First Light

Overheard in the Novice Coaching Launch

2011-05-18T16:51:00.006-04:00

"It's like doing triage at a nuclear holocaust."

To Bill*: Bill, rush the last six inches of the recovery!

To me: I can't believe I just said that. Oh look, it's working!

*name changed to protect the extremely short of slide

Home Bodies

2011-01-07T17:19:00.002-05:00

I'm convinced there's nothing funnier than coaching juniors, especially when the girl to guy ratio is 10:1.

Five minutes later: "wait, what days are we talking about?"

"They're on the board."

"Wait, what?"

---

I think it's only natural that fans and athletes develop connections to the places they grew up near, or train in, or spend most of their careers in. Sports are more than just competition, they're a secular communal experience that can bond a community. One needs to look no further than the New Orleans Saints win in the Super Bowl last year to realize how much sports can affect a group of people. Inspirational sports movies would have no stock if this were not the case.

The level of devotion to a specific site varies from sport to sport. The money sports (football, basketball, baseball, hockey) in America each have their own shrines to worship in; even ones that no longer exist inspiring devotion. Mention the names of any of the great ball fields, and you'll find people who revere them. The Polo Grounds. Fenway Park. Candlestick Park. The old Yankee Stadium. The new Yankee Stadium. I'm sure even Miller Park (Milwaukee Brewers) has its own group of devotees.

Runners, on the other hand, seem to be less specific about their sites. Most of the runners I know remember specific places they've run, or places they want to run, like the Chicago or Boston Marathon. Some of the more serious runners I know cite the Penn Relays in Philadelphia or Track Town USA, Eugene, OR, as places to make a pilgrimage.

I think American rowers tend to fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. We're very territorial of the differences between, say, the Charles and the Schuylkill, and Eastern Sprints vs. PAC-10 teams. However, with the explosion of junior rowing in the past ten years, training sites and teams have spread out to a larger number of areas (rowing in Tempe? How about Alaska?), and loyalty to a certain region seems to be less of an issue than where you're putting your boat in any given season.

There are, of course, places that transcend such characterization. In my mind, Olympic water is sacred. The luckiest people in the US, in my opinion, are the members of the Lake Lanier Rowing Club, who get to train on the course used in the '96 Games. The budding Lake Casitas Rowing Association isn't far behind on my envy scale. Beyond this, there are regattas that should be held in high esteem: the Head of the Charles, the Schuylkill, the Harvard-Yale Regatta, Stotesbury; races that have so much history behind them that they're impossible to ignore on any level.

Growing up in New England for almost my entire life and rowing exclusively in two New England states made the Head of the Charles the pinnacle of achievement in my mind. I rowed for seven years before picking up the megaphone, and have never rowed at the Charles. My high school didn't race there, and I wasn't strong or fast enough to make the Charles boat in college. Maybe someday I'll make the comeback and get into a masters or club boat, but as of right now, I've accepted that the Charles was not in my past and may never be in my future.

Before moving to Boston, I had never even actually rowed on the Charles. I like thinking about the places I've dipped an oar in and the places it's taken me (see this post), and I don't need to list them all here. But the Charles was never one of them, until this fall.

It was mid-September. A friend of mine was coaching a group of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans learning to row at Community Rowing, and I happened to be there checking out the boathouse when word came that they needed an eighth for their practice. I borrowed some workout clothes, and hopped into the stroke seat of a beat-up Pocock eight.

I don't think I'd ever been that excited to row before in my life. Not only was I finally getting a chance to row on the Charles, but I was STROKING? I'd stroked in fours and eights maybe 20 times in my life, primarily being a bow four rower.

We pushed off, and, despite the fact that the rowers had only been rowing since the latter half of the summer, they had picked it up quick and were very eager to row well. We did drills by sixes up to the Lars Anderson Bridge, where we spun around. The sun had started to set by the time we had launched, and we were obscured by the shadows of the city. The coach told us that we were going to head back by sixes, and a few of us wanted to row by eights.

"I don't know if you guys are ready for that!" my friend told us. "What do you think, Oarsman?"

"Feels good to me," I replied. "Let's do it."

We started by sixes, and after rotating through the boat once, my pair and I added back in and we went up to eights. It was a little shaky in the beginning, but my God, the power that that boat had. We rocked back and forth from port to starboard for the first twenty strokes or so, but we were still clearing our puddles by a distance that was quite impressive for a novice crew.

We kept cranking, through the bridges that serve as checkpoints on the Charles. We went by Cambridge Boat Club, the BB&N boathouse, and Henderson Boathouse in short order. As we passed Henderson, our coxswain called a twenty. Before she even gave the two strokes into it, I could feel a surge of power through the water behind me. I wouldn't necessarily call it a moment of swing, but we were moving. We took another twenty as we cleared the last bridge right before the CRI boathouse, ending the piece right in time to spin and head back in.

Through the second half of the row, I began to form an impression of the group that was backing me up. I'm not here to debate politics and regardless of your views on the War on Terror, being in that boat served as an allegory to the type of teamwork that has to work in a military unit. A number of them were just discharged due to injury or their own predilections, and still retained that military mindset. After we got off the water, the seven of them were joking about doctor's appointments or Reserve or Guard obligations that they still faced, and there were a few jokes displaying the inter-service rivalries that they still carried. Even though they were from different units and different branches, they were still able to come together and perform a task well.

After my friend gave the crew some feedback, he turned to me and asked if I had anything to say. I told them that for all I had done in the sport, I had never rowed on the Charles before that night, and that I was humbled and honored that my first time out there was with such a group. Two of them asked if I could come back and stroke them at a race CRI was holding that weekend. I would have loved to, but I was I was honored enough that for one practice, they allowed me into their community of warriors to practice, and for all my rowing experience, I was not worthy enough to step into a boat to race with them.

Deer

2010-07-25T08:24:00.001-04:00

Another late day at work. I didn't get home until 6:00, and then I had a number of errands to run afterward. Too late for a row, so go for a run instead.

I left the house and started running up towards the elementary school. I jogged behind the school, to the little league baseball diamond and a trail to the side roads.

I crested the hill and stopped. Standing on the pitcher's mound was a doe. A gorgeous animal, munching on the grass in between the mound and first. It saw me as I started approaching, slowly. Equally slowly, it ambled away towards the first plate dugout, where two more does I hadn't noticed waited.

Two of the three deers seemed skittish and wouldn't let me approach more than thirty feet. But the third alternated between staring at me and grazing as I stepped closer and closer. Finally, when I got within ten feet of her, she started moving away like the others.

We played this cat and mouse game for about half an hour, her trotting away and me following slowly after her. All the while, night started to fall, the sky darkened, and a thundershower rolled overhead. I only wanted to touch her, to befriend her, but at the same time, I felt primal, stalking, trying to outwit her.

She tired of the game before I did, finally running off towards the woods. I headed back to the trail and finished my run.

So often, we focus on splits and times and other factors of performance when we train. After rowing for so long, you fail to appreciate the beauty of the river: the hawk flying overhead, or the sight of a fish leaping out of the water near your boat. But sport is supposed to be fun. It is necessary to train with focus and seriousness, but every once in a while, it's nice to have a reminder of what sports, what life is about.

Speed

2010-06-16T21:27:00.003-04:00

6:30 AM.
Connecticut River.
I place my single in the water,
oars locked tight.
Shoving off, tentative strokes
to get the boat away.
Passing under the bridge.
How many people get to see
what the underside of the bridge
they drive on every day looks like?
Through the currents to silence
and a river turned orange,
the water flat like glass.
I almost feel guilty for disturbing it.
But then I remember
water does not need to train to go fast.
All it needs is a good rainfall
or a particularly bad winter in New Hampshire.
So I press on, swinging, striving, searching,
searching for speed.

On the Road

2010-05-26T22:53:00.003-04:00

It's funny how many trailers you drive by on the highway on weekends. I've run into both high school and collegiate teams going in the same direction, heading where I was coming from, going to the same regatta, and to far distant destinations. While not on the same level, trailer driving reminds me of a quote I read about combat once: it's hours of boredom, broken up by minutes of sheer terror. Great fun. I've made it through an entire year without breaking anything; hopefully I can keep that up through the summer.

Coming Back

2010-02-19T23:28:00.004-05:00

I saw my former novice coach at CRASH-Bs last weekend. We were talking, and he asked me if I was still rowing (I think it's pretty obvious from my expansive waistline that I haven't been as of late). I asked him the same thing.

Now, I rowed for a club program while I was in college, but my novice class lucked out. We had a head novice coach, who was trialling for the National Team, as well as an assistant coach/grad student who ended up rowing in Beijing in 2008. Both of them were training while coaching us, and putting their accomplishments alongside ours was both humbling and motivating.

So when he told me that he was doing what he could and finding a level he could race at with that training, I still find myself thinking of the times he's probably rowing, or planning on rowing. Once again, it puts my own life into perspective.

The problems that have been plaguing me for the past four years, the reason I was off the water for so long, are finally starting to ease up. I've been erging regularly, and I've found I can start pushing myself through harder pieces. Looking back on my logbook, though (I'm one of those people who obsessively logs every meter, even warm-ups), I can't help but be a little discouraged. My 30-minute PR is where I would expect my 2K score to be right now. It's not I-want-to-quit discouraging, but to get back to that point seems like a very long way off.

Post-Collegiate Rowing

2009-08-07T11:14:00.004-04:00

Jeez, it's been almost a year since I last posted on here. Far too long. I'm going to try updating this thing more often, now that I'm working instead of studying.

Last night, I had a transformative experience. It was one of those things that reminded you why you fell in love with something long after you were first introduced to it; it was like a husband looking at his wife of 10 years and seeing something that reminded him of their first date. A few members of the rowing club I belong to went out for a row last night to catch the moon rising over the river.

I was nervous when I got there; I was going to row a double with Jon, a guy my father's age who runs a residential construction company. He's a pretty good sculler, and I had spent most of my time on the water in a single, where my rough slide control and messy handle heights affected only myself. At least the boat was nice; an old Fluidesign that was still nicer than anything I had rowed before.

We launched a little before 8:00, when the sun was still setting. It descended behind our shoulders as we rowed westward on the river. Despite the fact that Jon and I had never rowed together before and it had been almost 3 years since I had rowed in a team boat, we were moving together well. Once I realized that my hands were moving slow out of the finish, I was able to match his timing, and we quickly caught up with the other shells that had launched before us.

We rowed up to one of the creek inlets on the river, about 5km from the boathouse. Jon and I spun around to catch the moon as it came up over the horizon, partially hidden by the low cloud cover. The safety lights on the other boats were either dim or obscured from view, and the water was glassy and quiet. I could barely make out anything beyond the banks of the river.

As I sat there, watching the moon move higher and higher in the sky, I thought about all the things that I have done, things that I never would have experienced if I had never set foot in a shell.

I have rowed next to manatees and dolphins in Florida. I have rowed both with and against National Team members, worked alongside men who have Olympic gold medals somewhere at home. I have been able to watch the moon rise over the tobacco fields in New England. I have seen more sunrises than most people probably see in a lifetime. I have made friends and found mentors. Most importantly, there are the characteristics of any rower who continues in the sport for years that have served me well outside of the realm of sport: a good work ethic, sportsmanship, collaborative effort, the ability to push beyond perceived limits. The list could go on forever.

The most amazing thing is that all of these things have happened to me, a person with a less than distinguished rowing background. It's these things as much as the viscerally physical feeling of moving a boat that make me love the sport and keep me coming back to it over and over again.

We rowed back to the boathouse as the moon continued to rise higher into the sky. We crossed underneath the bridges near the boathouse, the red and green lights glittering off of the surface of the water. Clearing the bridges, we took a twenty, and the boat took off. I know we weren't going fast compared to most doubles, but the rock-solid set and absolute sense of swing made it feel like we were flying off the water. We spun back towards the dock and took another twenty, a fitting end to the best practice I'd had in a very long time.

2008-08-29T03:31:00.001-04:00

http://www.rowinghistory.net/unique.htm

2008 Olympics: Impressions

2008-08-12T23:44:00.002-04:00

I don't know how I've managed to get through four days of the Olympics without posting about it. I've been busy with two jobs, so that's probably part of it. Despite my silence, however, I am very excited about the Games; I was more excited on August 7 than I was on Christmas Eve when I was a kid. So imagine my disappointment when I found out the viewing schedule in America for the rowing events. If I remember correctly, they showed every rowing final on television in 2004. I only think that because I have a number of the finals on tape somewhere in the basement. This is only the second Games in which I have been interested in anything other than what was on TV and in the news, so it's not as exciting as Athens was, especially with the way the US 8+'s tore through their heats.

There was an editorial I read online (probably something I found on Row2k) that bemoaned the rampant professionalism of the games, mostly in the "big" sports (i.e. basketball, track and field, gymnastics, swimming). Most of his beef had to do with the fact that in the "smaller" sports (i.e. rowing, canoe/kayak, shooting) only get one chance every quadrennial to make international headlines, so they should get the lion's share of coverage during the Games. While I sympathize with his point of view and I absolutely loathe the number of McDonalds and Coca-Cola commercials each break, the money from these sponsors has made the Olympics what it is today. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but I could almost guarantee that if you asked any US Olympians in the smaller sports if they would give up their spots to protest the commercialism of the Games, they would laugh right in your face.

