Whether athletes, coaches, supporters, JRN writers, or avid followers of the sport one way or another, we all have a particular kind of love for this sport. After all, many of us dedicate significant chunks of our lives to it. However, as many may already know, there is a point in all our careers when it’s time to hang up the oar.
I have rowed since I was 11. When I stopped, I had been rowing continuously for at least eight years and, in that time, I had accomplished a lot. Rowing had given me a purpose in life that I didn’t have before and made me into the person that I am today. I met a large majority of my friends through rowing, for example.
So, when it was time to leave, it was difficult to say the least.
The time to leave came prematurely. I had just come ninth in the country in a last-to-first race, a race that I had dreamed of for years. I was at the peak of my physical fitness, spending north of 20 hours a week training for at least six months ahead of that race, since there was little else to do during the pandemic. I was looking forward to the year ahead, when I would be able to go to GB trials and have a shot at representing the country.
However, my life had other plans for me.
Three days after that race, I was in the hospital. After a week in hospital, and following a lumbar puncture procedure, I found myself undergoing multiple visits that ended with me getting a blood patch.
The issue went away for a while, but then it resurfaced less than a year later when I was finally diagnosed with Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgia (TAC). TAC is essentially a disease that causes pain in the trigeminal nerve area in the side of the head, and there is little that can be done to prevent it. As you can imagine, training at a high intensity is not conducive to a good recovery from TAC, as the risk of an attack is, inevitably, heightened during any form of high-frequency and high-intensity training.
TAC ground my rowing career to a halt. Already dealing with minor scoliosis, the additional TAC diagnosis meant that it would be near impossible to maintain the lifestyle I had grown to love.
So, I left. I wandered back and forth before finally quitting less than a year ago.
The athlete part of me was relieved not to be on a schedule like that anymore, and to that extent, a lot of pressure evaporated from my life. However, the other part of me didn’t exactly understand why I had to leave, and to some extent I still struggle to accept it.
Although I have tried my hand at new sports that have filled this void to a certain extent, I still can’t seem to squeeze out that last bit. It hurts.
Knowing that I was at the best point of my life, only to have it all ripped away from me at the last minute from a health scare that was far out of my control, is gutting.
Through this experience, I have met a lot of athletes who have had to quit due to similar diseases, which have forced them out. This has been reassuring but, while we all understand that some injuries can be temporary, these things are not, and it can often be incredibly difficult to accept that you cannot go back. It’s frustrating and heartbreaking at the same time, and there is often little understanding of what it’s like once you leave.
Finding something to replace what you have done with such a high intensity, for such a long time is always a challenge. It’s almost similar to an addiction in a sense, and the boredom and emptiness that you can feel is very similar to what it’s like to recover from an addiction. It can leave someone quite lost. From the people I know that have left, all of them have experienced withdrawal symptoms.
Rowing has this edge over other sports that I struggle to explain to those that have never done it, and I haven’t met someone yet that has been able to soften the blow of being forced to leave it behind.
Most think it’s counter-intuitive, that the reason they are stressed or depressed is due to the fact that they had to leave their old and pretty stressful sport behind. All of this makes rowing especially hard to quit.
In addition, a lot of the social aspects are harder to deal with.
When you row, many of the friends and connections you have are in the sport. Some are confused why you left. Others will try to persuade you to come back. Very few people actually encourage and support you to retire or quit.
While I am in a far better place today than I was when I initially left rowing, the impact that leaving has had on me is still something I can’t entirely come to terms with.
It deeply affected my life in ways that I didn’t understand at the time, and that I do now. It forced me to change my outlook on sport to something that you must commit over 20 hours a week to to something that you can do for fun on the weekend. It has given me the freedom to try other sports like cycling and tennis, which have proven to be sports that I enjoy more and that I am naturally better at.
So, the freedom leaving gave me was incredibly special and still is a massive positive for me. In addition, it has allowed me to gain a lot of my life back and has allowed me to broaden my experiences in life. Through all of this, I have managed to turn this forced retirement into a positive force that has had a profound effect on my life in incredibly positive ways.
But even now, I still find it hard to accept that I didn’t have a choice to leave. But maybe that will always be the way it is. I am extremely competitive by nature and the fact that I can’t come back and prove that I am better is the bit that hurts. If that is who I am, and I cannot change that, maybe it isn’t such a bad thing after all.
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