Great Rowing on Youtube

For those looking for inspiration, as the heart of February closes about us, here are some great vids from Youtube:

Oxford/Cambridge "Inches" speech



Canadian Olympic team "Inches" speech



Men's 8+ final, Athens Olympics



2006 USRowing Junior National Championships, Men's 8+



And finally, an evil vid with the erg:

The Stupid Bowl

Oh, yea! This year's Super Bowl will feature the coronation of the New England Patriots. The NFC patsies will be the New York Giants. Two teams from the northeast, leaving the rest of the country with no real interesting storyline to watch. I don't believe anyone outside the northeast corridor really cares about watching the Patriots' "Drive for Perfection."

I, for one, will not be watching the game. I can think of many other interesting things to do than watch Fox put up slanted political reports for the first part of the day, followed by hours of insipid "analysis" trying to hype up the game, followed by three Eli Manning interceptions in the first half. Add in the usual terrible "halftime show" and more New England players dancing around, and this game promises to be a total snoozer. I'm predicting a total blowout, something like the real fun Super Bowls from the mid-1980s.

Care to join me in the Stupid Bowl protest? I'll be in Pittsburgh the day before, for the Three Rivers indoor sprints, hosted this year by Central Catholic. It will be nice to return to the 'Burgh for a weekend. I'll hang around on Sunday, then drive back to Cincinnati starting Sunday afternoon. If I'm lucky, I'll miss the entire game.

I just don't have the stomach to watch this. I'd rather watch people trying to lose lunch after erg tests.

Wintertime Cross Training

Will has gotten crazy about rock climbing this winter. This mania started with this picture, taken at Callaway Gardens in Georgia. The wall you see him on is about 40ft high, and he was quite pleased with himself afterwards. Since then, I've taken him out to a few different places, RockQuest in Cincinnati being his favorite. Below are a two shots of him climbing at their great indoor facility.






So, why talk about cross training while putting up pictures of my 5 year old climbing 45ft walls? Going to these various climbing gyms has given me an opportunity to observe the athletes that enjoy this sport up close, doing their own wintertime training. Climbing outdoors in freezing rain doesn't seem to be anything they would enjoy more than rowers enjoy racing in high winds on a 40 degree day.

So, how do high-end climbers train in the winter? It's their off-season, after all. There are some very specific skills they've built up over the years, or new abilities to work on. What do climbers do?

Guess what? They do the same thing swimmers do. They practice their sport in a simulated environment indoors. Does a wooden climbing wall exactly simulate the face of a granite cliff? Of course not. There's also no wind to deal with or footholds that fall out once your full weight pressed upon them. Just like rowers who deal with an erg that doesn't exactly mimic the feel of water or the the set of a boat.

Anybody guessing the point I'm making here? I'm all in favor of cross training. It makes a fun "different" activity to get into every other weekend or so. There is just too much evidence to suggest that cross training simply won't produce a faster boat. In a specialized sport such as rowing, there is no substitute to actually rowing to get faster.

Don't misunderstand my point, however, when the issue of weight training or flexibility is discussed. Both are worthy, focused tools used to increase power output and technique in the boat. Climbers lift weights fanatically, but they simply don't focus on the lower body strength like rowers must. Core muscle groups, upper shoulders and forearms are the favorites of climbers, where leg exercises and bench pulls are important to oarsmen.

So enjoy your cross training this winter. Once or twice a month. If, however, the fastest boat possible is your goal, keep rowing. That is, after all, the motion you're trying to perfect.

Beach Running

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?

When the coach rants

I'm going to add my two pennies into the Mike Gundy debate. For those that aren't familiar with what happened, read this column, that appeared last Saturday before the Oklahoma State Cowboys played. Then came coach Mike Gundy's post-game news conference:





Finally, here's the rebuttal column from the sportswriter.

When a coach goes on a rant like this, it's the product of a lot of frustration that boils over. Coaches deal with a lot on their plate on a daily basis, and the responsibility doesn't ever get easier. The highest duty is always to the athletes under your command, and good coaches get very possessive of "their" kids. We really become surrogate parents. Like parents, it's okay for us to discipline our kids, but look out if anyone out there says anything bad about our kids. Then papa bear comes out, and it makes for entertaining television. I really understand where Mike Gundy was coming from.

