In Which Our Heroine Discovers Boat Speed
Ah, boat speed. Liz and I went out yesterday in one of the CBC boats. Now, we've done this a couple of times now. And it hasn't been bad. In fact, quite the opposite. The first go round was enough fun to get us to want to do it for the rest of the season. The second time was fun enough to be a little frustrating, because we could see the amount of work we had to do. But, ah, this last time. What a difference a little rigging makes.

For those of you not in the know, rowing is actually a very technical sport. The simple version of the technical bits are that if you think of a lever, if you put the fulcrum at the right point, you get a lot more lift for a lot less effort. There are roughly a bazillion different little adjustments you can make in a boat to rig it to your size, relative body strength, wind conditions. For a better discussion than this, read pages 257 onward in Peter Topolski's "True Blue" - it is the best description of rigging and boat placement I've ever read. But getting back to Liz and I, we put the boat in the water to discover that someone had moved my footstretchers back very far in the tracks. Certainly much further than I had ever had them before. I had been planning on moving them back a bit anyway to see if it helped my front end catch, but not this much. I checked the positioning of my hands at the finish, and it seemed that I could move a bit back, but something in me made me leave it. Whatever that something was, I now bow down and worship it. It was astounding from the first stroke. Which should have been very heavy and slow on the oars, as we were moving from a dead stop and I was pulling Liz to warm up, so there was her weight dead in the boat. I know what this feels like. Or rather, is supposed to feel like. This was far, far, far too easy. And fast. The boat was already moving through the water far quicker than it should at this stage. I took a couple more strokes. It was insanely easy. I mentioned it to Liz, but of course she couldn't appreciate it. Yet. She did soon though. After my warm up, she had hers and then it was time for me to join in. On the second stroke you could hear her say "wow!" It was that amazing. We paddled up to CRI with relative ease, and then figured out what to do next. The boat was set better, the steering was highly responsive, and there was of course the speed. The speed! We thought it out and opted to do some drills to improve our technique, which was without question rusty and in need of improvement. We've both been out of practice a couple years, and while I'm a sculler at heart and primary experience, Liz is a sweep rower with only a rough dozen sculling outings. Time for the drills. And it worked. We started improving. We did the drills individually, which lets the other person set the boat. Liz made loads of improvement in her roll up timing and her power application. Then I did the same drill. And I realized I was "skying" at the catch, which is at the last second lifting your oars in the air before setting them down in the water. This is bad for a couple reasons. 1) The lift up throws off the balance of the boat. 2) The act of putting them up into the water tends to mean that when you finally put them into the water, you place them too deeply, which gives an inefficient stroke. Having noticed this during the drill, I tried to rectify it. And the strokes when I rowed correctly were astounding. If you get a certain amount of speed out of an Empacher, you get a hum from the rush of the air bubbles running under the hull. I actually managed to get the hum while rowing solo, lugging Liz around. (Poor thing, on her drills she had to lug my fat butt around.) Stunned, I was stunned. Liz couldn't belive it either. Inspired, we gave it a push for thirty strokes to try us out. I can't say it went that well, but over all the effect was positive. Which is how these things go. It is all easy enough during a slow painstaking drill. Then you have to think about it at speed, with the boat not balanced for you by someone else, steering, etc. But I could feel it on some strokes. We both could. I didn't want to land, but I did have to get back to the library. But now Liz and I are both so excited. Even more so than before.

This led to some interesting challenges. First, we had to find a boat. The CBC rules are quite firm - Liz, not being a member, can row with me 10 times in a calendar year. There is not a way around this rule, it is sacrosanct. I asked anyway, not expecting the Rowing Committee to say yes, but rather hoping that their answer would provide some clues about how to proceed next. Which it did. In short, if we could find another boat that wasn't a club boat and convince someone to let us row it, we could do that. But people don't have a double laying around usually. Plus, to add to that the boats are built for efficiency for particular weights. So it had to be a heavyweight double. Just to add a little challenge to it. Amazingly, the problem is already solved. My friend John owns a heavyweight Empacher double. And he is willing to let Liz and I use it. He just has to get it down here. We're negotiating a price of some sort for the season. In the meantime, beer and dinner! Huzzah! Huzzah! Viva my current serendipity. There is no logical reason why it should be this easy. But it was, so I'll be grateful for what I've got.

I'm still so amazed by the boat speed we found. In a nutshell, we're totally out of shape, we're very well out of technique, out of practice, and Liz isn't a sculler. And we're STILL going faster than I've ever gone in a boat before. Wheee! To make a bad joke, I'm not a fast woman, but I want to be.

All this is good. We've decided to put ourselves in the lottery for a Head of the Charles (HOCR) entry. We stand about a 50% chance of being successful. But the real fun is once we clear the mere entry hurdle. For most events, there are three or four classifications. The club, the lightweight, the championship and the masters. Masters are old people - by HOCR standards everyone in the boat must be over 30 and average age has to be 40. Anyone can enter the champ events. You have to qualify for the club events, but you qualify by *not* competing in Olympic, national team, or world championship trials or having come within 5% of the winners time in an HOCR event in the two years previous. So in short, the slower people (they're still pretty fast) are in club. And lightweights are under 165 lbs for men, 130 lbs for women. But for the double, there are only two classifications: champ and masters. We're not old enough for masters, so hey presto! We'd be in the champ events. We're not competing to win - that wouldn't be fun. But it will be interesting to see where we wind up in the pack. Of course, we first have to get that entry.........

And then, of course, there was today. Internship, good but busy. Then presentation. Good, but always stressful. It is my only grade after all. And then a meeting with the athletic director over the girl who quit when I yelled at her. While without question I was inappropriate, the parents have decided that any criticism of their beloved daughter would have been "unwarranted" as this is a girl who "has consistently given her best" to the squad. I want to know who they're talking about. The girl almost quit early last week anyway. When I see her on the runs, she's walking. She's disrespectful. She didn't pay attention to the safety video - she was ignoring it talking to her friends. She didn't pay attention during the safety lectures - she was ignoring it talking to her friends. She was warned three times by me and once by Dale. Her parents say she was standing up for the other kids. I don't see how, seeing as all three times she was leading the kids in being where they weren't supposed to be, and they were being loud which they weren't supposed to be. What is to stand up for? And if you even want to make that argument, bad mouthing the coach the minute she leaves the room isn't standing up for yourself. I'm lucky enough to have the full backing of Dale and the athletic director. Which is good, as the parents are meeting with them tomorrow. I'm not invited, as the parents don't seem to see the wisdom of speaking to me about it. The attitude of the parents pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the kid.

To add to the fun, I now get the pressure from the CBC members (since I am also a member) to see if I can crack down on the kids being loud and running around the boathouse. Look for me squeezed between that large rock and that very hard place. I'm going to be a hot topic at the next parents meeting. I'll have to double check my medication levels before that one I think. I'm still debating quitting, just because the season is so aggravating. Most amusing statement of the day is that the girls don't like me because I make them follow the rules. What is a girl to do???????

Go to bed, that's what. Sleep, perchance to dream.
Love,
Coach