“Set your monitors on preset workout,” the instructor shouted out as I tried to make sense of all the directions coming my way.
“Today’s a benchmark day,” she cheerily added. “We will be rowing 2000 meters and recording our time.”
My head raced. Did she just say 2000 meters? Yikes! I barely made the 750 meters during last week’s workout and that had rest intervals. It was all I could do to get myself here each day and now we were rowing 2000 meters?!?
“Get ready to press your start button,” she shouted. “We begin in 3 - 2 - 1,” she said with finality.
The long line of people began to row. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. I watched my meters count down: 1900, 1800, 1750, 1700. The numbers weren’t going down fast enough. “Try to push your speed up every two hundred meters,” she encouraged. Is she kidding? I thought to myself as I continued to row. I’m just trying to stay alive here.
I continued to row. Back and forth. Back and forth. The person rowing to my left was kicking it. I couldn’t match her pace if I tried. To be honest, it was hard to shake the thought of the distance and I didn’t want to wear out too fast. The instructor continued to move around the floor. Checking on our progress, correcting our form as we tired, and cheering us on from her nice place on the floor. Soon I heard her shout enthusiastically, “As you get close to the last two hundred meters go all out. Give it everything you’ve got.”
What? People are close to only having 200 meters to go? I looked at my monitor. I had just rounded the first 1000 and still had nearly half way to go! She must have seen the look on my face as she placed herself right in front of my machine, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “We’re all in a different place. There are people close to being finished, but these workouts are differentiated. You are trying to improve where you are.” Did she just use the teacher word differentiated? I wondered to myself. I knew she was right, but still. I had a long way to go.
I put my attention back on my rowing. 700, 650, 600.
People were getting up off of their rowers one after another to punch in their times. I was still rowing. When I got to 400 meters to go I realized I had enough left in me to end this rowing alive so I was able to find a little more to give. I completed the rowing and punched my time into the computer.
There were still other parts of the workout I had to do. I spent some time on the weight floor and some time on the treadmill. I watched the clock tick too slowly, but finally she called all of us to the floor to stretch. “Great workout today, everyone. You did it,” she said in her sunny coach voice as she shared our group statistics. As I looked around the room, I knew there was actually some truth to what she said. She did know where each of us were and she pushed each of us throughout our hour to dig a little more, to be a little better than the last time. It wasn’t unlike our classrooms. Sometimes we need to give ourselves, and our students, the grace to be where we are. We need to help to shine a light on the next step that is always within our reach.
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