Disclaimer: this is just my interpretation of the whole boat race experience. Everyone else will have experienced/reacted/interpreted it in their own way. I'm also not addressing the question of why we lost for a number of reasons, but mainly because I feel like that's a conversation that ought to be kept within a crew. Also I have high levels of race amnesia so I can't really offer any worthwhile analysis anyway.
The physical pain is taken for granted, my body has become fairly accustomed to feeling like it's been hurled into an inferno and had all the energy sucked out of it. For me, the psychological aspect was so much harder to know how to deal with. It's not exactly the 'pain of defeat', but the confusion and despair that came with that defeat. The sense of shock as I realised that I couldn't remember the race itself, and the inability to connect the incredible feeling of confidence that I had in the hours leading up to the race to the situation that I found myself in, 2000m later.
It's a terrible cliche that losing is one of the hardest and most valuable ways to learn something about yourself. Before, I had assumed that this was just one of those things that losers say to make themselves feel better, 'you might have won the competition, but I came away with a deeper insight into my soul and a higher philosophical understanding of the nature of humanity, so who's the real loser now?'. From my experience, I'd say there's probably a bit more to it than that.
Losing made me realise that the very act of racing is, in itself, a great privilege. It's one daring act of throwing everything out there with a high risk that you're not going to make it. It's extraordinary, exhilarating and exciting. I suppose it's quite similar to gambling for large amounts of money, only you end up with better abs and less chance of getting on the wrong side of an instant loans company...
The Boat Race is 'just a race', in the same way that A-levels are 'just exams', or a degree is 'just a piece of paper'. When you've invested that much time and effort into something, no matter what, it becomes of paramount importance, but when all that falls away you have to examine everything you're left with, and you realise that the whole process was about so much more than one race, and that your life is about so much more than this one process. It's always rather strange when your perspective changes. I've learnt that it's possible to become so psychologically invested in one particular outcome that it becomes inconceivable that anything else should happen - yet when that 'something else' happens, it's also possible to bounce back up with a deeper appreciation for all the other things in your life. Failure is no longer something to be scared of.
I'm not trying to suggest that winning wouldn't also be a valuable experience. In fact, I'm convinced that winning would be utterly incredible and would result in at least a month of non-stop happiness. This hypothesis currently stands untested, so there's only one thing for it: I'm going to have to trial again, and I'm going to have to cross that line before Oxford.
No comments:
Post a Comment