sunday, which isn't quite so pointy in that spot).