Rowing: Thursday the 20th

On Thursday I took the double out with Susan.  (There are a ton of Susan's in the rowing club.  It's like Jessica's and Kristen's on my high school dance team.)  I hadn't sculled with her (she was in the 4 I was in a while back), but she said to me "I'm not very good at sculling.  I've seen you, you're really good."  Can I just say "hahaha!"  First, me, pretty good for a beginner, probably not very good for a rower.  Second of all- she has actually raced sculling before.  She was QUITE good.  Maybe she just prefers sweep?

Anyhow, she was stroke seat so she set the pace.  The pace was a WORKOUT.  (For her it was probably an easy row...)  We rowed at a very fast pace, with very few breaks.  I guess that is good for me, since I have no endurance I need to work on it.  I try no to complain and just do whatever I need to unless I really can't.   The second half of the practice we did slow down, so that was a little better.

I was bow seat, so I had to steer.  I've gotten a lot better at this, at least in terms of not getting too far to the center of the river, and not coming too close to hitting things.  I think I only had to stop us once to get re-situated, the rest of the time we were able to steer within the strokes.  The only problem is I feel like I'm annoying when I do it, because I wonder if I am calling too many corrections.  I don't want us to get too far off straight that we have to do a major correction, but it seems like I'll call "heavy on port", "even stroke", "oh, sorry- heavy on starboard for two", "okay, even stroke"  and have to correct all the time.  Like we barely have even strokes in between, there is always a new correction needed.  How do you keep these boats straight?  I also feel like I'm just not the person for this job, as I have terrible depth perception and can't turn my head the full way around...  But I haven't hit anything yet, and no one has complained to my face that my steering is annoying (Susan actually said I did a good job, but I never know when people are just being polite, and I FEEL annoying, you know?)

But I really like the double!  I'm not getting as bad of slide bites now that I've moved the shoes much further forward (it's those LONG legs of mine!) so that's a big plus too!