Coincidentally, most of the coverage I've seen (after 9PM EST) has been of swimming and gymnastics. Honestly, I'm not really a huge fan of events where the results are based on the scores of a panel of judges. This is not to detract from the individual athletes; I wish I had the upper body strength of a gymnast. However, there's nothing subjective about getting to the finish line with your bow ball ahead of another boat. All this being said, as I type, I'm watching the women's gymnastics team final, and I saw something awesome. I tuned in just as the US team was about to begin the vault, and they showed Bridget Sloan at the runway. When she started her sprint, the camera zoomed in on her face, and she had The Look. It spooked me a little bit; this tiny 16-year old who doesn't even have her driver's license with eyes that had a killer instinct. It was great, and it's great to draw inspiration from other sports. Since rowing hasn't really been viewable for me, other sports have been all that I've seen. The other great inspirational moment so far has been the men's swimming 4x100 freestyle relay; I put a photo of Michael Phelps screaming at the starting block on my desktop to remind me of reasons to train.

One Out of Two Ain't Bad

2008-06-07T23:03:00.004-04:00

Check this out...

...

Heh heh heh

And, just as a postscript: the last time three public universities were on the medals dock at the IRAs was in 2002, when it was Cal, Wisco, and Washington. This is Wisco's first national title in the MV8 in 18 years. Congratulations to the both the Badger heavy men and light women for winning their respective national titles.

2008-02-04T12:47:00.000-05:00

I touched briefly on the Mahe Drysdale/Rob Waddell battle in a post a few months ago. My, what a difference a few months makes. At this point, Drysdale and Waddell have gone up against each other three times already, with the score currently at 2-1, advantage Waddell. From what I understand, the Rowing NZ selectors will be choosing the single sculler for Beijing from the results of the national championships and Olympic trials in March.

I'll be honest, I want Mahe Drysdale to go all the way to the top of the M1x podium at the Olympics this year. Following him from his unpredictable win at Gifu in 2005 to where he is today has been a great story, and I can't think of any single scullers who have won an Olympic gold medal after winning every worlds in the quadrennial. It would be an awesome achievement in the sport, and one I would be most welcome to see. However, regardless of which man goes to Beijing, Rowing NZ has a good shot of winning the single sculls title this year.

I can't help but see parallels to this duel and the battle between John Biglow and Tiff Wood leading up to the 1984 American Olympic trials. Most well-read rowers know this story from David Halberstam's "The Amateurs" or Brad Alan Lewis' "Assault on Lake Casitas." I can only imagine the dynamic between Rob Waddell and Mahe Drysdale to be similar to the Wood/Biglow relationship before that trial; it has been widely reported that Drysdale began rowing again after being inspired by Waddell's 2000 Olympic victory. I can't wait to see how this story plays out over the next seven months.

I Almost Forgot About This

2008-01-26T21:57:00.000-05:00

I found this in a journal I use; I forgot about that day until I read the first sentence of the entry. I don't know why I never posted it here. It seems like something I would've written here. This was from two summers ago.
--
"I slapped my face two or three times with both hands, as hard as possible. The slapping hurt. It snapped me to attention. My adrenaline started flowing...the Yugoslavs, sitting in the next lane stared at me in disbelief. The harsh slapping made me angry -- exactly what I wanted. I did my best work when I was angry." -- Brad Alan Lewis from Assault on Lake Casitas

The rain had just stopped. It wasn't a heavy rain, just a passing shower that wraps around you like a warm, humid blanket. I was sitting in the middle of the river, drops of water running down my glasses and my face. Slowly, dream-like, I gazed around at the armada heading towards me.

I was sitting at the top of the racecourse on the Connecticut River, waiting for all the participating boats to arrive. It was a scrimmage; the course was a little under 2000 meters, and the boats would be started like it was a head race. The only other person racing a single was a lightweight named Alex who was in his first season with the boat club. We had launched early in order to clear the way for the larger boats now heading towards us.

As the current brought our singles towards the starting buoys, we kept paddling, just far enough to drift back down five minutes later.

My body felt languid and insubstantial; my muscles could've been made of marshmallow and I wouldn't have felt any different. I recognized this feeling, the nervousness and anxiety that comes from being at the start. When in a team boat, it's easy to offset this feeling when an external force is telling you to row. It's much harder to control when you're the only one in control of the entire boat. I looked at the reflection of the riggers in the water. My hands were resting on them, my fingers looking far too fragile and slender to endure the trial that was awaiting me.

Brian, the head coach and starter, called Alex and I to the line as the last boats made their way to the marshalling area. Alex started about 15 seconds before I did, moving his single with a fluidity that seems to be a characteristic of lightweights. Brian called me up next. The marshmallows in my arms and legs transitioned to molasses. As my oars came out at the finish of the first stroke, they changed into something else, something undefinable. My legs were cannons, firing off every catch, just to recoil and do it again. I passed through the starting line after five strokes and really started to hit my stride.

Then the velcro holding my feet in tore apart mid-stroke. For one split-second, I thought that I might be able to come back up to the catch and fix them before I fell apart, but it wasn't going to happen. I have a hard enough time doing the feet-out drill with fair warning; it wasn't going to work when I hadn't chosen to do it and I was driving my body backwards at full pressure. Before I even had time to think, my single was upside-down, and I was in the water.

To my credit, I'd only flipped once before this. My first time in a single, they made me try to back off the dock without any kind of warning, and I immediately flipped. But since then, I hadn't had any incidents. But out of all the times I'd been out on the water, I had to pick today to flip.

Training immediately asserted itself. I flung my arms over the upset hull and fixed my oars so that they were in the proper position to keep the boat from rolling while I was floating on it. The coaches, busy with the racing, had me stay with the launches until the rest of the boats passed me. And there were a lot of them.

After one of the other coaches helped me flip the single back over and get in, I had already drifted down past the start about 300 meters, and it was too late for me to re-attempt the racecourse. So I went from where I was.

I was furious. Not only had I been denied the opportunity to race, but two of the eights that had rowed by me were crewed by oars that I coached. Once I started moving again, I took that fury out on the water. Moving that last 1500 meters, I pounded out every stroke with a force that I wouldn't have had if everything had gone normally. I wanted pain, pain that was all-consuming, pain that would replace the embarrassment and humiliation of the past ten minutes. Pain was good.

Masters at the Olympics

2007-11-24T20:41:00.000-05:00

Sure, it can be assumed that every athlete at the Olympics may be a master at his or her sport: one does not get to compete for his or her nation without countless hours spent training. But is it possible for a Masters rower to compete at the Olympics? Apparently, a pair from southern Oregon are giving it a shot. Stephen Kiesling and Andy Baxter are reportedly training for the 2008 Olympic Trials before the Games in Beijing in August. Kiesling is fairly well-known in the rowing world as the author of "The Shell Game" and a member of two national teams ('79 and '80). Awesome? Yes. Projected to win? No. But I always love an underdog, and I can guarantee I'll be following this story as the trials near.

This Olympic cycle seems to be geared toward the comeback, now that I think about it. Down under, there's a resurgence of older, more experienced oarsmen coming back to the sport as well. Australian James Tomkins, who hasn't been a factor on the international racing scene since winning the M2- at Athens, raced in the M8+ at both World Cup 2 and 3 and the World Championships. Rob Waddell is also said to have made a push to train with Rowing NZ again after serving as a grinder with Team New Zealand on the 2003 and 2007 America's Cup Challenge. No word on whether Waddell will replace three-time World Champion Mahe Drysdale in the single sculls, but it would make for quite a sight to see the three of these former Olympians with a 28-year spread to line up in the heats in Beijing.

Push

2007-10-10T19:31:00.000-04:00

This season's going fairly well; we're only visiting a few courses this year, our coach focusing us more on the spring season. Of course we'll be at the Head of the Charles, and there are a few other races we'll be involved in, but that's about it. We're rowing well despite the lack of competition, and I can say I'm really starting to get excited about how things will be shaping up for the spring. Head racing is fun, but there's not much in the way of t-shirts...

I had a really tough piece ahead of me today, and I can't even begin to describe how well it ended up going. I'm having a little bit of trouble going through the middle of longer pieces, and while I'm not flying and dying, there's definitely a slowing trend between the start and the finish. I've also found my arms are weak; they tend to tire during long pieces. True to form, my arms started to fatigue about a third of the way through the piece today. I hung on through the halfway point, wondering if I was going to be able to make it.

Gut-check time.

At two-thirds through, I started to focus on power with the legs, hoping I could just get a little more squeeze out at the catch. The next stroke I started to get the legs down faster, controlling the rate on the recovery. It's tough to describe how it felt at that point. The first (and best) analogy I could think of was comparing myself at the catch to a branch on a tree that's flexed all the way back, and when I pushed off the foot stretchers, it was like letting the branch go. I don't know, everything just flowed. It was great. At 1000m to go, I started winding it up a beat and dropping the split by two to three seconds. At 500m, I let go of the rate and dropped the split as far as I could hold it. Even though it was only a training piece, I felt like I was pulling the 6k of my life. It was beautiful, and the agony at the end only served to highlight how amazing the past four minutes had been. But there are very few things that I get satisfaction from more than lying down on a dirty gym floor, too spent to move, knowing that I went to the edge -- and found there was still more to give.

Joe Rantz, UW Class of '37

2007-09-19T21:29:00.000-04:00

The story of the University of Washington crew that took gold at the 1936 Olympics is one of the greatest American stories of our sport. If you don't know about it, I highly suggest you read about it here.

On September 10, Joe Rantz, the seven-seat of that eight, passed away in Washington State at the age of 93. The second-to-last surviving member of the crew, Rantz held a distinguished place in UW and American rowing lore. My sympathy and respect goes out to the family of a man who can truly be considered a hero, both in how he came to UW and through his accomplishments in rowing.

Olympic Qualifiers

2007-09-03T15:39:00.001-04:00

As promised, here's who qualified what for the Olympics next year in Beijing.

M1x
NZL, CZE, NOR, GBR, GER, SWE, BEL, ARG, SUI, NED, AUS

M2-
AUS, NZL, GBR, FRA, RSA, SRB, POL, USA, GER, CRO, DEN

M2x
SLO,FRA, EST, GBR, BLR, NZL, CRO, AUS, USA, GER, BEL

M4-
NZL, ITA, NED, GBR, SLO, FRA, CZE, USA, GER, IRL, BLR

M4x
POL, FRA, GER, ITA, CZE, UKR, RUS, EST, USA, AUS, CUB

LM2x
DEN, GRE, GBR, AUS, ITA, JPN, HUN, GER, CHN, FRA, AUT

LM4-
GBR, FRA, ITA, CAN, CHN, DEN, AUS, POL, EGY, NED, USA

W1x
BLR, BUL, USA, CZE, CHN, NZL, FRA, POL, SWE

W2-
BLR, GER, ROU, AUS, NZL, CHN, USA, CAN

W2x
CHN, NZL, GBR, ROU, CZE, GER, ITA, USA

LW2x
AUS, FIN, DEN, GER, GRE, CHN, CAN, GBR

M8+
CAN, GER, GBR, USA, RUS, POL, CHN

W4x
GBR, GER, CHN, UKR, CAN, USA, AUS

W8+
USA, ROU, GBR, AUS, GER

The only other opportunity for qualification is in Lucerne next summer, before the Olympics, at the last Olympic Qualification Regatta. The only boats that the US did not qualify this year are all small boats: the M1x, LM2x, and LW2x. Going to a qualification regatta two months before the Games will probably lead to a stressful summer season for the athletes in those boats, and as much as it would be nice to see the US race in all 14 events, they are some of the most competitive events on the Games' program (not that there's such a thing as an "easy" event at the Olympics) . Congratulations to all the crews who qualified at Worlds (as well as to the W4-, M4+, LW1x sculler Jen Goldsack for winning gold, gold, and silver, respectively).

Worlds Medal Count

2007-09-03T01:51:00.000-04:00

Here's the medal haul by country at this year's World Champs. I plan on compiling a list of who qualified what for Beijing 2008 tomorrow; that seems like it's going to take a substantial amount of time.

