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My rowing team and I are coming up on our first regatta of the season, and our practices have been getting tougher and tougher. My legs are sore, but it's a good sore. In mock races, we've been beating the other boat with whom we practice about half the time. That's very encouraging for us -- typically, they spank us without so much as breaking a sweat, then our coach proceeds to lay into us because "we're better than that." Grrr.
They're the "A" boat, you see, and we're the "B" boat. The women in the A boat for the most part have rowed together for years. Many of them have well-off husbands, so they don't necessarily have to work. They are the Beautiful People who have brunch at Brio in Winter Park Village every weekend. They are the ladies who before working out check to see whether their lipstick is smudged (I am not exaggerating). They also were once were referred to as "the stewardesses" by competing crews at a regatta. Not having to work also frees them up to go to the gym and practice more often than us.
Our boat, on the other hand, is an ever-rotating lineup of a few women who don't work and others, mainly younger women, who work full time. Because of all the work schedules and commitments, we have some who can only row on certain days, so our lineup shifts with just about every practice. I'm sure we're adversely affected by that, even though I and the other women in my boat fully support our intention to let everyone who wants to participate row regularly. In the meantime, we do our best to go to a gym or do an erg workout on off days if we can. We're all willing to work with each other's schedules, even if it means being the B boat indefinitely.
Today, we beat the other boat handily. Every race. And the coach even complimented us! We've been beating them, or at least hanging with them, more often than we ever have. In their defense, the A boat did not have their normal lineup; they had two substitutes for rowers who were out. In our defense, we had one sub. And that said, the A boat has beaten us with subs before. They're that good.
I genuinely feel optimistic that our crew can be the A boat sometime this year. Optimism is an unusual feeling for me. I prefer to be pessimistic and proven wrong rather than unprepared for disappointment. It's a good feeling not to allow my doom-and-gloom attitude beat me up for once.