Why We Do It

I am tired and never clean and the other day my professor told me it looked like I put my hands through a wood chipper. But it's not just me. It's we. We row in the rain and the hail and get up at ungodly hours to pull as hard as we can just to be in that boat and sometimes we lose and sometimes it's rocky and frustrating and everything we do is wrong.

It's you, too. You, the girl in front of me. You, the girl behind me. You agonize over that 2k test and it hangs over your entire day and you pull and that number burns into your brain and you've never felt burning like that before and it's blurry and all you can think is pull harder JUST A FEW...ALMOST...C'MON....and you listen to everyone screaming but the loudest is that voice in your brain telling you you can't but you must.

Why do we do this? Why do you do this?

We do it for the starting line. When your hands lock the oar in and your breath catches somewhere in your chest. When something is screaming from your heart to your fingertips. When we move together as one boat and it feels like you're running in a stampede of horses--a torrent of oars splashing, coxswains yelling, and that moment when the whole race is ahead of you and and it's your, our choice.

But sometimes sleep seems like a distant memory. Sometimes you want to wear jeans like a normal person or go out on a Friday night. Sometimes you look at everything you have to do and wonder if it's even possible. It's overwhelming and sometimes you feel more worried about crew than your actual future.

Why do we put up with this?

We do it for the middle thousand, when maybe you want to just stop but you pull anyway. Because the girls in front of you and the girls behind you make you laugh harder than anyone else. Because the girls in front of you and the girls behind you would never let you down and will never take a stroke off and you know they're pulling for you. And when you get off the water they will help you hoist the boat out of the water and even if they're short they'll strain to ease and share the burden. They'll do that with your problems too. 

But sometimes you lose. And the disappointment fills you. The frustration eats away inside your chest and you stare at that time and those crews and replay every stroke and flutter of weakness in your head.You look at that uniform and fear that you're letting someone, anyone down. It hangs over you and it sucks.

But what do we do? We breathe. Shake it off. And we take that frustration and fear and disappointment and let it scream through our bodies on the next one, when we tear ourselves to pieces for that finish line.

We do it for the final five hundred. When everything is black or white, or blurry, or wet, or loud, or all of this and the finish line is suddenly 300 meters away. And you take every piece of strength inside you and let it out, pulling in fury for the backs in front of you and the blades splashing behind you.

We do it for the win, but not only. We do it because of we know we can win together. We do it because we are the Ithaca Crew, and we know no other way.