MEDAL COUNT (NON-ADAPTIVE EVENTS)

IOC	GOLD	SILVER	BRONZE	TOTAL
GBR	1	1	7	9
GER	0	6	3	9
AUS	3	0	2	5
ITA	2	3	2	7
NZL	3	2	0	5
USA	3	1	1	5
CAN	2	0	2	4
FRA	0	4	0	4
NED	2	0	2	4
CHN	1	0	2	3
BLR	2	0	0	2
POL	2	0	0	2
DEN	1	0	1	2
ROU	0	1	1	2
SLO	1	0	0	1
CZE	0	1	0	1
SRB	0	1	0	1
FIN	0	1	0	1
GRE	0	1	0	1
BUL	0	1	0	1
EST	0	0	1	1
NOR	0	0	1	1

ADAPTIVE EVENTS

IOC	GOLD	SILVER	BRONZE	TOTAL
BRA	2	0	0	2
GBR	1	1	0	2
AUS	0	2	0	2
POL	0	0	2	2
GER	1	0	0	1
BLR	0	1	0	1
CAN	0	0	1	1
ISR	0	0	1	1

TOTAL MEDALS (INC ADAPTIVE)

IOC	TOTAL
GBR	11
GER	10
AUS	7
ITA	7
NZL	5
USA	5
CAN	4
FRA	4
NED	4
POL	4
BLR	3
CHN	3
BRA	2
DEN	2
ROU	2
BUL	1
CZE	1
FIN	1
GRE	1
EST	1
SLO	1
SRB	1
NOR	1
ISR	1

Worlds 2007

2007-08-26T01:31:00.001-04:00

Worlds starts today! At the beginning of the summer, it seemed like it would never come, but now that it's here, I can't wait to see how events play out. Of course, I'm following US crews, so here's a list of who's racing when tomorrow (all heats are one to progress unless otherwise noted):

SUNDAY
M2+, Heat 2, 9:36
LW1x (Jen Goldsack), Heat 3, 9:54
LM1x (Ivan Baldychev), Heat 1, 10:06
W1x (Michelle Guerette), Heat 1, 10:42
W2-, Heat 3, 12:06, three to advance to the semis
M2-, Heat 1, 12:24
W2x, Heat 2, 12:42, two to advance to semis
M2x, Heat 1, 12:54, top four to the quarterfinal, rest to final E
M4-, Heat 4, 1:48

MONDAY
LM2-, Heat 1, 9:30
LW4x, Heat 2, 9:48
LM4x, Heat 1, 9:54
LW2x, Heat 1, 10:06, top two to advance
LM2x, Heat 2, 10:30, top four to quarterfinals, fifth place to Final E
LM4-, Heat 6, 11:30, top three to quarterfinals, fourth place in heats with four boats to quarterfinals, fifth to Final E
W4x, Heat 2, 11:42
M4x, Heat 3, 12:00, top two to semifinals
W8+, Heat 2, 12:18
M8+, Heat 1, 12:24, top two to semifinals
AW1x, Heat 2, 1:50
AM1x, Heat 3, 2:20, top two to semifinals
TA2x, Heat 1, 2:30, top two to semifinals
LTAMX4-, Heat 3, 3:20, top three to semifinals

Munich time is six hours ahead of current East Coast USA time. Good luck to all the US crews!

It's A Small World

2007-08-21T01:00:00.000-04:00

I was in Rhode Island for a week-long vacation earlier in the month, and it was good times. This being the first time I went on this vacation as an over 21 year-old, I was able to go to the bars and clubs with my brother and brother-in-law. It was fun, although I'm not much of a drinker.

The most interesting thing that happened to me all vacation took place in one of those bars, however. One night, my brother and I were trying to meet a few girls, and we took notice of every pair of girls or women that walked into the place. We ended sitting next to two good-looking women at the bar. We talked for a little while, although it was obvious this conversation wasn't going anywhere, especially since one was married. We got up to leave, and the unmarried girl noticed the club logo on my henley.

"Do you row?" she asked me. I told her that I did. She told me she had rowed for a mid-Atlantic college a few years ago. Her friend remarked that her husband had been a heavyweight at Georgetown and her brother-in-law rowed and won a silver medal at some regatta. I thought she meant some regional championship back in the 90s. Out of courtesy, I asked who her brother-in-law was.

"Sebastian Bea*?" She asked me as if to say "have you heard of him?"

I was shocked. Stumbling out of the bar to our next drinking spot, I couldn't help but laugh. The world of rowing is so small sometimes, and if you stay around long enough, you'll eventually meet an Olympic medallist -- or at least his sister-in-law.

*Watch this if you don't know the name.

2007-06-10T01:56:00.001-04:00

I went on a five-mile run tonight; it took me an hour and I felt like I ran a marathon. There were some nice moments, though. I ran past my old house and through my old neighborhood, which of course got me thinking a lot about how things have changed over the years. Drizzle marked miles one, three, and four and a half, while I got to listen to a pianist practicing what sounded like Handel in the living room as I jogged by. I smelt new pine growing in, woodlands along the side of the road rotting, life fading away and renewing itself, and I thanked God for the existence of grey New England twilights like this.

Right on the Money?

2007-06-03T20:52:00.000-04:00

Just so I have this down somewhere as proof: Yale and Wisconsin crews are on the rise. I predict both programs to have a place on the medals stand at IRA's for the V8 in the next two to three years.

Blisters

2007-05-09T10:09:00.000-04:00

My blisters are coming back. The pain in my lower back is more manageable, so I figured it's about time to return to rowing, or at least it's red-headed stepson, erging. I started small, but I've been increasing the amount weekly. I figure I'll finish this week rowing 20 minutes three times a week, and then I'll try to bring it up to five and see how it feels. That coincides well with finals.

So it's time. Time to commit myself to something bigger, to the team. An eight cannot go fast without all eight people working in unison, but I must prepare myself to rise to the expectations of the group. And I will. By September, I will be back to the point where I can take a 6K test and be within 2 split seconds of my PR. I will be able to lift and stretch at least as far as I could last year. Time to bring it back.

Still Nicer Than Vespolis

2007-04-30T03:31:00.000-04:00

Since when has Washington used Empachers? In the photos of their dual with Cal, the men's varsity eight is rowing in one. That's surprising, considering Pocock's long association with Washington rowing. It's only the 1V, though. The junior varsity, freshman, and varsity four are all still rowing Pococks. Weird. I never thought I'd see Washington in anything but a Pocock.

Podcasts

2007-04-24T00:08:00.000-04:00

I found a podcast on the Apple store that broadcasts videos of Cal crew races. The name of the podcast is "Friends of Cal Crew Video Archive", and while it's very Cal/West Coast-centric, it's also a chance to observe some excellent racing (this season's racing includes duals against Wisco and Stanford). The videos are sponsored by Resolute Racing Shells and include starting lineups and statistics like stroke rates, 500m splits, and boat speed (mph). If rowing ever reaches a widespread audience in the United States, this is a good idea on how it should be done, although I would like more color commentary, and maybe a livelier announcer.

The Boat Race

2007-04-07T12:16:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to the Light Blues, winners of the 153rd University Boat Race. I don't know if the Race has ever been broadcast in the United States, but I'm glad that ESPN got the rights to broadcast in America this year (even though it's just ludicrous that I had to wake up on a Saturday!).

One of the things that impressed me the most about the coverage of the race was the cinematography in the pre-race introductions. Everything, from the opening montage to the crew introductions were well crafted and seemed to display the beauty of the sport so well.

The race itself was a pretty good one. Oxford, billed as the underdogs by a significant margin, put up a hell of a fight right through the Surrey Bend. However, Cambridge held onto Oxford throughout, and just pounded through the last half of that race.

I've always been an Oxford fan, ever since I learned of the Boat Race. I don't know why, maybe I have something for Dark Blues; I've cheered for Yale in every event they've ever competed against Harvard. For Oxford to lose is a bit of a disappointment, but when one learns of Tom James winning his first of four Boat Races, you can't help but be a little happy for the guy. It must also feel good for Duncan Holland to win his first Boat Race after last year's debut loss to Oxford.

The Ecstasy and the Agony

2007-04-02T10:13:00.000-04:00

My teammates had their first race this weekend. Apparently, there was some good racing, and from what I've heard, there's still a lot of work to do in order for the 1V to reach their potential by the time the championships roll around.

It's still very tough hearing about races and looking at results, knowing that I might have been in one of the boats that raced this weekend if not for my back. It's even worse than being the spare or not making weight in a lights race, because my absence is not due to lack of dedication or training time; instead it's an uncontrollable weakness of my body. I can't imagine what it's going to be like after my years of college eligibility are up. I know I'm never going to be an elite oarsman, no matter how hard I work; I have too much in the way of physiology and size working against me. But I don't think I could stay disconnected from the sport for even a few months, whether I'm holding an oar or a megaphone.

Now for the pain: running sucks! That's about it. I enjoy it, but I'm terrible at it. I would love to run a marathon or even a 5k someday, but even when I'm at my fittest as a rower, I still can't run fast or far. It's far from ideal, but now that it's nice out, there's no way I'm going to spend my days in the stuffy, overcrowded gym.

---

In other news, congratulations to the USC women and Stanford men for winning the Jessop-Whittier and Copley Cup at the Crew Classic this year. This makes two in a row for Stanford, who defeated Cal by a little over a second this year; last year, they beat Cal by two seconds (of course, Cal ended up winning the rest of their races against Stanford, the Pac-10 championships, and the IRA MV8). There was also a strong field in both the Men's and Women's Cal Cup races, with 20 entries in the men's race and 17 in the women's. UC Davis won the women's event, while UCSD won the men's. From what I understand, the Cal Cup is becoming the race for smaller programs at the Crew Classic; hopefully this trend of crews coming from places as far away as Philly and Buffalo to race in San Diego will continue to grow.

On A Lighter Note

2007-03-28T11:06:00.000-04:00

Some good quotes from Row2k columnist and coxswain Rob Colburn that I couldn't help but share:

"How do I keep my rowers from looking out of the boat and affecting the set? I keep calling them out, but they still do it.
Tell your boat what I tell mine: Every time someone looks out, I get to eat one of Ms. Quail's chocolate nut brownies. I figure I win either way.

As coxswain, am I empowered to perform weddings?
Technically, yes. (Be careful how you use this authority, though.) Per U.S. Coast Guard regulations, anything 60 feet or longer is legally a ship, and ship captains can perform marriages. (Shorter-hulled Resolutes, and 4+s may need to go out beyond the twelve-mile limit.)

My parents want to know how come -- if a crew race only takes about 6 minutes -- going to a crew race always takes up an entire day.
Erm, well..., we've got our best research team working on that."

Rallying Cry

2007-03-28T10:16:00.001-04:00

For those of you who have been following the news on Row2k, the decision by Rutgers University to keep six of the Olympic sports on the chopping block despite the $3 million of pledges isn't much of a surprise. In addition to men's light- and heavyweight rowing, the school plans to demote men's swimming and diving, men's tennis, and men's and women's fencing from varsity status to club sports.

For the record, the entire operating budget for these six teams totals to about $800,000. The $3 million that boosters have raised alone could fund these sports for 3 and 3/4 of the next academic years. That means the programs could run from next fall to this time four years from now.

To put this in perspective, the annual operating budget of the Rutgers athletic department is $40 million. $40 million. The operating budget of those six sports equals 2% of the entire athletic department.

Where does the rest of that 98% go?

A majority of it goes to the Scarlet Knights' football program. Rutgers football went to its second straight Bowl game this past season, defeating Kansas State 37-10. Meanwhile, the football budget last year was $13 million. That's 32.5% of the athletic department budget for the year. The school has been arguing that with the increase of applicants to the University and the large incoming freshman class, some of that chunk can be made up through ticket sales at home games. How much money do you think ticket sales can make up over the course of three months of games? I wasn't able to locate figures, but I'm willing to be that it's not the $12,200,000 that would make up the difference between the football budget and the budget for these six sports that are about to be cut.

The bottom line for the decision-makers at Rutgers University is the fact that none of these sports are revenue-producing sports. Take a look at these statistics:
-women's fencing has the highest cumulative GPA of all varsity sports at Rutgers
-four of the five men's teams being eliminated have GPAs in the top five
-14 Olympians have come from Rutgers crew -- since 1992
-men's and women's fencing have produced 32 All-Americans and an NCAA championship in the past 20 years -- this was the only NCAA championship Rutgers produced during this period

In light of all these facts, the school's refusal to consider keeping these sports on with the offer of $3 million to support them from alums and other boosters is simply ridiculous. Legitimate budget shortages are unfortunate but understandable. However, this just stinks of something larger. As the premiere land-grant university in New Jersey, don't they have a responsibility to promote excellence in academics and athletics, even if the athletics in question don't produce a profit?

So now the rallying cry. I'm going to ask anybody who reads this blog to write to the movers and shakers at Rutgers. As members of the rowing community, we should all fight to keep venerable collegiate programs alive. They are as much a part of our sports' history as they are the university's. So write to some of the people listed on the Save Rutgers Tennis website. Let them know that their decision is irresponsible and unjust for the athletes who race and play for the Scarlet Knights with little or no recognition.

(Sources: The Daily Targum and NorthJersey.com)

Coming Back Like Jordan

2007-03-13T01:02:00.000-04:00

To anybody who caught the Jay-Z reference in the subject line, good for you.

The weather has suddenly done a turn-around towards the whole "lamb" side of March. It was 54 degrees today, and it's supposed to be almost 60 tomorrow! I even wore flip-flops all day! It was very exciting.

To celebrate this change for the better, I decided I was going to go for a run after classes. I changed, stuffed my keys in my mailbox downstairs, and headed out the door. I headed towards the main road that would take me in the loop around campus. Inexplicably, however, I turned right instead of left, my legs leading me towards the gym where the men's crew equipment is stored. I couldn't help myself; if my back felt good enough to try running, then I must be well enough to give erging a shot.

