ROWING INTO MIDLIFE, ONE STROKE AT A TIME

In a single month, I quit my job, became an empty nester, and joined a community rowing team.

By Karen Dukess

If I told you I’d never been on a team before, I’d be lying. I was on a team. For exactly one day in ninth grade. My mother—the same one who’d lovingly stitched me a needlepoint pillow of a snail saying “Don’t rush me”—convinced me to get moving and try out for the field hockey team. I was 5-foot-2, more spherical than strapping, and during that one afternoon learned that thwacking a ball when running with a hockey stick is surprisingly difficult. Ever since, I’ve kept a respectable distance from group sports, sticking to my principle that there’s no me in team.

Until a year and a half ago. It wasn’t a midlife crisis, more a confluence of events in the river of life. In a single month, I’d sold my debut novel, quit my speechwriting job at the United Nations, become an empty nester, and read The Boys in the Boat. I suddenly had time—way too much time—in a quiet home office in a quieter suburb. In that context, a small ad for the community Learn to Row program, an ad I’d seen countless times over the past decade, called out to me. With my newfound freedom, the early—and I mean early—morning sessions were not out of the question. And with a great deal of will power, I chose not to be intimidated by the photo of the strong female rowers in skimpy Lycra singlets.

What did it matter if I was the weakest, the heaviest, or the oldest? I enrolled. 

Just like that, I became a member of the Pelham Community Rowing Association. Four mornings a week, I’d report to the boathouse while the mist was still rising from the water. Together with three other newbie women, along with a few experienced rowers who were there to help out, we would carry the boats on our shoulders down to the dock. I learned how to get in the boat, which is not as easy as it sounds, and after a few weeks, managed to get out of the boat without rolling my body onto the dock like a sea lion. I learned the three phases of the rowing stroke—the catch, the drive, and the recovery—and how to avoid “catching a crab,” when the blade gets caught awkwardly in the water, sometimes so forcefully that the rower is catapulted from the boat.

With the careful instruction of our preternaturally patient coach, Chris, I learned to propel the boat with my legs and mirror the stroke of the rower in front of me without looking at her oars.  Day after day, as Chris instructed us through a bullhorn from his launch boat, we learned to row together. Though we may not have become “a poem of motion, a symphony of swinging blades” like those boys in the boat, we sometimes found a rhythm, at least for a little while, and experienced the boat-bound thrill of slicing the lagoon like a knife. 

I was in it for the outdoor season when I signed up. The indoor winter rowing machine workouts struck me as all the misery with none of the misty beauty. But by the time the season was over, I’d grown attached to my boatmates. And I wanted to continue to get stronger and better. I signed on for the winter season, and even started to like rowing on a stationary “erg,” probably because I was doing it as part of a team and with a coach.

About six weeks into our erg sessions, Chris started talking about the club’s annual indoor regatta, when rowers in various categories compete on ergs in a 2000-meter race, about 1.25 miles.  Four of the other women signed up right away. I hesitated. There was an extremely good chance I’d be the slowest in the women-over-50 category. Who wanted to volunteer to come in last?

But the more I shared my fears with my teammates, the more I realized that no one cared about how fast I went except for me. It’s often said that women feel invisible when they get older, and that can be painful. But on the flip side, getting older can free you from worrying about what other people think. And the truth was, the more I got used to my plan, the more eager I became to see if I could execute it. Two days before the regatta, I signed up. 

The morning of, I drove to a school gym in the Bronx, a trip I’d made countless times to watch my sons play basketball. Now, my palms were the sweaty ones. I hopped on an erg beside my rowing pals and together we warmed up and then made that middle-aged-female, last-minute dash to the restroom. When it was time for our bracket, we wished each other luck and went to our assigned ergs.

Two thousand meters is simultaneously an endurance event and a sprint. I never once glanced at the race board to check my standing. I kept my eyes focused on my erg’s computer screen, on pace with a 2.22 split, my goal of two minutes and twenty-two seconds per 500 meters. I made my time, to the tenth of a second.

And I came in last. With burning glutes, a pounding heart, and the sweatiest smile, I felt—for the first time in my life—like I was, maybe, sorta, kind of an athlete.

The endorphins carried me through that week. And the next, when the talk back in the studio was all about the threat of a pandemic. And then, three weeks after the regatta, I finished a workout feeling chilled. The next day, I tested positive for the coronavirus. By the end of the week, our boathouse was off-limits. The park where it’s located was turned into a testing site. As I slowly recovered, self-quarantined, rowing wasn’t even on my radar.

Now it’s spring and perfect rowing weather—sunny, cool, only the tiniest breeze. As I wait to hear when rowing will start again, I can’t help but reflect on all the real barriers the pandemic has thrown in our way. What a waste it is to be held back by obstacles of our own making, fears of how silly we’ll look or how we’ll compare to others. One day life will resume again, and there will be glorious new failures to pursue—if we let ourselves.