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Rowing Number 10: A Lightweight Rower???

So thank goodness for Mommy cause she reminded me that a long time ago (less than a month) I said I would post stuff on the blog to remember stuff about rowing. So here I am starting these posts(:

One of my most ridiculous memories of rowing would have to be four weeks before Nationals (ACRA) and two weeks Dad Vails in Philly, I was assigned to be in the Lightweight 8 boat. Now in rowing there are two types of rowers: lightweights and heavyweights. Heavyweights can basically be anybody, big or small. (It should actually be called any-weights cause even lightweight rowers can row in heavyweight races.)

Lightweights though have a strict weight requirement: the day before racing starts, all lightweight rowers have to weigh-in at under 160 lbs on an official scale. If one person in the boat doesnt weigh under, the whole boat doesn't race, so a lot is riding on the weigh-in.

Now to put this all in perspective, of the 8 guys in the boat, 7 are all under 5'10". Me? 6'5". And even then, I started two weeks before the race at about 170. The funny thing was, I had no clue how to lose weight(: I've never had the need to lose weight for anything, and in fact normally ride on the edge of underweight. So losing ten pounds? Kinda scary.

So we start the first week, and every day we have two workouts, each going for 3 hours. This is all in the hot, sticky humidity of the Michigan summer mind you(: I'm eating just really regular food, not really thinking about it much. Throughout the week, we keep having weigh-ins to see how everybody is doing. I think the lowest I ever got was about a 164, and I was really struggling with it cause I didnt know what I was doing wrong: I wasnt eating ice cream and I hadnt drank pop for like two months, my usual comfort foods.

Coach's solution was kinda simple and in Daddy's perspective pretty stupid: just eat less. Well great, as if rowing wasn't hard enough, we now have to do it on nothing in our bellies. So that's what I did. Literally the first two days, when I would normally be eating like 3000-4000 calories, I'm taking in like two protein shakes, a banana, an apple and as much water as I could drink. It was MISERABLE. And yet, the next time we weighed in, I was still sitting at around 162, and I had to weigh around 158 to comfortably weigh under. GREAT.....

So for the next three days, I think I just ate carrots. No protein shakes, no carbs, nothing. Literally I have never been so exhausted as I was after our last practice and weighed in at around 158.4(: Of course out on the water I'm like dying within like 15 minutes of starting practice, and as I hop out of the boat at the end of each practice, I'm swaying back and forth about to pass out and seeing stars. As if that wasn't bad enough, when we get to the race in Philly and we weigh ourselves on our scales, I weigh in at 160 flat. Coach says that's not low enough so I go for a sweat run.

A sweat run??? Seriously there is nothing worse...

The idea of it is just to completely sweat all the water out of your body so you weigh less. What it meant for me was putting on every piece of clothing I brought with me to the race, winter hat and coat included (in 85 degree Philly) and running 2 miles. Seriously, I was keeling over at the end...

But in the end, I weighed-in at 157.4. Haha I have never felt a more complex series of emotions: happiness at making weight, complete fury at having to do the sweat run, embarrassment at not making weight originally, complete and utter exhaustion for not eating for three days and STILL having to do the sweat run, and complete exhultation at being able to EAT!!!!

Short to say right after the successfu; weigh-in, we went to some super cheap Italian place a-eating and ate A LOT. Fasting has always seemed pretty bad but compared to that, fasting is nothing(: And in the end we placed third in our race, earning these huge cool medals that any marathoner would be jealous of!

It definitely goes down though as one of my most ridiculous memories of my freshman year of rowing. Oh the crazy stuff we do for competition(:

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