I hopped on an erg and pulled a 30-minute piece, my first time sitting on one of those machines since mid-December. Three months away was a terrible thing; I was huffing and puffing after five minutes of a pace that was ten split seconds slower than my steady state pressure while I'm in season. The drag setting was around 120, yet it felt like the flywheel was cranked all the way to 10. But I suffered through the whole 30 minutes, feeling like a champion when the timer hit zero. I'm paying for it now; my back is sore and my arms ache. But it's not the same kind of pain that I've been experiencing lately, and it's good to know where I stand and what I have to do to get back in shape for the summer.

Dreams

2007-03-08T11:40:00.001-05:00

Up here in the still-frozen north, temperatures haven't risen high enough to enable on water rowing. My teammates are still land-locked, sweating their lives away on ergs while oarsmen further south and west are on the water, already racing. I won't be joining them this year, although I hope to get to a few races along the way.

It's funny. The more I'm not training for the spring, the more I think about it. When I'm churning out morning after morning of high-intensity pieces, I don't usually have the energy to contemplate it; the very act is inherently maddening enough that it makes contemplating unbearable. If I was training and concentrating on every little aspect of the race like I am now, I would probably end up burning out or quitting, the intensity of it is so great.

I have this image in my head, and I can't get rid of it. It looks like the intro to some kind of film. Opening shot is the blank surface of the water. Out of nowhere, an oar swings across from the top of the screen, mid-feather. It grabs the water at the catch, perfect backsplash. The video goes into slow-motion, arcing through the water in a perfect application of power, a bend in the shaft right up to the release.

Zoom out. The camera picks up with the movement of the shell passing by. As the boat fills the camera, more and more of the oarsman can be seen. He is poised, taut like a rubber band, ready to go off at the next catch. The boat runs perfectly set underneath his blade. As he rotates to take the next stroke, we finally see the face of the oarsman about to drive the eight forward. Usually, the face is mine, although it's not always the case. Onward with the next stroke; the camera continues zooming out until the entire shell is on display, eight bodies swinging as one, rotating in a clear line down the shell. It's a beautiful sight.

Hey!

2007-02-26T07:05:00.001-05:00

Wow, it's been a while.

I went cross-country skiing yesterday in lieu of another mind-numbingly boring workout in the gym. I don't know how people can do that year-round and still stay motivated. I don't think I'm designed to go fast on land; I'm a terrible runner and an even worse skier. I spent more time on my ass than I did on the skis. Every once in a while, however, there was a beautiful moment, like when my skis were gliding in the direction I wanted them to and I felt like I was flying. Or watching my teammates cross a ridgeline between myself and the setting sun. I felt the kind of peace that I find in a boat, the kind that is inimitable in a pool or on a stationary bike, or even, in that case, on an erg. I miss being a part of the flow of nature on the river, even more so than usual because I know I'm going to be denied that pleasure until at least May.

Everything I do is to make me faster.
Every waking moment I dedicate myself to perfection.
Every stroke is a chance to improve.
Every race is a test against myself.
Every action off the water is for myself and my teammates.

Late-Night Drive

2007-01-29T21:31:00.000-05:00

It was the last night before Winter Break was up. I was getting restless. All my friends were back at their schools already. I had visited one of my friends going to school near home, but other than that, I had been on my own. It was relaxing, the solitude, but I was itching for some contact other than watching Desperate Housewives on TV with my stepmother. I got in my car and headed out, unsure of where the night would take me.

I drove down the interstate, absently driving along roads I had traveled many times before. This stretch of highway led me to points north in my life: my summer rowing club. My university boat house. College.

Without even realizing it, I had driven to the town where my summer rowing club was. The highway snaked along adjacent to the river. In the moonlit darkness, the water looked crystalline. The ice that had formed over the past few days of frigid winds and below freezing temperatures had broken apart along the bridges spanning its width. Despite the cold air whipping by the outside of my car, I longed to be out on the river in a single, silently sweeping across the shimmering water. No matter, even if it was nice and sunny out, I would be stuck to the car seat with my bad back.

I eventually turned around and headed to an all-night diner that specialized in quick, greasy food. Fuck my weight. I needed comfort food that night. I ordered some fries and sat, munching and thinking. And waiting. Waiting for my back to recuperate so I could satisfy a much stronger hunger.

Welcome Home

2007-01-15T18:59:00.000-05:00

Today marks the conclusion of another successful winter training camp for my crew. I am currently writing this at whatever cruising altitude and speed is for a Boeing 727, exhausted after almost two weeks of double sessions.

As predicted, I ended up rowing only one day due to my back. Instead, I made the most of it by taking photos and video for the coaches on the launch. It was a productive week; our 1V is going to be fast this year if we can build on the progress we made in the past four or five days. It was discouraging at first, having to sit out while my friends did some hard work and some of their best rowing to date. The guys I was a a novice with are nearing the end of their eligibility, and it only seems that they're getting exponentially better as time goes on. By the end of the camp, my disappointment was gone, replaced with a yearning to get back in a boat and on the water. The last practice we did pieces in mixed novice/varsity lineups, and by the last one I wanted to pull a Rudy: "Come on, coach, put me in!"

In a way, this injury couldn't have come at a better time, at least as far as injuries can go. My class load this coming semester is terrible, and some of my classes actually conflict with our practice time (I'm an education major, and a lot of the classes are early in the morning to simulate a working environment). Furthermore, I got the highest marks of my college career last semester, and the pressure is on to repeat that this semester. I thought that being injured would be an easy way out for me, to slack off and get fat and slow until my back healed; watching my teammates row, however, has helped light a fire under my ass that's not going out any time soon. To that end, I've set a few goals for myself once I get back to school:

-Maintain weight. I've put on a few pounds since the end of the fall season, and I'd like to be able to say that I'm around 165, even if I'm not racing this season.
-Get at least 90 minutes of work done a day. Running aggravates my back, and erging is definitely out of the question. But I was able to use an elliptical every day while I was at the training camp, and I plan on getting on that and a stationary bike as often as I can.
-Use my time away from rowing as effectively as possible. My core strength needs work, and I can finally dedicate a good chunk of time to those kinds of exercises. There's also a Bikram yoga club near my campus, and I plan on trying that out at least a few times. A few of my teammates have been singing it's praises for a while. I might even be able to get a second job and save up some money for a single.

Of course, even the best laid plans can fall through. I want to follow through with as much of this as possible, however.

I always plan my flight late from these training camps, only because our bus to the airport never arrives on time. This year, we got lucky: it was only an hour late, and as far as I know, none of the team missed their flights. Being one of the last ones to leave also gives me a little time to myself to reflect on what I learned at the camp and what I can do to make my rowing better before our first race. This year, there obviously wasn't any direct feedback that I could apply to my stroke; instead, I was struck by how empty I felt waiting by myself. For twelve days, I ate, slept, woke, relaxed, and worked alongside the same group of men. The novice that I could barely identify by face at the end of the fall are now close to me; if not as close as my varsity teammates now, then pretty damn close. Waiting in solitude, even for a small a time as four hours, threw me off my rhythm and ruined the routine that I had already been able to adapt to. We have a week off, then classes and practice starts again, and even though I won't be rowing, I'll be there in the morning, just to be a part of that team and that routine.

Bummer

2006-12-29T05:46:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty sure this year is over for me, at least rowing-wise. I can't even run without my back hurting a few hours later. Considering it's been about two months since my back started hurting, I'm going to wager that it's probably not the simple strain that they told me about at the infirmary at school. I've got an appointment on Tuesday with my physician here at home, and hopefully he'll be able to give me a better idea of what's going on and how to treat it.

This is honestly a little scary for me. I have a fairly high tolerance for pain, even outside of the normal pains of rowing; I know I could row through this if I really wanted to. However, I don't want to damage anything beyond what it already is, and I don't want to blow many more years of rowing over one collegiate season. I know I'm going to be at college for over four years anyways, so I could use this as a "redshirt" season. Beyond the injury, I have classes that are probably going to conflict as well, and it'd be better off for everybody if I just took the season off and got myself in order.

I haven't told my coach this yet; I haven't talked it over with any of my teammates. We start winter training next week, and I've already paid for the trip, I might as well go. I have no idea what I'm going to do while I'm down there. I'll probably end up the launch bitch, taking video footage and holding on to clothes for people. Oh boy.

Postlude

2006-12-11T16:25:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. This and this was put up on Row2k last night, a small conclusion to the post I made a few weeks ago about the dimishing support to be found for rowing in the world of collegiate athletics.

Pinochle...ha.

She's Pretty Much Everything I Could Want In A Woman

2006-12-11T16:20:00.000-05:00

If anybody knows who this is and/or how I can find her, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
-The Oarsman

Bowball!

2006-12-05T22:27:00.000-05:00

We were out for what was probably our last on-water practice today; the weather was chilly, but clear. This afternoon, it snowed, effectively killing any ideas our coach might have had about getting on the water tomorrow morning.

It was a good practice, though. We were planning on doing drills all morning, by fours on the way upriver, and by sixes and eights on the way back down. Nothing strenuous; an easy practice before our 6K test on Thursday morning.

Things went fine for the first half of the practice. Drills were done, handle heights were set, and pauses were implemented. The novice, coincidentally, were also out, barreling around at full speed by all eights while we plodded slowly through the fog. We had launched with sufficient time to get to the turn-around point before they were able to catch us. By the time we had spun around and stretched out, the novice had caught us and were resting for the second half of a set of four-minute pieces.

We started down, still working on the drills by four. Our boats stayed pretty close together, about two oars lengths apart, one boat adding pauses as necessary when the other began to fall behind. Our oars dipped gracefully, silently into the water, counting time for the resting four. Behind us, the novice had spun and had started again with the four-minute pieces. This time, they would surely pass us.

Mid-drill, the novice did flash by, in a flurry of oars, splashing water, and screams of "bowball!" Their coaches, who were on our varsity last year, zipped by in their launches, screaming along with their crews. "What do they want?" asked our coxswain. "We're rowing by fours, for God's sake."

Immediately, our coach turned to us. "Cox, take it up all eight, full pressure. Don't stop until you catch them." Our cox relayed the message to us, but we were already ahead of her. The next stroke, we were up all eight, and the stroke after that we were at a 28.

By this time, both novice boats had already moved a good distance on us. Later, I would find out that they had about five boat lengths on us before we brought it up to full pressure.

BOOM. Ca-Chunk. BOOM. Ca-Chunk. Our oars thudded in our oarlocks, hammering the water with each stroke. Puddles moved under us, our bodies swung, and our coxswain called the second novice boat a length down. We took them within the first 100 strokes. One down, one to go.

We thundered upon the first novices about fifteen strokes after we walked through their other boat. I looked over, seeing they were slowing, almost allowing us to overtake them. "I want their bow man in ten strokes!" our coxswain yelled. We wound it up, taking the rate a beat higher each stroke, moving through them in the ten strokes, our coxswain counting as each stroke took us up another seat. Seeing no need to upset a good rhythm, our coach had us race the other varsity eight back to the dock.

Fun practice? Yes. Easy practice? No.

Rowing Programs Get the Axe

2006-11-29T20:11:00.000-05:00

PRESS RELEASE
CINCINNATI, Ohio -- The University of Cincinnati Department of Athletics is realigning its sports offerings to more effectively address the evolving shifts in the popularity of women's sports.

With a growth rate at the high school level of 290 percent over the last decade, the number of female athletes participating in girl's lacrosse has skyrocketed to almost 52,000 according to a recent survey conducted by the National Federation of State High School Associations. What this translates to is a much greater need for opportunities at the college level which UC Athletics will address by adding women's lacrosse as a varsity sport.

Concurrently, the University of Cincinnati has elected to discontinue its women's rowing program at the conclusion of its traditional season in the spring of 2007.

These moves are part of a long-range planning process initiated to optimize the department's objectives of producing championship caliber programs and ensuring that the department is being managed as efficiently as possible and in accordance with the standards and best practices as set forth by the NCAA. The CATAPULT plan focuses on three main initiatives: winning BIG EAST team championships, high-level academic achievement, and a comprehensive integration with the Greater Cincinnati Community.

This is the third (or fifth, depending on how you count it) collegiate rowing program that I have heard was being cut by their athletic department in the past year. Personally, I find this amazing. Junior rowing is a niche sport, certainly, yet there is no end to the number of recruitable boys and girls pulling on oars in high schools across the country. Add the University of Cincinnati to a list that includes the University of New Hampshire and Rutgers University, two schools who have elected to drop rowing, along with other sports, in order to fund a higher-profile sport (in UNH and Rutgers' case, football, from what I understand). Rutgers, prior to the end of this year, has sponsored men's heavyweight, lightweight, and women's openweight rowing, and the loss of these programs is a blow to the depth of rowing on the East Coast.

Certainly, crew is an expensive sport. When the essential tools to field a team run upwards of $30,000, you know you're going to have to allocate a good chunk of the athletic budget to pay for scholarships, coaches, facilities, etc. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing; with Division I-A football coaches earning an average of $950,000, adding a women's rowing program to your department is a way to achieve gender balance as required by law in Title IX. But for the University of Cincinnati and the University of New Hampshire, rowing was already a women's sport - men's teams were club sports. One has to wonder about the wisdom of these cuts, especially at UC, where the women's rowing team had leveled charges against the Athletic Department that the quality of departmental assistance they were receiving did not necessarily help make the school Title IX-compliant.

