When I started rowing, winning a gold medal was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to learn to row because it terrified me, and somewhere deep inside, I knew it would change my life. So when one of my first coaches asked me “Do you want to win a gold medal?” I wasn’t sure what to say.
I had called one of the coaches at the Augusta Rowing Club where the National Training Center used to be. It was 2003, and I had barely rowed a year and a half at Ohio State. But I wanted to go somewhere to train with the best. Something was compelling me to see how far I could take rowing.
I remember the conversation clearly. Before I could answer he interrupted and said: If you don’t want to win a gold medal, this is not for you.
The conversation has stuck with me for nearly twenty years. Not because it was inspirational or because I then went on to win all the gold medals. It stuck with me because even in my naivete and inexperience, I knew it was the wrong way to go about this thing I was about to embark upon. It is a lesson I come back to now as I think about my life.
I hadn’t rowed enough to know if I was good, so a gold medal felt unrealistic and absurd. I was more interested in finding out if I could become any good.
This might seem antithetical to high performance, but for a novice like me, it made sense. I was compelled to pursue excellence, not some shiny object in the future.
A medal was not what I was looking for. I was looking to see who I could become. Pushing my limits. Learning how to row well. Understanding what boat feel meant. And to go as fast as I was capable of going. To master something. That was what I was after.
I have always enjoyed the quietness of hard work. I spent my time learning and observing. Tinkering and practicing, and testing. I could fully immerse myself in the craft of honing my technique. Breaking the stroke down and building it back up. The process transformed me from a novice to a strong and capable elite rower.
When I found rowing, I felt like I had finally found the vehicle to push my high expectations of myself and to test them for everything they had. If I had been solely focused on winning a gold medal, I probably would have gotten injured a lot more, and I don’t think I would have achieved any of the things I did in the sport. This is the difference between focusing on outcomes instead of the process.
I was most fulfilled when I was immersed in the work. Day in. Day out. Through wind. Rain. Snow. Breaking the ice at the catch. Cold showers. Darkness and sunrises. Blisters and callouses. Broken oars. Carrying my single on my head across the red and white slats of the PBC dock. Back injuries. Tendinitis. Heartbreak at defeat. Losing over and over again.
These are powerful experiences that shaped me. Fundamentally. To the core. They broke me down like I was breaking down the stroke and then built me back up into something greater than I was before.
I developed a unique relationship with my boat and oars. They became a part of me. I can still feel the tackiness of my Croker grips, or the end of the tracks jutting into my calves. As if they were molded for my body alone. I imagine this is how a guitarist or painter must feel about their instruments.
I have won a few medals in my time and competed around the world. But my initial intuition about how rowing would change my life came true. I learned that the process is the gold.
Eight years after that conversation, I won a gold medal at the Pan Am Games in Mexico. It was an incredible moment. But more than the victories, I remember the practice. Years of listening, tweaking, and trying things out. Playing with my grip. Overcoming my fear of flipping and learning to conquer rowing in choppy water. Sucking. Struggling. Losing. Getting Injured. And the times when all of this came together, I experienced flow. The feeling of gliding along the water is as ingrained in my being as it is to breathe.
I have experienced so much in rowing, but I always come back to the Potomac river, my Filippi, Matt in the launch, and the earnest fine tuning. Getting lost in practice.
It was more than trying to be the best. It was a struggle to understand myself, to work hard to master something, and to learn how to persevere and overcome.
There is nothing wrong with wanting a gold medal. But I have found that the process has intrinsic rewards, such as self-awareness, character development, mastery, perseverance, even euphoria. Why else would losing be somewhat bearable? Because it teaches us something about ourselves. Forces us to confront the things that scare us. And ultimately is a means to become a better version of ourselves. And that is pure gold.
