The story begins with me just walking along on campus and minding my own business one afternoon….

A girl hands me a bookmark-thing with some info about UBC Rowing and their upcoming info session. I look at her and her partner. Both are tall and incredibly fit. She asks if I’d be interested in joining rowing?

I ask her three questions:

1. Do you have to know how to swim?
2. Do you have to have tried rowing before?
3. Do you have to be really ripped?

I’m sure it is clear to you, that with the kinds of questions I was asking, I probably shouldn’t have even tried. But she answers no to all three so I accept the bookmark. For a week I’m thinking, yeah Rowing! Why not? Maybe I can do this.

I go to the info session. Some of the coaches are there and they talk about how cool it is that rowing is a sport you can enter at such a late age. How it’ll make you fit. How you could even go the Summer Games.

UBC Rowing has a development team that you can try out for, the goal being that if you make it, they’ll develop you into an athlete worthy of the varsity team in a year or two.

Turns out, this is what I was trying out for. On tryout day, I show up late because my Grandpa calls while I’m walking there to see how I’m settling in at university. (And you can’t just hang up on your grandpa). Oh and to top it all off, I’m feeling absolutely horrible. I had a doctor’s appointment the day before to deal with my suspicions of having tonsillitis and just generally feeling awful. I had emailed the coach the night before to explain what was up but I was still going to give it my all.

…

The tryout is in two parts: an “erg” test and a run (I think it’s 2k.). The first part is to test our power on the ergometers (rowing machines). I do alright.The run is obviously a fitness test.

Before coming to UBC, I played soccer for two seasons. Before that I played on other sports teams and did cheer for a couple years. All this is to illustrate that I am an active person. I hate exercise for the sake of exercise (the gym looks like hell), but I love doing my favorite activities like biking and playing soccer. However, once I was here, I didn’t feel like I had enough time or was good enough to join a REC team. I didn’t have the money to sign up for a dance class and as I mentioned the gym looks wholly unappealing to me.

I don’t realize  the effect of all this until I’m about 1 minute into the 2k run. ONE MINUTE! My shins hurt for some reason (I actually think I might have shin splints) . And my arms are killing me which might be from the erg test earlier. Parts of me that have never hurt while exercising before are deciding now is a good time to ruin my life. The more I run, the more I realize I really can’t do this. People keep passing me. My lungs are only barely recovered after being so sick for weeks. To exaggerate a little bit,  I’m dying.

I realize now that I should have just recovered during my recovery period instead of you know, trying out for a new college-level sport.

I come in last.

No one says anything.

I get an email the day after. My name isn’t on the list.

Probably one of the most humiliating things I’ve done since moving away from home. Would I do it again? Yes.

Why?

Because I think we all need a little failure in our lives. Success just feels so much better afterwards.