I'M GOING CRAZY

2006-11-12T23:58:00.000-05:00

I can't take not practicing anymore. I'm going back to it tomorrow morning, backache or no backache.

Injuries

2006-11-09T20:44:00.000-05:00

Last Friday, our coach adjusted the rigging in our four, making the load heavier. Being a smaller guy rowing with three other stereotypical heavyweight men (6'0" or taller, 200+ lbs), this was a viable option to see if it would increase boat speed. However, the resulting change did something to my lower back, and I haven't been able to row since last weekend. On the eve of my first week without touching an erg or an oar, I figured I'd chart my degression into madness day-by-day.

Day 1-2
Saturday and Sunday were off days. Woo.

Day 3
First day I got to sleep in since the week before I moved back on campus. It was nice, waking up after the sun had already risen. However, I didn't get up in time to take a shower and therefore had to go to class stinky and with a wicked cowlick. This will become a trend as the week goes on.

Day 4
I don't know what this feeling is. I...miss? Rowing? Had an early class so I had to get up early anyways, and I didn't fall asleep until after midnight the night before. I haven't really spent any time with my teammates since the weekend, which is a long time. Keep slogging, you'll be okay...

Day 5
This is the most times I've been up past midnight in one week since the end of the 2006 spring season. I'm getting irritable and jittery, and I blame this on a lack of erging. I usually don't have enough energy to be anything but tired when we've got hard afternoon workouts, but I can't push myself like that on a stationary bike. On the plus side, I've gotten an extraordinary amount of classwork done.

Day 6
Rest of the team had a 6K today. I went down to the erg room and watched some of them pull it, helped cox a few of them who wanted someone talking to them. Wanted to hop on an erg and pull one with the rest of the team, regardless of fitness and back pains. Instead did a 40 minute steady state on the stationary bike in the public gym. People like to stare at guys in spandex.

To be continued...

Cancellations

2006-10-29T13:24:00.000-05:00

Lots of regatta cancellations this past weekend: both the Head of the Fish and the Princeton Chase have cancelled parts of their regattas. The Fish cancelled their masters events, and the Princeton Chase has called off all their small boat and four events. Some full regattas have been cancelled, most notably the Head of the Schuykill in Philadelphia. The Head of the Elk in Indiana has also been cancelled.

I was at the Head of the Fish Saturday (open and junior events still went on), and the regatta committee made the proper choice in cancelling the rest of the events. Racing was done in miserable weather: a driving rain, temperatures in the mid-40's, a pretty bad breeze blowing through. By the time I got ready to launch for the Open 8+, I had been exposed to the weather for over six hours, which thoroughly diminished my enthusiasm.

It started coming back when I was bringing down the boat from the trailer, though. I knew what was going to happen: I was going to be cold, wet, and miserable from the moment we got hands on to the moment we pushed off. And then we'd start warming up, first by sixes, then by eights, taking tens on the way to the start. I'd start getting warmer. The rain would stop bothering me, or at the most it would only serve to take my mind off the shortness of breath and the onset of pain as we swung into the current. We would get to the start, spin, and I would strip down to just my uni, as cold as I was. The moment we started heading down that chute, though, any thought of the temperature or the moisture or anything else would have disappeared, 50, 100 meters behind me.

And lo and behold, it did.

Head Races?

2006-10-18T20:35:00.000-04:00

Jesus, it's been over a month since my last post to this blog. I guess I should start getting back on it, huh?

For most of us here on the East Coast, we're knee-deep in the fall season. We all know what that means: 10+ minutes of fun and adventure. It's always a little weird shifting from sprint to head racing (and vice versa), at least to me. Every "off" season (summer or winter training), I keep thinking about the races of the previous season, even though I'm training for a completely different experience. I'm not sure why it is, why the big shift catches me so off guard.

In any case, I enjoy the fall a great amount. I think I have a better aerobic system that I do anaerobic, so I have an easier time pacing myself throughout a 5K race or a 6K time trial than I do than if I'm doing a 2000 meter sprint. Not only that, but the staggered start takes off so much pressure. Unless you're starting before some very fast crews, you usually can't judge whether or not the boat ahead of you has moved that much, if at all. And moving through a boat when you know that they started 15 seconds ahead of you is a great feeling; it makes me feel so strong to know you were able to make up a four or five length difference to pass them.

All that being said, I think it would be a very interesting change in dynamic if head races were started out head to head (no pun intended). Think about racing some of the teams you face in the spring over a 5000 meter course, battling back and forth for over twice as long as you do in the spring. There's so much more time for great moments in racing, boats battling back and forth, exchanging the lead with each stroke.

...of course, you could also face a crew that's obviously faster than you and lose by 20+ seconds.

The biggest race I can think of that happens in that format in America is the Harvard-Yale race in June; however, the entries to that race are obviously pretty limited. But there are some great stories from both that race and the Oxbridge Boat Race in England which I think could be recreated here during the fall.

That's why I like the concept of the University of Southern California's Club National Championship race in Los Angeles on November 11. So far, the three year-old event has only hosted crews from California. But I know of a few East Coast crews which have considered racing at this event this year. Whether it will happen or not remains to be seen, but I would love the opportunity to line up against USC or California's lightweights, crews that I would otherwise never get to race.

To Race

2006-09-16T20:09:00.000-04:00

"Hundreds of feet above us, cars whisked by, oblivious to our drama. Up there were the shortcuts, the excuses, the world of infinite possibilites separating man and his potential. We had four miles nad the best competition in the nation. We linked hands in a chain down the boat, committing ourselves to each other. I gave a final glance at Harvard, and then looked over my shoulder down the lines of stakes receding into the distance. We were set, the boats were aligned, and both coxswains' hands were down."
-Steve Kiesling, Yale '80, from The Shell Game

Can't Sleep...Zombies Will Eat Me...Can't Sleep...

2006-09-02T03:51:00.000-04:00

"With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything's far away. Everything's a copy of a copy of a copy."
-Fight Club

I wouldn't say I'm an insomniac, but there are a lot of nights that I find myself unable to sleep. Some days, when I can, I'll just lay in bed until I fall asleep, watching the digital numbers on my alarm clock pass five o'clock, six o'clock, seven. Then I'll sleep until three or four in the afternoon. Other days, when I have work, class, or practice, I'll stay up for another day. I've been pretty good about it this summer, but this past week I've had two nights where I just can't sleep. Unfortuately, this was my last week at home, so I had a lot of stuff I had to do. So when I got a night of no sleep, I couldn't just try again later.

What's funny about it is that while I'm still not back at school, occasionally I'll go through the same motions. So when 6 AM rolls around, I'm hopping into my car for the half-hour drive to the boathouse. I had been looking forward to morning rows since work started and I couldn't fit them in my schedule anymore. There was no way I was going to let a little lack of sleep keep me off the water. At least that was my attitude as I was sitting in my beanbag chair. Once I stood up, my head and my body started to rebel.

I wouldn't say I remember the drive, except for the first few moments when I was terrified I would eat it in some sleep-induced car accident. After a few moments, even abject terror becomes mind-numbing and boring.

Even when I got to the boathouse, there wasn't any sign of me feeling better. My head ached, my mouth felt like it had been packed full of cotton. Sounds were coming to me muffled and from a distance. Much like the drive up, I don't really remember bringing down my oars or even my boat. But somehow, I found myself tied in and pushing off of the dock with my partners, both masters in their 60's.

I can't really explain it; I'm not a neurosurgeon or any other kind of medical authority, but once I started moving, my mind cleared. The stuffiness that I felt was gone. It was just the three of us, moving across the flattest water I've ever sculled on. I was moving well, my boat was running underneath me with barely a ripple, just the faint flow of the water against the hull of the boat.

By the time I had returned to the dock, I was ready to go for another few hours, just enough time to let me get what I needed to do done.

I know a lot of teams don't do morning practices, and if it works for the program, great. But I would never want to completely lose those few hours between the end of the night and sunrise, where I can find myself before every morning.

Post-Worlds Blather

2006-08-31T22:36:00.000-04:00

I just spent an hour typing up a report on my impressions about this years World Championships, but Blogger, being the bitch that it is, deleted it on me without warning. I'm not going to type that whole thing in again, so I'm going to make it as brief as possible. If you can't follow along, ask someone else to translate.

US: Gold W8+, new world's best time. Bronze W4-, M8+, disappointing for those who were expecting a repeat of last year (like myself).

Big upset: NZ placed third in the W2x, behind AUS and GER; this is the first time since 2001 the Evers-Swindell twins have lost a World Championship race.

Hometown favorites: GBR M4- and LM1x won their events; the M4- by less than a second and the LM1x by setting a new world's best time.

The Chinese won the LW2x, LW4x, and the LM4-; two of those boats are Olympic-class. If these trends continue, this should be interestng come 2008.

That German LM2- that I said looked like a pair of juniors last post? They won their event. Pwned!

Is that it? I think that's it. I'm going to bed.

Put Some Money Down On This Horse

2006-08-21T15:46:00.000-04:00

"China has fielded what looks to be a pretty strong, large team here this year, and their crews have done well over the past two days. The preparation for Beijing are apparent, right down to athlete development across the board. The Chinese also boast the youngest rower at this years Worlds: Xuefei Fan, three-seat in the LW4x, turns
sixteen this coming October."
-Row2k

Hehehe.

In other Worlds quibble: take a look at the German LM2- here. I've never really seen Germans fielding lightweight crews before; these guys look like a pair of juniors. And check out the Indian M2x...I wonder who's got the better erg time in that boat?

In actual racing news, the US took the top spot in their heats for both M8+ and W8+; I'm interested to see if Teti and Co. can pull off the three-peat this year. The M4x also put up a fight in their heat today; I was listening to it live up until the halfway point when I had to leave for work. I waited the whole morning wondering what the result of the race is.

So far, the US crews that are going to the reps are: W2-, M1x, W4-, M2-, M2x, LW1x, LW4x, LM2x, and the W4x.

Last word: I love this shot. Drama, misery...you can see all the emotions of the sport on these guys' two faces.

World Championships: The Beginning

2006-08-20T00:38:00.000-04:00

World Rowing Championship racing starts in five hours! I'm very excited; there's nothing better in a non-Olympic year than this week. Good luck to all the US crews racing tomorrow: W4-, LW1x, W1x, M1x, W2-, M2-, W2x, M2x, and M4-. I think this last race will be very exciting, although perhaps not for the reasons I'd like. The Great Britain M4-, the heirs to the Redgrave/Pinsent/Cracknell dynasty have swept the World Cup races, and I'm sure they'll provide some interesting racing for the American crew, who are in the lane over from them in their heat.

The race I've got my eye on the most is the LW1x, where the United States is being represented by Lisa Schlenker. Her story is one of the most remarkable in modern rowing, I believe. She's currently 41 years old, and didn't even begin rowing until she was 28! Now a ten-time national teamer, she's represented the country in the lightweight quad, double, and single sculls, was the first lightweight woman to break the 7:00 2K barrier (in which she also holds the world record), and has won three silver medals at the World Championships (LW1x, 1999, 2002; LW4x, 1998). The last race for the LW1x at the US Trials was also very dramatic. The best of luck to her, who I think serves as an example for athletes everywhere, rowers and non.

Our History

2006-08-17T00:37:00.000-04:00

There's been a few postings on the Row2k website about an ambitious project Peter Mallory has taken up: he's writing a book that traces the evolution of the rowing stroke from at least as far back as Ned Hanlan in the late 19th Century. There are two chapters from his manuscript available on Row2k starting here. I urge you to read them, they're quite compelling if you have any interest whatsoever in the history of rowing. He is also asking for video footage and books that might be able to help him in his writing. His website is here, and you can find the stuff he's looking for under the "Wish List" tab.

Oops

2006-08-07T23:25:00.000-04:00

I can't believe I haven't done this before today: there's another rowing blog out there that I've been reading a lot of lately, and he's the first reader of this blog who's made note of that fact. So, without further ado, may I introduce Coach Jay and his blog, Launch Exhaust! My apologies, Coach, for not giving you the link-up earlier.

Woohoo!

2006-08-07T16:04:00.000-04:00

Sophie Balmry is racing at the Head of the Charles! *Swoons*

I'm not a crazy stalker, I swear. They posted the singles draw on the Charles website today.

And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, read this.

Rowing, Sex, and Lightweights...Oh My!

2006-08-04T19:16:00.000-04:00

A few oldies but goodies for you (and if you're new to the sport, something new to laugh about).

Top 10 Reasons Why Rowing is Better Than Sex

1. You can row with minors and not get arrested.
2. You do not have to worry where your oar has been before.
3. Two words: "Cox Box".
4. You can row with up to seven other people at the same time.
5. Your oar will never give you a S.T.D. (except crabs).
6. Female rowers give Head races a new name.
7. Let's face it, it's not.
8. When rowing you have a coach to tell you what you did wrong.
9. After a good hard row, everybody is satisfied.
10. In rowing, the catch is aggressive, the hands quick, the slide smooth, the drive powerful, and the oar is always hard.

