An Ode to O-Dark-Thirty
No matter where you row, you know that with each new season, those first few weeks are tough. Especially if your practices are in the morning. Readjusting to early bedtimes, and pre-dawn swearing at your alarm clock, while wishing you could stay bundled up in bed another hour. Dragging yourself around your house with eyes half open, brushing your teeth and slathering on deodorant (if you really like your teammates); filling water bottles, feeding the dogs, trying not to wake up your partner ...
And then you're at the boathouse. You've probably ridden your bike or driven your car there hundreds of times and when you get there you can't always actually remember steering the route because it has become so routine that each morning commute blurs into the next.
You adjust your spandex one more time as you approach the boathouse and your teammates, and feign an attempt to organize your bedhead. Someone says hello and as you start to respond you realize these are the first words you've spoken today. A rower's morning word quota is low, so simple sentence structure including mumbling and single-eyebrow raises are commonplace and acceptable, if not expected.
You grab a set of oars and bring them to the dock, or the shore, or wherever they need to be when the boat gets set into the water. The weight is familiar and you know to the millimeter where you need to hold on to keep them balanced and controlled. You start thinking about your first strokes of the morning. The lineup you'll be in. Whether there's chop on the water. How much you really love 3 seat, or bow, or cox ...
The fog over your mind starts to lift. The sun won't crack the horizon for another thirty minutes, but the synapses start firing a little faster. You shuffle to the boat racks and the coxswain calls "Hands on!" One hand on the near gunwale, another hand reaches out for the far gunwale and when both are locked on: Zap! Your inner power generator fires up, forgetting fuzzy memories of the dream your alarm interrupted. Power levels charge as you walk the boat to the dock.
Once the boat is in the water, oars locked in and rowers claiming their seats, there's that shove away from the dock. It's a shove away from the rest of the city, and away from all other responsibilities. You lock in for the first catch and you're present in the moment. Power generator at 100%, mind and body tuned in to the frequencies of the boat, the water, and your teammates. It's gonna' be a good day.