The Joys of Coaching
I have been known to coach rowing. Sweep rowing and sculling to youth and adults. I love it. I even loved it this past autumn with my adrenaline out of control. Being a relative newbie, and certainly trained only through trial by fire immersion, I coach the beginners. The "learn to row/scull" crowd. Personally, I tend to prefer the sculling coaching due to the fact that since everyone progresses indepentantly of each other, people feel as though they are progressing quite quickly. But working with the team sweep boats presents different challenges, but I do what I can to get people inspired.

As a coach, it always warms the cockles of my icebound in Boston heart to have someone really step up to the plate and commit to learning to row. I also find that it isn't always the person you'd expect. And this is certainly true of the latest person to pop up, one of my adult learn to sweep row women from the fall. She committed to erging over the winter, and entered a logbook group to row 100K between Thanksgiving and New Years. She was successful. And now she has decided to compete in Crash-Bs, also known as the world indoor rowing championships which are held here in Boston in February. (I am not competing this year. This is itself is highly unusual - I love Crash-Bs, although I will be attending to do other things.) I happened to run into her during a rather decadent evening out of curry and chocolate at Burdick's with another friend, and now we have been corresponding about how to formulate a race strategy. She seems very excited, and this always brings out the coach in me. When a person is excited about rowing, I will do whatever it takes to keep them that way. So now I am going to spend my Saturday afternoon working with her to learn erg racing starts, discuss strategies, and work on form. And I think this is a good way to spend some time. Particularly since I'm not racing!

It starts to beg the question though, what do I know about coaching?
Love,
Anne