Top 10 Reasons Why Athletic Directors Will Not Make Rowing a Varsity Sport

1. There will be more rowers than football players.
2. Not enough injuries for athletic trainers.
3. Team graduation rate is too high.
4. Team GPA is too high.
5. Can win by sitting on your bum and going backward.
6. There is no offense or defense in rowing; all rowers do the same thing; there are no incredible plays during competition.
7. Coaching staff is too small.
8. No need for maintenance crew to maintain practice and competition sites.
9. No extensive recruiting budget.
10. Does not generate revenue.

Top 10 Reasons Why People Row Lightweight

1. LOVE IT, LIVE IT, ROW IT!!!
2. It's skill, not size, that matters.
3. Definition is sexy.
4. They're scrawny.
5. Endurance training increases libido.
6. It's better than being a butt-weight.
7. They like the feel of Saran Wrap on their body.
8. The lack of protein stimulates growth.
9. The extra layers of clothing compliment figure.
10. To meet incredibly interesting people in the sauna.

The Girls

2006-07-30T01:33:00.000-04:00

I started coaching for the recreational rowing program in my hometown when I returned home from college this summer. This is my first coaching job, so I've been learning a lot about being on the opposite side of the megaphone. Everything is multiplied tenfold (or, to be more precise, eightfold) when you're in a coaching launch. When you're rowing yourself, nothing beats the feeling you get when you come off the water after a good row. Conversely, there's nothing worse for your psyche than a completely shit row. Sharing that feeling when you're not actually rowing a seat yourself, however, is a completely different feeling. I wasn't prepared for the satisfaction that comes from teaching people how to row properly, but it felt great. Of course, when your boat has a bad row, you get down on yourself, too, wondering what you're doing (or not doing) to keep your points from getting across.

We have a good mix of people, from juniors looking to stay in shape for the upcoming head racing season to masters novice trying something other than aquacise. There's also an older group of women who want to compete in some local head races come fall. It's this group that I've been with most of the summer, and I enjoy working with the most out of all the different types of people. Despite the fact that most of them are old enough to be my mother, they listen to the entire coaching staff (most of whom are a little older than I am) without issue. Doctors, lawyers, or businesswomen, they're all successful and dedicated to their professional lives and their families. This makes their committment to the sport all the more surprising, as well as exciting. They want to work hard, they want to be competitive. They have no problem coming in and doing 2x20min steady state rows on days where the mercury tops 95. Their allegiance lies to the boat and to themselves. While the high school boys and girls are outwardly friendly, they have a hard time forgetting about the unis they row in during the school year; those type-A personalities that serve their parent programs so well aren't as easily adjustable to our program. It's easy for there to be an entire boat full of eight mavericks on a given day, especially with the boys (because high school boys are, well, high school boys). But the competitive masters, they don't talk back, they don't complain. They just lay into their oars every practice.

My mother, who's ambivalent to my rowing career ("It won't pay the bills"), doesn't really know what I do down at the boathouse, other that it involves water and going backwards on narrow little boats. So when she asks me where I'm going after my day job, I just tell her I'm going to see my ladies. At first, she wasn't really sure what to make of my explaination, but now she fully understands that I'm not carrying on affairs with eight older women.

I'm In Love!

2006-07-09T23:33:00.000-04:00

This is a first: I've got a crush an oarswoman who I don't know from my own boathouse. Who is she? France's Sophie Balmary, who won this year's Princess Royal Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta. As the Row2k Henley correspondent said in a report: "Saw Balmary walking down the lawn this morning; nice muscles mademoiselle."

Indeed.

The Next Great Rowing Superpower?

2006-07-06T21:43:00.000-04:00

I remember reading an article in Rowing News months ago which discussed the dominance of the East German rowing squad in the 70's and the 80's. At the end of the article, a coach compared the GDR training system to the system that the Chinese are currently using. Essentially, the coach predicted the rise of Chinese rowing by the time the Bejing Olympics come around, due to their approach to training.

I took very little stock into this report; how could the Chinese, a nonentity in a rowing world dominated by Europeans, come to rule over a sport? Certainly, when the East Germans took the rowing world by storm, both pre-World War II Germany and West Germany had already made itself a presence on the international rowing scene. But China? I didn't think it was true.

I may very well be wrong, however. I was looking at the results for the past two World Cup events in Munich and Poznan, and found that there were a number of Chinese boats in A finals, some even in first place. I know that not every great rowing nation sends rowers to each World Cup event, so the results can't be looked at as a definitive prediction of the World Championships, but to win medals; nay, even make the A final in an Olympic event at a World Cup is pretty impressive.

Not only were the Chinese winning and racing well, they also had depth like I've never before seen at a World Cup. There were some small boat races that had up to four Chinese entries in them. Depth is important to any successful rowing program, and if you've got four boats fighting it out for a chance at the World Championships this late in the season, the crews that come out on top are probably going to be fast.

Besides, depth is not an issue when 20% of the world's population lives in your country.

Ummm...

2006-06-22T20:06:00.000-04:00

A little explaination about that last post of mine...up until about a week and a half ago, it had been raining almost nonstop, going on three weeks. Just to put it in perspective, we had been having crap weather like that since I came home from school. That last post happened on another gray day, and I was just expressing my anger with it. The rain made the river I row on at home flood, and that kept me on the erg and on the road for quite a while. But now summer is fully here, and I can enjoy being out on the river again!

I've got a few posts in the draft stage right now, but nothing ready to put out there. I'll get them up as soon as I have the time to finish them.

2006-06-10T11:57:00.001-04:00

All I have to say is: this weather sucks.

The Look

2006-05-13T20:55:00.000-04:00

The day after Easter this year was Patriot's Day, and we had school off. I ended up going into Boston for the 110th Boston Marathon. My friends and I got to the finish line about half an hour before the elites were supposed to finish, and it was the most crowded place I'd ever been in this side of a mosh pit. While we were walking Boylston Avenue to get to the finish line, we had to press through people who were packed shoulder to shoulder, vendors hawking free samples, bands, watch out for little kids...It was a nightmare.

I'm glad that we got there, though. We ended up camping out in front of a chocolate store (I think it was Lindt's), right across the street from the Jumbotron that was broadcasting the entire race. The wheelchair competitors had already started to finish while we made our way down, and we only ended up waiting for ten minutes or so to see Robert Cheruyiot of Kenya break the tape. It was amazing to watch; not only was it a course record (by one second!), but, by nature, the finish of a marathon is a dramatic event.

Time seemed to stand still as Cheruyiot crossed the line. He didn't collapse or exult, but just jogged out of his race pace and began walking. The picture on the Jumbotron zoomed in on his face, waiting for the look of happiness, the shock of joy that came with victory, but it did not immediately flash across his face. I was mesmerized by what I did see, however. Upon Cheruyiot's face was a look of pure determination. There was nothing in his eyes except the desire to cross the line ahead of every other competitor. Such intense single-mindedness was moving, especially amidst what must have been one of the greatest moments of his life.

Only later, once I had time to think about it, did I realize where I had seen that look before. It was on the faces and in the eyes of my boatmates as we rowed to the stakeboats at the start of a race. No more joking, no more nervous high-fives, no more time to get that last sip of water in. Just one thought in our heads: to cross the finish line ahead of all others.

NCAA's

2006-05-06T20:56:00.000-04:00

In the latest issue of Rowing News, former National Team member Sean Colgan listed off a few good reasons why men's rowing should not become an NCAA sanctioned sport. Reason #3: "It has taken Harry Parker 42 years to FIND Camden. Harry will never find a new location each year."

Haha.

In all seriousness, though, it's probably for the best that men's rowing was voted down by the NCAA. I'm not going to get into details; those who are most interested in this issue probably know both sides of the argument very well. However, implementing a national restructuring of the current institution at this time will most likely hurt American men's collegiate rowing more than help it.

The Fog (Wasn't That a Horror Movie?)

2006-05-05T14:34:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning to a wall of fog outside my window. No practice? That would be nice. My first class isn't until 2:30 today. That would give me plenty of time to get another eight hours of sleep. My ride comes, and we drive in foggy silence to the boathouse. Not having practice wouldn't affect us that much; it's a taper week anyways.

We get to the bridge that crosses the river to the boathouse. Miraculously, there's a circle of fogless air surrounding the boathouse; I swear to God, it actually radiates from the bay doors.

Damnit. That's worse than any horror movie.

The Things They Don't Teach You...

2006-04-10T19:13:00.001-04:00

My team was racing at the Knecht Cup in New Jersey this weekend. It was a pretty terrible regatta. Bad weather, irate umpires, and unfair floating starts were the story of the day, at least on Saturday for the heats. A bunch of events were cut to allow for a break in the racing while the worst of the storm passed over us. Sunday was better, with warm weather and a light breeze. Much thanks for the hospitality of the host crew, Villanova, for allowing some of the freezing oarsmen to use their tent and the enclosed stove they had inside.

It's been a while since I'd been at a major regatta, where you're there for the entire day without reprive. Head racing season seems so long ago. And, of course, along with the memory of the pain of lactic acid buildup, I'd also forgotten one of the most important non-rowing related skills to have at a regatta. This is something that most coaches rarely, if ever, touch on during the racing season; more often, it's up to the individual oarsman to learn how to properly execute this action himself. This, my friends, is of course, what I have termed the regatta squat. Yes, to tame the ubiquitous blue or seafoam green port-a-potty that sends it's blue sanitary water smell throughout the tents, one must have an understanding of how to properly keep ones buttocks off of the seat. For, as Confucius once said, "man cannot count on Lysol alone, for there remains the .01% of the deadliest viruses."

Lo and behold, when my boat was getting ready to meet before our first heat, my bowels started to rumble. I excused myself, tellling my teammates that I would meet them at the trailer, and located the nearest vacant port-a-potty. Of course, the seat looked clean, but I wasn't going to take my chances. But, like I said, I'd forgotten the proper way to execute a regatta squat. So, not only do I almost touch the seat, but I also almost dump my ass straight through to the mound of blue waiting for me in the bottom. Lucky it was a handicap one, or else I might not have made it to my race alive.

So remember, my friends. Go slow. If there's a bar, hold on. And do your jumpies, because before the race, there's the pre-race jitters.

~~

On a more serious note, the Harvard varsity heavyweight eight lost its first domestic race since the 2002 Eastern Sprints to Brown this weekend. Wisconsin captured the Sprints varsity eight title in 2002. Harvard's last dual loss prior to this weekend came on April 21, 2001, to Princeton for the Compton Cup. Throughout the streak, Harvard downed 32 opponents in 24 races, won a Temple Challenge Cup and Ladies Challenge Plate at the Henley Royal Regatta, and represented the United States as USA2 in the 2004 World Cup Lucerne stop, making it to the grand final in the M8+. While at Harvard the streak has been downplayed, this has been the rowing world's version of the University of Southern California's winning streak in Division I football the past two years. A major hand to the Brown Bears, as well as the Crimson for maintaining a perfect record at the highest levels of American collegiate rowing.

Other Rowing Blogs

2006-03-29T09:20:00.000-05:00

Aside from the usual rowing columns that occasionally show up on Row2k, I haven't really come across more rowing-related blogs. But I did find this one, Fight in the Dog, on the Schuylkill Navy Home Page. It's a blog dedicated to collegiate lightweight women's rowing, which is a minority that is slowly following in the steps of collegiate openweight women's rowing on smaller campuses across the country. Check it out.

Breaks

2006-03-13T23:40:00.000-05:00

Spring Break is rapidly approaching. I suppose that's a good thing; we'll spend the week here, getting faster and faster. But there's something looming over my shoulder, as well, because there's so much pressure around this time of year. Not only are we gearing up for crew now that we're on the water and our first race is only two weeks away (holy shit!), but all the professors seem to think that they're the only ones who are clever enough to use the weeks before and after Spring Break for midterms. I have tests every day from now until break, and then two more when we get back on campus. It's crunch time like you wouldn't believe.

Today, we had a midterm in one of the core classes for my major, and pretty much everyone bombed it. The fact that it was at the beginning of the day didn't really help set the tone at all; practice had been cancelled due to thunderstorm conditions that might rain us out tomorrow morning, too. All in all, it had been a very shitty day.

So when the rain really started coming down tonight, I decided to go for a run, regardless of the fact that I still have assloads of homework and practice in less than eight hours. I went and got one of my friends out of her room (she bombed with me), and we went and played football in the muddy quad for an hour or so.

And I gotta tell you, it was just what I needed. Forget practice and that 2K that we've got this week. Forget the homework that I've got piled on my back. Forget the midterms that are going to sink me this semester. I'm so tired of trying to be a responsible student/athlete that I've forgotten to have fun along the way. Tonight, it was just about getting dirty as hell and flirting with the girl who's muddy ass gave me a good excuse to stare. I've got those finals tomorrow, and I've got homework that I have to do, but it's okay. Because I had fun tonight. And you only live once.

