(singing) wade in the water.
(speaking) Don't look at me like that!
Mama is a good singer!
I know I'm not really, but you can keep that judgement for yourself.
Alright?
Hi everybody, I'm Amanda the G and I don't know if I've mentioned this or not before,
I think I have, but I was a rower throughout all of college.
This is actually a rowing shirt.
On the back it says, I don't, I don't know if you can read it, but it says 'we do it
long, we do it hard, we do it first thing in the morning with eight other people.'
Because rowers like to make a lot of sexual jokes about the sport (laughing).
And I know rowing seems kind of like an odd sport for someone who is absolutely petrified
of open water, and I did go out on the water all the time and I have flipped boats and
fallen in and it's awful, but for some reason this was the sport I chose and I absolutely
loved every minute of it, even when I really, really, really hurt myself.
Accident prone Amanda.
I hurt myself so many times in college, both while rowing and not, but I figured I'd go
over my top 3 worst rowing injuries.
Number 3 was when I herniated a disc in my back while erging.
For those of you that don't know, an erg is an indoor rowing machine.
And yes, I will be defining words during this for anybody who doesn't know.
We had a race inside where we hook up the rowing machines to a little TV output and
you see this really sad looking boat that just does this very slowly against all the
other boats, that's supposed to make it better that you are attached to each other and racing.
It's like if you put a bunch of treadmills next to each other and had people run a marathon.
Against each other.
On treadmills.
It's shorter, but it's still that bad.
In the middle of all of that, my back together decided it wanted to go ppplllhhh and spit
out my disc - essentially.
I was in so much pain.
I kept going for a while and I just couldn't.
I fell off of the erg, ended up on my back, and could not stand up from there.
And then after the day was over, went to the emergency room, found out it was a herniated
disc, and they put me on a shit ton of pain pills.
I was on percocet and flexerol which is a muscle relaxer.
In college.
Living by myself.
Going to class.
They just left me on so many pain meds, I was literally petting the air.
The air was so soft and fuzzy, I would sit in class, and I would pet the air, cause it
was so soft, you had to pet it.
I had great professors who let me do that, let me come to class that way, and several
of them let me sit on yoga balls instead of desks.
And then, a few weeks later, I went in to see a specialist, and he promptly took me
off of all of that stuff and said I'm not even sure I can have you sign the medical
papers right now, I don't know who put you on this.
But we love pills in America!
So let's just take all the pills and pet the air.
Number 2 - I lost a part of my toe to a snapping turtle.
After my freshman year in college, I went to a sculling camp.
Sculling is where you row with two oars instead of one.
Sweep rowing is one oar, sculling is two.
So I went to a camp specifically for that which was an absolutely amazing experience
and I got to be trained by Olympic rowers and it was (stammering) indescribably awesome
and really helped me in my rowing and in my sculling and then I kind of just sculled all
the time after that.
But the very first day, they make you flip the boat so that you can get back into the
boat.
And they do this right on the dock.
So you just push off from the dock a little bit, flip the boat over, get back in, pull
back onto the dock, and then dry off, get your actual boat that you're gonna be using
all week, and go off and row.
I did not want to do this because as I said, I am terrified of the water.
We stood in a line, one at a time, everybody's flippin' over, getting back in the boat, getting
off, getting their own boat, going off, everything's fine.
I went last.
Because of course I went last, I was frikin' terrified!
And I did not want to do this but I knew that if I ever flipped, I would have to get back
in.
You HAVE to, or you have to flop on top of it and then swim yourself to shore, because
you're not just gonna sit in the water for no reason.
You have to get back in the boat.
Gets to my turn and Amanda's like, ok, I am not gonna let them know that I am TERRIFIED
of this.
So you get out there and the your brain just tells you 'this is wrong.'
Because you shouldn't flip.
But you have to force yourself to do it!
So you let go of the oars and you force yourself in the water, like I shouldn't be doing this.
I go down to the water, I am so terrified I hardly even notice this happening, but my
toes slide down and then pinch on the side from a snapping turtle that we have clearly
been passing the fuck off this whole time.
Get back in the boat, I come up.
I'm missing a quarter inch off the side of my big toe!
Blood everywhere!
We are two solid hours at least from any sort of a hospital, and I needed stitches.
