Hi, I’m going to HOCR this weekend and unlike everyone, I am not excited, only extremely nervous. Basically, I don’t deserve to be in my boat. The other 3 girls are way better and have years of experience and I started only this spring and I didn’t row during the summer. I’m only in the boat because our club is so small that we are only 5 girls and one has been injured since August. My technique isn’t good either. Any advice to how to row with people better than you? I’m so scared I will mess everything up…

Attitude is everything. If you think you’re gonna have a good time, you’re gonna have a good time. If you think you’re gonna have a shitty time, you’re gonna have a shitty time. This is a situation where “control the controllables” couldn’t be more applicable. You can’t control the size of your team, you can’t control the fact that one of your teammates is injured, and you can’t control the fact that you’ve rowed for less time than everyone else but you can control your attitude and how well you row those 3.2 miles. You only started rowing what, six months ago? Your technique isn’t going to be perfect but if you put the effort in and focus on taking one good stroke at a time, you’ll do fine.

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If you’re that person in the boat that spends the next three days focusing on all the “bad” things though, your teammates are gonna get pretty pissed at you really fast. Don’t do that. When you go out for practice, try to do something a little bit better than you did the day before and build up some confidence in your stroke (and yourself). When you race, row the best race you can and come off the water knowing you couldn’t have done any better.