The Gay Games

2006-03-09T17:35:00.000-05:00

There seems to be a fight brewing in the Midwest over the Gay Games, an all-inclusive athletic event that is going to have competitors from all over the world. According to their website, the games are: "open to anyone. There are no qualifying events, no minimum or maximum requirements, and no mandatory affiliations. The Games are built on the founding principles of Participation, Inclusion, and Personal Best, and promote a supportive environment, free from bigotry, where participants achieve success by their own measure. More than a tournament or cultural program, the Gay Games is a gathering of the international sports and arts community that changes lives, attitudes, and the very nature of competition."

Rowing is included in the program of events, and one of the venues in dispute with local residents is Crystal Lake, where the organizers of the games hope to have the regatta. There were links to letters on the front page of row2k about the rowing events, editorials speaking of both sides of the argument.

I wasn't planning on touching on politics in this blog. I usually save things like that for my personal, non-anonymous blog. I have never really found reason to bring politics into the world of sport; although it's very idealistic, it's also realistic.

In high school, my coach told the team something that I would never forget, something that I try to carry with me every time I tie in and push off: leave it all on the dock. There are enough problems out on the water for you to worry about without thinking about unnecessary things while underway. Grades, deadlines, girlfriend issues, those will all be there once you come back, and you can pick them up once your row is over. But when you're out there, concentrate on making the boat move as fast as you can. That's it. To do anything less is disrespectful to yourself and to your boatmates.

I think any kind of rowing event is a good thing for the rowing community as a whole. A regatta is a regatta, regardless of the sexual orientation of the competitors. The fact that these games are all-inclusive means that the oarsmen and women in them are rowing to compete, not because of some hidden homosexual agenda. So let the Gay Games have it's regatta, Chicago. Don't let your bigotry defeat something with decent intentions in it's heart.

CRASH-B's Part II

2006-02-26T00:23:00.000-05:00

CRASH-B's went well. I didn't do as bad as I thought I was going to do, but I went in there, rowed my race, and finished fifth in my heat. I can live with that. My legs are filled with the dull aching burn of the lingering traces of lactic acid, but I'm dealing with it. An ice bath would be nice, but I guess sleep can't hurt, either.

Making weight was what I thought would be a difficult proposition. In the end, it worked out, although it involved me not eating about 18 hours prior to weigh in. I only drank a Nalgene bottle worth of water in the same time period, too, and I was paying for it past the first 250. My mouth felt as dry as the inside of a frathouse keg on Sunday morning. I don't think I'm ever going to do that again; from now on, I'm going to have to figure out how to keep weight without dehydrating myself. But at least I did it; making weight is half the battle.

Speaking of Nalgenes, I picked up a bunch of free flair for my bottle. I've now got about 2/3 of my bottle covered! I need a life.

Being finished with that was one of the best feelings of my life. The first thing I did after I dropped my bags off was go eat. I've never enjoyed a pizza and fries more in my life. I'm staying with a good friend from high school for his birthday, and tonight we went out and ate copious amounts of food at Dick's Last Resort, a pretty good place at Faneuil Hall. Total bill for 16 people? $340. And tonight, we party. I'll get back to you when the hangover's gone.

CRASH-B's

2006-02-24T21:34:00.000-05:00

If you've been reading this blog lately, you probably know my feelings about erg tests. If not, I just gave you a link. So read it. :P

So I have no idea why the hell I decided I'd do CRASH-B's.

Actually, yes, I do. I remember the moment pretty well, actually. Last year, my coxswain and I promised each other that we'd do CRASH-B's together, regardless of whether or not we were ready for it. So I guess the question is, how the hell did I allow myself to promise such a ridiculous thing in the first place?

But I'm registered, I lost the weight that I put on over the holiday season (for the most part, at least. I won't be surprised if I'm stuck doing a sweat row for half an hour before my weigh-in ), and I've got my transportation all set up for tomorrow morning.

I've been thinking a lot about the whole thing, mostly on why they make me so nervous, and I've come up with another theory. An erg test really is a test. Let me explain.

So far, the top seeded times are all at 6:20. Maybe there are guys who will show up in the bullpen who can pull faster, or maybe they don't show the elite seeds on Regatta Central, but in any case, the winning time is probably going to be between 6:10-6:20. I know I can't beat that. There's no way I could pull a 6:20 at this point in my life, maybe not ever. Hopefully, some day, I will, but not tomorrow. I know that. So what am I getting out of this, other than the pride of competing?

There are a few things. The rest of the team did their 2K tests this week. I'm fighting for my seat in the varsity boat. I'm also going to race the rest of the guys on my team in my heat, because I don't want some snotty novice beating me. But the most important, yet probably intangible thing that I'm going to get out of this is the knowledge that those numbers put in my head. Like I said before, this is really a test. You put the time in studying, hours upon hours of studying. And then it's test day. The only difference between the limits of the body and the limits of the mind is I know what knowledge I hold in my head. If there's a question to that I don't know the answer to, I know I don't know it. But, if someone asked me "can you go 10 seconds off your PR? How about 20?", I wouldn't have a response. I can only tell you after I get my score back.

You know, I just realized that was a very long way of saying I don't like doing erg testing because I fear the unknown.

Why Redgrave is a God

2006-02-20T20:14:00.000-05:00

I was just looking at the record times posted on the Henley Royal Regatta website, and I saw something ridiculous. The first split, the Barrier, was covered by Redgrave and Clift in the Double Sculls Challenge Cup in 1982 in 1:58. Eleven years later, Redgrave and Pinsent covered the distance in the same time. However, they were in the pair. Their record time for the finish in the pair in 1995 is 6:56. The record time for the double, set in the same year by Jamieson and Gleeson in the same year was one second faster.

Dude. That's nuts.

Solo

2006-02-17T11:13:00.000-05:00

Prior to this year, I hadn't really had any friends who didn't already row. Now, living in a mostly freshman dorm, I've met and befriended more people in one semester than the rest of my college career. Most of them find out that I row pretty quick, when we're hanging out and I leave by ten to go to bed because it's "late." I usually get one of three reactions: 1.) aren't rowers supposed to be taller? 2.) dude, your arms must be jacked (I don't know how to respond to this. Am I supposed to strip down to show them how "jacked" I am?) and 3.) Can you teach me how to row on one of those machines? We can go work out sometime.

My replies usually come out something like this: 1.) I'm tall enough. And if you don't believe me, check out Steve Tucker's height. He finished second in the Championship Single at the Head of the Charles this year. And there's Francesco Espozito, who was even shorter. So blow me. 2.) See above in parenthesis, as well as the standard explaination that rowing is a predominantly lower-body sport and 3.) Erhrhmmm...

It's not that I don't like introducing people to the sport. I think the more people who row, the better, especially in the United States, where rowing is far outside the mainstream. And I taught a friend how to erg so I could have a training partner for some of the steady states while I'm home on break. He's a former middle-distance runner, and we've been friends since middle school, so when he asked me to show him about cross-training, I didn't hesitiate. But as for my college friends, that's another story.

When I'm at school, training is probably the least stressful part of my day. Sure, it's a pain in the ass to get up at 5:30 every morning, and fitting in the afternoon workouts in a busy schedule isn't any better, but that's more of an issue of timing, not the work itself. Once I strap in and start stroking, I let the issues that have been bothering me about classes and friends and money all go. When I'm doing any type of piece, whether it be steady state or a category II piece, my mind is predominantly on my splits and the time remaining. It's only once the handle stops moving and the flywheel slows down that I let everything else come back into my mind.

Working out is a solitary pleasure to me, most of the time, and I don't want to have that meditative period of my day broken by having to talk to a friend about the very things I'm trying to forget about while I'm rowing. I truly like many of the people I've met while at school, but I'm not at the level of friendship with them yet where I would feel comfortable working out with them. My friend from home, as well as my teammates, understand this for the most part, and when we're doing steady state, the chatter is kept to a minimum, and we never talk during hard pieces, unless it's for encouragement.

So, to my friends at school, I appreciate you showing interest in my sport, and I'd love to have you hop in a boat some day. But, no, I'm not going to show you how to erg.

Training Camp

2006-01-20T20:22:00.000-05:00

It's about halfway through the winter training camp that my team's on in Florida. We're training in the same area as a very good women's crew; let the libidinous collegiate sex games begin!

Honestly, as a college male, I can safely say there are fewer factors more motivating that the opposite sex. Coxswains, I'm afraid to say, don't count. We spend all our time with them as it is already, so it's really hard to impress them. I will confess, whenever we're on the water with the other crew and we row by one another, our catches are a little crisper, our tapdown is a little faster, and our set is always a little more...well, set.

In any case...

I have always had doubts about whatever it is that I do at one time or another. I don't know if that makes sense, so I'll try again. Every once in a while, I get despondent with my choice to row; I wonder "why am I doing this? What compels me to sit in these ridiculous looking boats and row for over two hours a day, while my amount of racing time is maybe 1/100th of what I practice?" Sometimes it's a bad practice that sets me off, and other times it comes out of nowhere. Maybe one day I just feel I'm too tired of working as hard as I've been doing, and I don't think I want to do it anymore. It's rare, and I've found the more I do the sport, the less it happens, but it still does occur.

That's why trips like this don't just mean spring speed. Personally speaking, they're also a break from the monotony of winter training, when the 15th minute of a piece is the same as the 25th, when there's no difference at the start and the finish of a 6K because you've been staring at the same damn wall/mirror/whatever for the past 100 strokes. It's a time to get back to the basics of the sport: your boat, your teammates, and moving with both of them over the water, together. It's a time when raw power and aerobic capacity aren't always the most important traits to have to move a boat. It's a reminder of what proper backsplash looks like.

I'm sure anyone who's been on a team trip knows, these kinds of training camps also help bring oarsmen together. Living in close quarters, spending most of your waking moments with them, even cooking with them (as in our case) teaches you things about teammates, whether you've known them for a year or four. It's where those lifetime bonds that the novice coaches sold to us at the recruitment meetings (remember those) are made, and you experience much of what life is about in such a short time. That is what the sport is about, beyond finish lines and 2K times, and I think if you ask almost any oarsman, he'll tell you that that is what makes crew so special.

EDIT: We returned to our homes after one of the team's most successful camps in recent memory. No booty of the neighboring women's crew was tapped, making this camp a little less successful, but still the most in recent memory. Because they were good looking. And they talked to us. And we didn't know them before we got there.

Christmas Post, A Little Late

2006-01-03T20:16:00.000-05:00

12/25/05 9:37 PM

My feelings about the holidays are not a secret; being a lightweight, is probably just as bad as being single around this time of year. What if you're a lightweight and single? It's a situation without a solution, one has to go. To mess around with the fairer sex is akin to tampering with weapons of mass destruction, so I ended up giving up on worrying about my weight and enjoying the bounty that awaited me this afternoon. My coach would've killed me had he seen me at dinner on Christmas Eve. I'm over, but I don't have to worry about weight-ins for another two months. And hey, CRASH-B weight is 165.

Winter Break is much tougher, training-wise, than any other break during the school year. It's too long that you can't take some time away from the erg (like Thanksgiving, where running or cycling can keep your fitness levels up), yet too short to waste money on a membership at a gym or the summer rowing club's winter training program. Here in the northeast, it's also tough to train outdoors. The temperature outside today was about 35 degrees F, compounded by a cold drizzle that keeps even the heartiest runners indoors. I've been able to wrangle some temporary training ergs at a university that's in close proximity, but they'll be closed until the New Year. The next best thing? Go to every health club you can find around town and inquire about a free trial membership. They usually last about a week, but it's enough to keep you where you won't crap out the next time you hit the ergs.

Here at home, we don't have high-speed internet, so on my downtime, I've been watching rowing tapes that I've recorded from TV. I've got tapes of most of the '05 IRA grand finals, and some of the heats and finals from the Athens games. Every time I watch them, I can feel my heart rate start to climb. These tapes, well, I've watched them so many times, I can quote the commentators and know who's going to finish where about 80% of the time. It's not the general excitement that I get from watching a boat race, either. It's the knowledge of what the men and women in the video are going through as the tape plays that makes my heartbeat speed up. I'm already starting to imagine our duals this season, rowing down the course at Quinsigamond.

It's always grey, and I can feel the chill of the April wind on my shoulders. It's never at the start; usually it's the middle thousand of the race, when you've settled into your rhythm and are doing what you can to attack or hold off the crews you're racing. In my mind, we're usually about an oars length apart from our opponent, the boats locked in a dead heat. The lead changes with each stroke, as the team currently on the drive pushes their bow ball ahead of the other. We are rowing very aggressively, attacking the body of the race at a 36. From my position in the bow, I can see the spray from the oars at the finish leaping out of the water to chase our boat as we fly down towards the finish. The set is perfect (hey, it is a dream), and our blades square in unison as they hook into the water at the catch. My heart is pounding out of my chest, my breath coming in massive gulps as I try to consume as much air with each inhalation. This is where the dream merges with reality, as I can feel my heart pounding in my chest as I recline in my chair, thinking about a reality that has not yet come true.

