It works the other way, too. The Yale light­weight coach called Sat­ur­day’s per­fectly calm con­di­tions “an Easter mir­a­cle,” be­cause we had al­most resched­uled the rac­ing for Mon­day due to se­vere storm warn­ings. Who knows? Maybe the prob­lem is that me­te­o­rol­o­gists are in­com­pe­tent.

But there’s more to su­per­sti­tions than just weather fore­casts, and I’m sure sim­i­lar phe­nom­ena ex­tend into other sports and ac­tiv­i­ties. In row­ing, you can work hard all week,, get sleep, eat­ing well, build up your ‘mojo’ and your con­fi­dence and your op­ti­mism … and then pull your worst split ever. Or your blade gets caught in the water 1,500 me­ters in and your han­dle slams into your chest, stop­ping the boat. You won­der where that came from, or who you can blame.

On the flip side, there are weeks when you pull an all-nighter study­ing for some orgo test, or you catch a cold from that kid in your 2A who’s al­ways sneez­ing, and you’re wiped out and de­pressed and you’d rather hit the snooze but­ton a few more times than open your eyes, even though it’s race day.

And then you go out there any­way — and you fly.

Some­times it doesn’t mat­ter that you had a ter­ri­ble Fri­day prac­tice. Some­times it’s ex­actly what you need. Be­cause the truth of the mat­ter is this: If you’ve got a crew of eight guys who know and trust each other and have worked and sweat and bled — lit­er­ally, bled — to make this boat go, it goes.

By that I mean that every stroke, every snap of the wrist, every surge of the legs blends in per­fect time and it feels as though you are barely touch­ing the water. It still hurts of course — when you have a firm hold on the water it hurts the most — but the pain mixes with the dopamine and adren­a­line and every chem­i­cal in your body that com­poses the feel­ing of sheer ex­hil­a­ra­tion, and you crave all the extra pain you can find be­cause you know it will make you go even faster. And what a feel­ing that would be, be­cause right now you are at the peak of your train­ing, and noth­ing is more sat­is­fy­ing than know­ing that the time and ef­fort you took to get there were worth it.

Some­times days like these just so hap­pen to be race days. Then you win. And you think, wow. Those crappy days, that was all part of it. That’s what it took for us to get here. Oh yeah, D150s. It’s all com­ing to­gether.