Go Ham or Go Home

Yooo!

Guess what! Today was the first regatta I've ever participated in! Woot woot!

'Case you don't know, I'm currently a novice rower. I started winter training in January and it went through till almost the end of February, until the Spring sports season began. School crew teams is a Spring sport, so....yeah. I'm on novice 1st eight boat (we only row eights as novices), stroke seat! (I realize you probably don't know anything about crew, but don't worry, neither did I...) Girl's Novice 1st boat raced as girl's Varsity 3rd boat (the varsity girls have 2 boats). There is no JV, only Varsity and Novice, which means that we raced against other Varsity girls! :O I have to admit, we kicked ass. It was pretty cool. No, we didn't win, but we came pretty darn close.

What happened was that the wind kept screwing up the boats as we were lining up in the beginning, and the entire race ended up starting wayyyy above the starting line. Like, 250 meters. It doesn't seem that much, but it is because the races are supposed to be 1500 meters. My boat started out all right, but we were last. Towards the middle we caught up to two other boats and passed them, and in the last 500 meter sprint, we caught up a lot. We ended up placing 2nd out of four (five?) boats, and lost only by .83 of a second! 

I have to say...as a first race, that's pretty darn awesome. We beat varsity boats! Like...I can't get over it, haha. All of the girls just started rowing this year, which means that varsity kids having been rowing for 1+ years. My teammates and I literally started just sitting in the boat a month and a half ago. Holy. Crap.

^That up there is what an eight boat looks like.

I was dead tired once I got home, so I passed out for a couple hours...

And, I'm now sporting a couple Hello Kitty bandages.

Crew is not a sport for those of you who hate cuts and injuries and such...I had a part on my thumb that's been rubbed raw before, and it started bleeding again during the race......ew :P

The story behind "Go Ham or Go Home" is....there's a bridge that we row through every day during practice. It used to say HAM in big letters, so my coach would just say "Go ham" to tell us to go through the bridge. Unfortunately, some stupid other school decided to cover it up (spraying bridges is kind of a crew tradition) and it no longer says HAM anymore :( And you know that saying "Go big or go home"? Well...so....yeah. Go ham. Go big...ah, you get the idea.

I'm suuuper tired right now. I don't know why. And I haven't had a chance to write since Monday; I've just been so busy. I haven't gotten good sleep this past week, either. I fell asleep in all my classes yesterday. I probably looked like this----->

Well. I think I'd better start some writing right now. Or maybe I'll just sleep. I dunno. But I'll be baackkk!

--Ivers