Saturday’s rowing regatta went well. My husband and I both had four races because our friendly mixed double rivals from the Great Miami club came to the regatta (we finished just ahead of them by 0.7 seconds in the 1K sprint, for third place) and each of us also rowed a single-sex double with them as our partners. My women’s double advanced to the finals in a large field of competitors, but did not medal. My husband also coxed for Great Miami once.

There wasn’t much time to rest between the 1K mixed double and the 2K because they were scheduled fairly close together. That was all right, though, because we still had a good amount of energy. Unfortunately, we didn’t go straight in our lane because of shifting winds (we need to work on that) and whacked a few buoys with our oars, which slowed us down. We finished three seconds behind the second-place boat and 20 seconds behind the crew that took first place.

We would at least have gotten third place regardless, as there were only three entries in the mixed double 2K race. Still, we’re happy with our medals because we were middle-aged lightweights racing against much larger college athletes, and we stayed close to them all the way down the course. It’s not the size of the dog in the fight…