I never finish the race. The dream always stops around the 500 to go mark, where the rate starts to come up and we start our sprint. The vision that dances before my eyes is not of the result, but of the act, of the race itself. I an at once nervous and excited, terrified and eager, to get to that point in the season. Don't get me wrong, I can see victories, and I can imagine the joy and excitement that comes from winning t-shirts and medals. But that really isn't part of the dream. It's what I'm working for between now and April, therefore it wouldn't be right to drift idly off into fantasyland thinking about the winning stroke, or the medals dock. Those are more lucid, and at the same time, less tangible; they are the images that motivate me through the solitary hours of winter training at home.

Narc

2006-01-03T20:05:00.000-05:00

Erging isn't as bad as most people say it is.

I just got through with my first erg of the New Year. It was bad, realizing how much you can lose in just a week and a half.

Okay, maybe bad is the wrong word. I love erging, the solitary joy of pushing my body, on my own, with just me, my music, the handle, and the flywheel. I usually end up forgetting about everything; concentrating on split times and rates are a great way to forget about problems with women and domestic issues and worrying about where the gas money is going to come from when the tank is almost on empty. In a way, erging is like my drug. It's very habit-forming. I go and do it when I feel bad and it makes me feel better about myself. I get a little high from the adrenaline or the endorphins or whatever's flowing through my veins. I come down and all my problems are still there, but I had an escape. A great escape.

Okay, maybe erging is as bad as most people say it is.

Foot Injuries and the Positive Side of Winter

2005-12-16T01:00:00.001-05:00

I rolled my ankle on a run sometime this week; doing anything but swimming laps has been tough. I erged for the first time in four days today, and it hurt a fair amount, but not undoable. It's just going to be a while until I can put any serious pressure on it.

We've hit finals, so morning practices have ceased as of lately. It's weird not getting up for 6:00 am practice. Nice, but weird. I've found that the best part about this, though, is that practice usually ends around 7:30 and my earliest class during the week is at 9:00. So I usually end up eating breakfast with the team and getting back to my room at 8:00-8:15. Instead of showering, I end up laying down with my headphones on some soft music. It's not really sleep, but it's definitely rest...you know, that state of semi-consciousness like before you fall asleep. That 20 or so minutes before I roll out of bed for classes is probably the most relaxing part of my day. I suggest you try it some time.

Quitting

2005-12-10T00:04:00.001-05:00

"Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subsude and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever."
-Lance Armstrong

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it."
-W.C. Fields

Everyone quits at something at one point or another in their life. Perhaps, in a society that constantly stresses moving faster with quicker results, the idea of failure has changed a little. Or perhaps the door to the easy way out is marked more clearly. The "why" is a topic for another blog. But you've given up on things before. Whether it be a research paper, a diet, or a marriage, they're all things that you decided weren't worth going on. You threw in the towel. You gave up. No person in the history of the world has succeeded in every thing they ever set out to accomplish, so don't feel bad. I'm not trying to blame or point fingers at anyone.

In rowing, however, quitting is a concept that is so far removed from the sport as to make it an abberation. Rowing is a sport where the legends are virutal ironmen, able to continue long after their bodies have decided they would stop. A sport where the act of pulling to the point of vomiting or passing out is regarded with respect, not disgust.

Maybe that's the reason failure during an erg piece is so prevalent in my mind during the winter months. Maybe that's why the sting of failure is so much sharper. The coach can see everything you do during each workout. The little monitor in front of you doesn't lie. The numbers may be harsh, they may be cruel, but they don't lie. Ever. Unless you're retrofitting a PM3 to a Model C and your connection is funky. But that's also another story.

I don't talk about quitting during erg training lightly. So when I do quit, the failure becomes that much more sharp, a mark of my lack of strength. And this morning, I broke. I quit.

I was extremely angry at myself after the exercise was over. Championship oarsmen never quit. My teammates who were attacking the ergs during our rest time didn't quit. So why did I? The only answer that I could come up with was that I was wearker than the rest of them; that I wasn't as good as they were. At that point, one of my good friends on the team told me that being angry at myself wasn't going to make it any better for the next piece.

Now, eighteen hours removed from that piece, I can fully understand that he's right. This was the first high-level threshold piece we've done all year, so it was unrealistic for me to expect that my splits would be around where they were at the end of last year. My weakness today was one of the mind, not one of the body, and I fully recognize that. However, like every weakness, they can be worked on. Anerobic threshold levels can be raised, erg scores can be lowered, and my mental breaking point can be put to a higher level. Breaking is never pretty, and rebuilding from this point is going to be harder than if I had been able to sustain my efforts throughout the morning. But taking it in context, this wasn't a National Team trial, an Olympic or Worlds final; it was a Category III workout for my college crew club. So get back on the horse.

Sometimes the only challenge is realizing that the horse isn't as big as you think.

The Dreaded Winter Begins

2005-12-02T17:43:00.000-05:00

There's snow in them thar hills! Or at least that's what NOAA says for the weekend. I think I might've even seen a few snowflakes on my way to classes today. Once those little white specks fall from the sky, you know what that means. Another season indoors, three to four months on the ergs.

There's something about winter training (if you row on the West Coast, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about) that just helps to sap the sprits of even the most dedicated oarsman. No matter how nice your facilities are, from Newell Boathouse on the Charles to the near-gulag basements that many clubs use, being indoors is nothing near as exciting as driving your oar and your boat through the water. Being one of those club rowers that trains in said gulags, I'm already itching for that winter training trip down South.

Despite the lack of satisfaction that comes from erg pieces as opposed to moving boats, I appreciate the process that comes from working out indoors on the oars. In an article by Topher Bordeau I read a while back, erging is to rowing what fast food is to a meal. The stress that's placed on the body during a long winter can make or break crews in the spring, and it's where you weed out the guys on the novice squad that are hanging on by their fingernails.

So for all of you guys out there who are digging in for the long winter season, good luck and many PR's to you.

Happy Holidays, Lightweights!

2005-11-30T15:51:00.003-05:00

Ahh, back from Thanksgiving break. This time of year is horrible for lightweights. Horrible! What are the holidays about, other than making every half-baked enterpreneur rich and having to deal with the in-laws after they've put back a few too many eggnogs? Eating. Putting as much food in your gullet as possible. It's impossible to avoid it, but it's also impossible to avoid the guilt you feel after downing half of an overstuffed bird. So what's the moral lightweight to do?

-A Tofurkey! -- just kidding

-Row heavyweight -- I know the thought of getting in a boat with the fatweights is tough, but hey, maybe if you gave it a shot, you'd be able to appreciate all the work you put in to make lightweight that much more

-Cosmetic surgery -- how much can an arm really way, anyways? And now that adaptive rowing is a paralympic sport, the possiblities are endless!

-Time-honored fallbacks -- trashbag suit erging, saunas, vomiting...talk to your friend who wrestles

Whatever you choose, have a safe and fun winter season!

Erg Test

2005-11-08T22:49:00.000-05:00

"No matter how well you know the course, no matter how well you may have done in a given race in the past, you never know for certain what lies ahead on the day you stand at the starting line waiting to test yourself once again. If you did know, it would not be a test; and there would be no reason for being there." - Dan Baglione

Today was our last 6K of the season. I hate erg tests, I really do. There's something about them, it just makes me fall apart a little bit inside every time. In high school, I used to act and sing in plays and with the choir, and the nerves that come with having a solo or a monologue on stage really don't even compare to the nerves I get before an erg test. I don't really know why that is; probably because I know that with a piece of music or theater, I have the confidence in myself that if I rehearse it enough, I won't screw up. I can't screw up. Maybe I haven't gotten to that point with my physical abilities on the erg, but I just can't go into an erg test with full faith that my mind won't let my body quit. I haven't died on a 6K yet, but every one I've pulled I've really wanted to, and fighting through that feeling was the worst thing ever.

Part of the problem with my erg tests was that I never really tried to maintain a consistent split before; I would do a mini-fly-and-die, going out a little high for the first 1000m or so, and then my splits would rise up for the most part until about 1500-1000m to go, and then they'd drop drastically. I tried getting a .0 for the average split and then holding that for about 5500m, and it was a lot easier than my previous approach. So remember kids, consistent splits!

Just one more random thought: isn't it weird how slow the first 4500m goes? And then how fast the last 1500m goes? Weird.

By the way, I PRed by 9 seconds :-)

Title IX

2005-11-06T21:09:00.002-05:00

I was reading a news article on row2k.com about a master's woman who learned to row at Ithaca prior to Title IX and the changes that it brought about to women's collegiate sports. In it, the woman talks about the challenge of being a club sport, namely the lack of funds. For those of us who row for club programs, scrounging for equipment, being 5-7 years behind the technology curve, having hand-me-down oars and boat parts is nothing new.

But now, over thirty years after Title IX was first implemented, the gender of the club teams have changed; now it's almost impossible to find a school with a men's varsity crew and a women's club crew. I can say that I've never come across such a school. I wish I could recall how many times my teammates and I have joked about taking away the football team and making the men's crew program a varsity sport. Rowing out of the same boathouse as a funded women's rowing program, it is a constant thorn in the side to see the women take for granted their top-of-the line rowing shells, bussed transportation to races and practice, and the infrastructure that goes behind supporting them on the college campus. Bearing these burdens quietly, I must imagine is like the women of thirty years prior to today, paying for everything that we use, from unis to boats, fundraising to pay our way to regattas and to have a coach, and to drive ourselves to practically everything: regattas up to five hours away, practice to the boathouse 15 minutes from campus every morning, and even winter training in Florida.

Before I proceed any further, let me explain that this is not in any way a rant to discredit Title IX, or women's athletics as a whole. The intentions behind the act are completely good; I understand that. I enjoy watching women's crew, and I don't think anyone should have limited access to the sport due to gender.

However, it feels that the times have turned; the theoretic "equality" that exists in athletic departments is not really equal at all. In the time that Title IX has existed, it has practically reshaped the landscape of collegiate sports. I did a little searching, and I couldn't find one state university with an equal number of men's and women's sports, let alone a college with more men's sports programs than women's programs. None of the state schools I looked at, most in the Atlantic Coast/New England region had this trait; indeed, out of all the Ivy League schools, schools known for affluence and a budget the envy of every public university, only two can field more men's teams than women's teams (Harvard and Penn).

In reaction to this, most men's sports, instead of becoming inactive on campus, have been filed under the "Intramural and Club Sport" label. Among some of the clubs sports that had long traditions of being varsity sports on college campuses include men's lacrosse, rowing, fencing, volleyball, wrestling, water polo, etc. While I would not be in favor of slashing women's sports programs to bring these sports back to a varsity level, I feel that as a whole, the club system (with exceptions) limits the heights which athletes can achieve, which is a bad thing for sports across all levels, not just men's athletics. But irregardless of the negative effects which this system has on the development of amateur sport in America, is it now fair to make men pay reparations for the actions of the past?

Happy Halloween!

2005-10-31T11:00:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the end of Daylight Savings Time, the sun was rising at about the same time we were going through the end of our warm-up routine. This won't do; sunrise has been associated with the end of practice and putting food in my stomach since September. We're all Pavlovian dogs, or maybe we're just not used to sunlight. r a Halloween

There was a nice fog on a stretch of the lake we're rowing on (our home river has been washed out due to flooding) this morning, and with the sun coming up, it didn't burn off and we were able to see it. One minute we were doing pieces with another eight about 40 feet away on starboard, and the next thing, all your senses can detect are the slicing of the blades through the water and the motor of the coaches launch. Very spooky, yet apt.

Introduction

2005-10-30T21:45:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this blog; I suppose I'll just start writing and let it take it's own course wherever it wants to.

So, a little bit about where I'm coming from: I'm a twentysomething undergraduate at a large college that is in a "suburban setting", according to the Princeton Review. Most of my life revolves around rowing; I've been rowing competitively for the past six years now, the past two for the men's club program at the university.

This blog is more of a reflection of my rowing life, since most of my friends don't really want to hear me talk about crew on my personal blog when they have little or no experience with the sport. I don't expect this to be something that appeals to the average reader, but instead to those of us that know how beautiful a sunrise can be in the early morning, or how uplifting the moment of swing can be during a dismal practice. There is something amazing about crew that can't be found in any other sport, to my knowledge, and I hope that those of you reading this have shared in those experiences and can relate to me when I write about them.

IOC	TOTAL
GBR	11
GER	10
AUS	7
ITA	7
NZL	5
USA	5
CAN	4
FRA	4
NED	4
POL	4
BLR	3
CHN	3
BRA	2
DEN	2
ROU	2
BUL	1
CZE	1
FIN	1
GRE	1
EST	1
SLO	1
SRB	1
NOR	1
ISR	1

IOC	TOTAL
GBR	11
GER	10
AUS	7
ITA	7
NZL	5
USA	5
CAN	4
FRA	4
NED	4
POL	4
BLR	3
CHN	3
BRA	2
DEN	2
ROU	2
BUL	1
CZE	1
FIN	1
GRE	1
EST	1
SLO	1
SRB	1
NOR	1
ISR	1

IOC	TOTAL
GBR	11
GER	10
AUS	7
ITA	7
NZL	5
USA	5
CAN	4
FRA	4
NED	4
POL	4
BLR	3
CHN	3
BRA	2
DEN	2
ROU	2
BUL	1
CZE	1
FIN	1
GRE	1
EST	1
SLO	1
SRB	1
NOR	1
ISR	1