Better Late Than Never
This past February, after almost ten years of rowing, I decided that I wanted to switch to the ski team. In retrospect I think it was a move that was a long time coming, going back even to my first winter after graduating college, when I put my single on the roof of my car and drove out to southern California. Initially I was so excited to be going on an adventure, for the beach and palm trees, the sun, the rowing in January. And then, against all odds, I was miserable. I longed for big fat snowflakes, cozy fires in the woodstove, and of course the skiing. I came home to Vermont for the summer and all seemed right in the world again. But rowing had lost some of it’s magic for me. It was starting to feel more like work and less like fun. Winter rolled around and we started skiing for cross-training. It felt like freedom.
At this point, competing at the Olympics had been a dream of mine for so long that it felt inextricably entwined with who I was as a person. I could feel it slowly but surely slipping out of my grasp and yet I couldn’t let go. I thought about quitting, but there was always something pulling me back. Don’t get me wrong, I loved racing. I loved racing against my teammates in practice, I loved lining up side by side for a 2k or blindly pushing myself past all reason in an interval start. But the training, the whole process had gotten stale. I felt like I was slogging my way through each steady state workout, counting down the minutes rather then enjoying the time I had. Meanwhile, I jealousy eyed the skiers leaving each morning for what looked to me like exciting adventures. They got to go biking and hiking and running and rollerskiing (yes, I was jealous of rollerskiing)! But it never really seemed like a viable option to me. I was a rower.
It all changed when I cut my finger on the wood splitter this fall. It sounds worse than it was, but it did sever the tendon on the back of my finger. I had surgery at the end of November and had to wear a splint on my finger for 8 weeks afterwards. With my splint, I couldn’t bend my finger to hold an erg handle but with good pole straps I was able to ski. I finally started to realize just how unhappy I had gotten with rowing and began to entertain the idea of switching sports. My finger was good to go at the end of January and I somewhat reluctantly began trying to get back into erging. Incidentally, this coincided almost perfectly with Craftsbury hosting two weekends of Supertour racing. The big turning point for me was making the A final of the classic sprint. Admittedly it was a smaller than usual field but it definitely helped me see that switching to skiing wasn’t an entirely unrealistic idea. From there it really snowballed. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how badly I wanted it, until I couldn’t sit through even one more rowing practice.
Now I am happily almost two months into my summer ski and biathlon training (I’m following in both my siblings’ footsteps and giving biathlon a try too!). Most days practice still feels like the exciting adventures I envisioned but there are frustrating practices too. There are times when I feel so far behind everyone else that I may never fully catch up, times when I finally think I’ve got V2 down only to be told it looks exactly the same as before, times when I can’t seem to hit a single target. But through it all I’m happy because I’m doing what I love.
The GRP girls with Pepa in Sun Valley at Supertour finals