The only goal for today’s indoor rowing was to go the full 10K distance. There was no stroke, pace or HR target. The session was interrupted a few times to switch from one video to another, while searching for something that I wanted to watch in its entirety. During one of those interruptions, Diane looked in and noticed that I was just sitting on the erg without rowing, so she walked in and said something strange that she’s never said before. Not to me, at least.
She said, “I wish you were a girl.” I replied, “Well, I’m not a girl.” Then she explained that if I were a girl, I could understand something that just happened to her. So I invited her to talk about it anyway and she said that she had been looking through some old sheet music and had come across the sheet music for the stage musical called West Side Story, which she had seen when she was around 12 years old, plus or minus a couple of years.
It was the first Broadway production she’d ever seen and she tried to describe how enrapturing the experience was, of live symphony, actors and choreography. I don’t know how a girl would have responded to what she shared with me… there probably would have been a lot more talking back and forth. But I was glad she shared that little bit of her happy flashback to childhood with me. I’m sure it was an “out-of-this-world” experience, judging by how her face lit up when she talked about it.
Diane’s reminiscing about seeing one of the original stage productions of West Side Story was during the 5th split of the 10 into which this session was divided. This 10K was done online, but it was setup online and nobody else was present at the time, to join in. As I’ve said before… indoor rowing is a small world and online indoor rowing is a much smaller world.
Happy rowing with or without flashbacks, to you.