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I'm back from the Hooch and have returned to the daily grind. I was in two races during the weekend, an eights event and a four. We won the eights race handily, but unfortunately, my four came in eighth of 12 boats. I hated to end a long day of racing on such a sour note.
My four was doomed from the start. The coach had busted up the members of the eight into two boats of four by taking the four biggest and strongest people for the "A" four and the other smaller, shorter rowers for the "B" four. I was put in the B four. In putting the tallest and strongest people in one four, the coach did the right thing. He did what he had to do to ensure that ORC as a club would have a shot in the event. And, as it turned out, the big ORC boat won the event, to everyone's amazement.
However, he shouldn't have taken the leftovers and formed a second four. He should have just made the one good four and left it at that. The B four was destined for failure from the start, and I wish he'd have saved us the embarrassment and apprehension. We had only one practice together, a very inexperienced coxswain who steered us all over the course and technical problems with the boat itself. I considered it a success that none of us got hurt or crabbed or cried of embarrassment. I'd never been so happy to see the finish line.
On the bright side, the eights race was one of the best we've ever had. It was nearly flawless, surprising us all, since our practices together had been shaky.
In the meantime, the women's crew Web site I'd been asked to set up is online. Keep in mind that it's just barely online, and I realize it's spartan and plain. But I wanted to get the mechanics up and running. It's hosted at ORC's Web hosting company but it's basically a Blogger blog, mainly because I wanted several people to have Web-based access to post announcements without having to know HTML or how to FTP. And it looks like crap in any browser but Safari (groan).
Current mood: Mellow
Current music: Chimera | Destination Unknown