Wha?????????

Monday, December 15, 2008
Meters Rowed: 5,985
Time: 28:00
Pace: Sub-2:20
Total Meters Rowed: 182,835

The very definition of a lousy finisher? You’re looking at him. Thank you very much. Today’s plan was 6,000 meters. Except as you can see I came up 15 meters short. With two strokes to go, tops, I got it in my head that I was to row to 28 minutes, and so I locked in on the timer and at 28:00 I pulled up, triumphant. Except I wasn’t. I can give you no explanation other than I just completely lost it.

Imagine brain-locking like that that in, say, just to pick a race, the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s? It would be like when Willie  Shoemaker,  riding Gallant Man, inexplicably stood up at the 16th pole of the Kentucky Derby in 1957, right when he was moving on Iron Leige and Bill Hartack (Sports Illustrated, May 13, 1957; great stuff) and just like that Shoemaker’s race was lost. (A near-perfect analogy, I think.) It would be like when decathlete gold-medal fave Dan O’Brien no-heighted at the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trials and failed even to make the U.S. Team. It would be like when Roberto De Vincenzo signed an incorrect scorecard after the final round of the 1968 Masters, thus fitting the Green Jacket on Bob Goalby instead of setting up an 18-hole playoff between the two the next day.

Well, OK, so it wouldn’t be exactly like any of that. But it would be close, at least in the legend of my own mind.  Because there will be a lot -  or, at least, SOMETHING –at stake for me at the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s. Though I figure I will need to experience the race to discover exactly what that will be. But I know already that I will not have wanted to put in all these months training to then metaphorically stand up in the stirrups, sail under the bar or put pen to paper improperly.  It was enough of a disappointment just this morning when I realized what I’d done.

Here was me, standing next to the calendar I keep in the garage right above the Concept2, marker in hand, still breathing hard, poised to write “6,000″ in the 12/15 box:  FIVE thousand, NINE-hundred and eighty-five? Where did THAT come from? It wasn’t until that very moment, after I’d already written it down — “5,985″ — that I realized I’d lost it.  My kingdom for a horse? I’d settle for those 15 meters. 

Meanwhile, on the plus side. I do hope you noticed the sub-2:20 pace, which I maintained THE WHOLE WAY. Except, of course for, uh, those final few 15 meters.