I really needed stitches.
And I didn't wanna miss that practice and the afternoon practice, so they handed me
a bottle of water, a bottle of peroxide, and a giant thing of gauze, and a whole bunch
of medical tape.
And I poured water over it to clean it.
I poured peroxide in it to clean it out.
I wrapped the whole thing up - big wrapping all over my toe, got in a boat, and ROWED.
Because I wasn't gonna miss practice!
It bled for four days straight.
And now I have a wonderful scar that I'm not gonna show you because people are weird with
feet on the internet and I don't wanna go down that road!
The number 1 worst injury that I had while rowing - I got hypothermia.
I have to explain a couple of things here.
To begin with, when you race on race days, you typically race more than one event.
In the Olympics, you can only be in one boat, and a lot of times in the spring, they're
modeled after that Olympic model where you can only race one time.
But, there are smaller regattas and all of the ones in the fall where you're racing 2,
3, maybe even 4 times.
So you get in the boat, row all the way down to the start, turn around, race all the way
back in, and then dock the boat.
And sometimes you go from one to the next to the next relatively quickly.
We had a regatta.
And it was cold.
It was on and off raining, sometimes snowing, and the water had just defrosted the weekend
before.
So it.
Was.
Cold.
Then to top it off, we were wet docking which is the stupidest name for something.
Because wet docking means that you actually have to wade into the water, like, here's
the water, you wade into the water, then put the boat down, and then climb into the boat.
So you go knee deep, thigh deep into the water, and then get into the boat.
And then when you come back, you get back into the water, take the boat out and c- step
back up onto the shore.
Come the second or third race of the day, I had gotten really hot.
So I took off my outermost layer.
Because they came up to me and they said 'we need to go right now.'
I'd just gotten off the water, I had on a heavy coat, it was too hot racing.
They were like 'we need to go out right now, we're gonna be late for our race.'
So I take off the coat thinking 'alright, I might be cold for a little bit, but we're
about to race again and I got too hot, I'll be fine, and then as soon as we come back
in, I'll put the coat back on.'
We wade into the water.
We get into the boat.
They call us back and say no, your race isn't starting yet, get back out of the boat and
out of the water.
So we get back into the water, walk all the way back up, start carrying the boat back.
By the time we get back to where the boats are, they come back to us and say, no, we
need to go now.
So I was going to get my coat at that point, but we needed to go.
So I go back out.
Now we have wet docked in and out twice for this race.
So we get all the way down to the, to the start, and there is a 20 minute wait at least
before our race.
But I don't have my coat!
And there's no extra coats and now I've only got one layer on top.
And the temperature started dropping, and dropping, and it started to snow.
And I started getting colder and colder.
And then I started to lose the ability to say more than two or three syllables at a
time.
And my coxswain, god help her, is trying to keep me warm.
A coxswain, if you don't know, is the person who steers the boat, motivates everybody,
and controls pretty much everything.
They're basically your god for when you're rowing.
So she is there painting a whole picture about a cabana boy and drinks on a beach trying
to get me to be warm.
And god love ya, Diana, you tried!
My coach came by and realized what was happening, pulled the, the launch, which is a motorized
boat, into our boat, pretty much, had me fall out of the side into his launch, put a different
coach in my seat, scratched the boat from the race, had them row back in.
Which to this day I still feel bad that we scratched that boat!
Then had me slide down in his boat as low as I could go and he sped as fast as he could,
waked everyone all the way back, flung it way up onto shore really fast, and yelled
out for the team to come to shore.
I could hardly move.
I'm not even sure how much weight I put through my feet.
I'm pretty sure two of my teammates all but carried me to a car that had the heat on,
sat me in the car, and then started throwing clothes at me.
I wore everyone's clothes!
Every bit of clothing that was at all dry, I put on, after I slowly tried to take off
the sopping wet clothes.
And then I eventually got my own clothes, I got warm again, thankfully.
During that whole process I lost the ability to shiver.
So now when I get cold, I either don't shiver or I very ineffectively shiver and I can't
get myself warm again.
That's it for this video.
Let me know what you thought about it in the comments down below.
And if you liked this video, click the like button and subscribe to my channel, I make
a new video every Tuesday.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
MWAH!
That wasn't our oar pattern.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét