It all started on a dark and stormy Saturday afternoon. The day before our very first regatta, and the training plan was to row together for the first time in a four+. As a runner, I can tell you that a training plan is sacred--like a religious document--and any major deviation will kill all hopes of reaching your goals, it can destroy any confidence you have going into a race, and failure to follow it precisely, usually dooms you to a runners hell.
Rowing, well, not so much.
I am learning so much from rowing, and this weekend I have learned many lessons:
Lesson number One: Flexibility In Training and How wet is too wet.
Due to circumstances beyond our control, we ended up in an 8+ with four VERY TALL PEOPLE (you all know who you are--and the rest of you can just look around in GS1, and when you see a belly button at eye level, you will know too). So as John Keh tried to mimic our four by putting us in the same line-up in the stern, the VERY TALL PEOPLE in the bow had to row at quarter-slide to keep their stroke lengths with ours....ok, I'll own this one. As stroke seat, it was my short stroke they were keeping down with. sigh.
We started our pick drills by fours and sixes in the drenching rain. I started out with a rain coat on---novice naivte--we moved on to pause drills, the rain soaking through my hat. By the time we reached half-slide, rivulets were running down the back of my neck and dripping into my shorts. We were doing some outside arm strokes, and the water dripped down the sleeve of my inside arm. I started to sweat, and the perspiration mixed with the rain and salt to form a gelatinous mess across my shoulders. We finally took a break to shed some layers, and my coat was plastered to my back. Emily, in 7 seat, kindly took a putty knife to it, and pried it off. I was down to a single, damp, dripping layer. We spun the boat, and headed back up for the longer piece. I am sorry, but I have no memory of that row.
So, that essentially sums up the day before the race. It is always important to go into a race with a good sense of what you know. Here are the lessons I learned from our last training row in the rain:
1-Raincoats are worthless for rowing-gortex or not. If you see a boat full of raincoats, they are either fishermen, or coaches on their launches.
2-Water makes a nice swish sound around your legs when the boat is really moving. When you are asked to "listen to the rhythm of the boat" this swishing water may be a helpful aid.
3-there are many degrees of wetness, and none of those degrees we knew as non-rowers compare to those we now know as rowers
4-there are no kayakers out in the rain. there are no singles out in the rain. There are no swans out in the rain. In fact, there is nobody out in the rain. Not even those sculpted Riverside A-boat guys. I am pretty sure they were having a beer down at the Asgard. A dry beer.
5-The terror of your first Head race will motivate you to do stupid things your mother warned you never to do---like row in the rain.
6-Rain+rowing=blisters
7-I still like rowing. I think there is a psychiatric diagnosis for me.
Sunday came, and we arrived at the course in Lowell. We had bought, borrowed, and stolen a random assortment of CRI hats, tanks and unis, and we completed our uniform with a rash last-minute purchase of matching black and red checkered knee socks. Rag-tag, but proud, we rigged the Alacrity (someone asked "What does Alacrity mean?"--but never mind that. It is completely irrelevant to our experience in that boat). However, when we asked for oars, we got blank looks from everyone. And then, when we went to find our cox'n, she said "Oh, I thought you started two hours earlier--I can't cox you. Sorry."
So who ya gonna call???? "Coach" John Keh! Who was racing an 8+ and had had the temerity to turn his cell phone off during the race!!!
So there we were--four terrified, excited, abandoned novice women with a boat but no oars, no cox'n, and no coach. (But at least we had matching red-checkered socks.)
Suffice it to say there were some uncomfortable, panicky moments in there, but I will sum it up with this: Coach Bode generously provided an excellent novice coxswain, Coach Isaac (from GS2) saved us by offering us COMPOSITE oars! (woooo--ooooh! they were nice!). And Coach Keh found us after his race and calmed us down before we had to launch. I think he had us sing "Kumbaya" a couple of times... It also helped that as we were carrying the boat down to the water, we heard a multitude of compliments on our checkered knee socks. If we were not going to be fast, we were at least going to be fashionable!
Our race was pretty ok---except when it wasn't. I stayed reasonably dry, but I showered everyone with my completely squared oars (dare I confess to flip-catches here?). We were the most set I have been yet in a four--which maybe doesn't say much, but going faster really does help. My shoes came unvelcro-ed halfway through, and I still kept rowing. And that is the sum and substance of a Head Race. You just keep rowing.
We kept our stroke rate at a 28-32 the entire distance. Even through a myocardial infarction, an emphysema attack, and an aneurysm. That novice coxswain didn't let us slow down for anything.
About that coxswain: She made us do ratio shifts, power tens, focus tens, "tens for form", tens for our bow pair who would cross the finish line first, ten for the stern pair who would follow right behind. We did tens for the boat that passed us, and tens for slowing the slide. I think we did a power ten to the ten power lines 1000 meters into the race. And ten for the bridge we didn't hit. That coxswain had us do a ten for breathing--had we forgotten to breathe??? I don't even know what some of those tens were for. But there were an awful damn lot of tens that we rowed. and rowed. and rowed. (I confess to a few negative thoughts about our perky little coxswain, with her perky little pony-tail, who kept blithely asking us for another power ten. I think I may write about coxswains sometime.)
So we did our final sprint (ha ha) and our final power ten, and crossed that invisible line between those two floating pumpkin-like bouys, and that familiar bile-in-the-back-of-the-th
Isaac came onto the dock and said "we are going to hot seat your boat". Before I could wonder if that was a cure for arthritic glutes, he pulled us out of the boat, and pushed four GS2 rowers in. They were off for their race, in our Alacrity! All we had to do was stagger off the floating dock, across the sand, and then go hunt for our shoes (our coxswain had also been "hot seated" elsewhere for her next race). As we dug our shoes out from under a pile of oars, we laughed with glee. We were happy. Our raw finish time was NOT the slowest. (another topic to explore is handicaps in rowing, but that is for another time...) We felt Good Enough to want to do it again.
So we ate, and ate and ate. And smiled. And gingerly held things in our sore hands. And clapped each other on the backs. And proudly showed off our new blisters. And promised to do it again soon. The human capacity for selective memory and self-flagellation knows no bounds.
So, in closing, this is the final lesson from rowing: What I Learned from my First Head Race:
1-5k is a VERY VERY VERY LONG WAY (even when they've shortened the course to 4400 meters)
2-composite oars are very easy to handle and allow excellent oar control
3-composite oars rip your hands to shreds
4-Rigging a boat is not that hard to do. Except when you drop the washer into a pile of beautiful, fall leaves.
5-When you are over 40 years old, a washer in a pile of leaves is very hard to see.
6-A"wet launch" is sometimes preferable to a floating dock. As long as you are not afraid of leeches.
7-You can NOT "toe the edge" of a floating dock without falling in
8-You can come in last (or almost last) and still feel like you rowed a terrific race.
9-Wearing spandex in certain venues makes you feel like an insider.
10 The Rite-Aid in downtown Lowell is not one of those venues.
11-Matching Red and black checkered knee socks are more important for team-building than being fast.
12-Matching Red and black checkered knee socks are also not well received in the Rite-Aid in downtown Lowell
Stay slow up the slide, friends...
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