For Thanksgiving this year, my family is on the beach in Charleston, SC. There's miles of beach to walk and run, along with a heated pool for the kids. Plenty of fun for Will and his cousins and a big enough building to house all 25 of us.
I was thinking of hitting the beach tomorrow and talking with some of my family members of the running persuasion. Everyone knows that I can't run, and we brought an erg down to burn off some T-Day calories, but their conversation about running on the beach got me thinking about the running that happens in rowing.
In rowing, we encourage everyone to work in unison. In the boat, that's a requirement. On the ergs, workouts are structured so the weakest oarsmen many times are finishing at the same time as the strongest. Instead of working over a certain distance, we use elapsed time, such as 60 minutes of steady state or six 1-minute pieces.
However, when sent out on a run, a crew reverts to individuals. If I sent a team on a run down the beach, I would get multiple sets of footprints in the sand, and they would return to the start at different times. However, the military runs in formation and in step with each other. Why don't we encourage this in rowing? If anything, rowing is more dependent on such interdependence and unison, yet we let such an opportunity slip by. Perhaps this is something to think about in the future, when the team is sent out on a run.
Just a thought. Anyone have any comments?
