DI announced that tomorrow and Friday, we will be doing time trials to see who
will be racing in the San Diego Fall Classic. Except, that is, for those of us
with erg times slower than 24 minutes for 5000 meters. That would be me,
Pigtails, and the girl who crabbed so many times yesterday. It's not a coincidence
that Pigtails and I are two of the smallest people in the program; Hardcore is
tiny, but she's, well, hardcore, and Egret is a bit taller. Still, that's not
really an excuse; while my erg times will never be anything to brag about, it's
true that more dedicated work would bring them down at least a little. On the
other hand, Hardcore and Egret's times are more where mine should be, but they're
still among the slower ones; there's simply a limit to what the body can do.
But if DI is going to run the program so that I'll never get to
compete, then that's another reason for me to pull out of it. The thing I've
always liked most about club rowing is that anyone who wants to, can, but it's
true that the high-level competitive programs, such as he would like this one to
be, are run more like a college program. The coach picks who gets to race, and the
faster ones are chosen, period.
He's completely within his rights on
this one, but I will admit here that my little feelings are hurt. If my attitude
were better, I would merely take this as a sign that I haven't been working hard
enough and should be doing more erg pieces until I can bring my times down. And
it's true, I should. It is discouraging, though, when I've been lifting weights
and doing at least little warm-up erg pieces all year. I've done something like
160000 meters total, since I started keeping track last March, but for comparison
purposes, Rudder has probably done over 300000m for the year to date. He's a lot
more dedicated than I am.
Meanwhile, I've revamped my resume based on
some advice from D. The new version goes against a lot of what I was told by the
career counseling guy that my old job paid for (who went over my resume, provided
a list of job sites on the web, and did little else for me). Since that version of
my resume seemed to attract very little notice, however, I think it make be time I
took someone else's advice.