The national sports media had a wonderful few days with this. It made for great sound on sports stalk radio. ESPN radio had morning hosts that agreed with Gundy and supported his point of view and a midday host that called it insane and predicted Gundy's immanent departure from the college coaching ranks. Both points of view got passionate calls, which is what talk radio wants. I believe the media missed who was the target audience for that rant.

Gundy was going off for the consumption of his players. He had made a difficult move to switch starting quarterbacks, his defense had just been shredded in a shoot-out which the team did win, but controversy was swirling around the team, being fed by a columnist. She needs readers, so "stirring the pot" gets her attention. How does Gundy respond to this situation? Usual coach-speak might work, but won't take any attention away from a possible quarterback controversy or a week of questions about his defense.

So Gundy made it all about him, while making a very important point to his athletes: Coach has my back. It's us against everyone. We're a team, a family and coach will go to the mat for us. I'm sure the offensive players would love to exult about their great performance and the team's win, but I'm absolutely sure that Gundy's boys will follow him into hell after his rant on the media, because they know and they've seen that he cares deeply for them. Deeply enough to deal with a week or more of media insanity for them.

As a final side note, I think the columnist is disgusting. She claims "sources and facts," but actually claims not one. No quotes, interviews, nothing. She writes that her integrity has been attacked, but she doesn't understand what her function is. She's a columnist, someone hired to write an opinion. Columnists don't have to support their work with facts. They can make things up from whole cloth if they so choose. But somehow, she's offended that she got called out over and over again on national television. She doesn't like being told that her opinion stinks. Anyone can say that: it's free speech. Her problem is that it's getting far more airtime.

I like what Gundy said and did. I agree with him. He must be one heck of a coach.

The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker is the unfortunate byproduct of Swing. When the rhythm of the boat re-enforces the output of the oarsmen, they feel it as a sublime, unstoppable moment that can last for a few strokes or a few thousand meters. Swing encourages the crew to continue the output they are generating for as long as possible. Frankly, the crew might feel as if they could continue on that pace indefinitely.

The Hurt Locker opens up when the boat finally stops and the body, which had been fooling itself, suddenly realizes how much energy has been produced. Between two and three breaths, pain suddenly floods the various systems. Welcome to the Hurt Locker.

Once you've gone there, it is very difficult to get back to the swing the boat has just experienced. There's just too much pain. If you're lucky, you've timed your trip to the hurt locker with the last piece of the practice, or the final at the big regatta. If you're unfortunate, you've got to somehow muster up the physical courage to start rowing again in the next few minutes or hours to go all over again.

Jay and I took a trip into the Hurt Locker this morning. It was our best outing in the pair so far, with the boat set well and running straight. There were times as we swung downstream from the 62nd street bridge that I felt as if I were rowing an erg. It was Swing.

Of course, when that feeling comes over a boat, the rowers usually increase power to reenforce the good row they're having. And so on we went, steadily increasing the pressure and then the rating over the next 2.5 miles. I was breathing hard as we made the final turn under the wires toward the 40th street bridge.

Sweat broke out all over my arms we relentlessly pursued speed. I knew what was happening; I felt like I could continue this pace for a long, long time. There always seemed to be more energy, flowing from the boat, through me and into the water. I wondered why I wasn't hurting too much and why my hands had gone numb on the composite oar.

One last power twenty took us under the bridge. Even that didn't seem to tax me so much, it just required moving a little faster and drawing more power out and into the oar. Then we paddled and stopped. And the Hurt Locker opened like a yawning, stinking mouth of hell.

I had made some poor eating choices yesterday, and my guts were reminding me of them. Feeling returned to my aching hands, where fresh blisters from earlier in the week protested the continued abuse of this morning. My head pounded; I was dehydrated despite guzzling down a quart of water every workout.

It was very difficult to stand when we landed the boat. Jay's back was in agony. He had difficulity putting on his socks later in the locker room. I feel, now five hours later, as if I'd been up all night before going on the water. (No, I wasn't.) There's just no energy left in me, and my legs are aching now. No amount of caffiene has overcome the all-consuming desire to sit at my desk and sleep.

However, I now sit here with a smile on my face and content in my heart. It was a great row. I wonder if Jay's back will be ok for Monday?

The coach 2-

Well, after a very frustrating spring and summer with injuries and general insanity, the Central coaches' pair finally got out on the water this morning. It was the first time in a 2- for me in over seven years. I have always liked rowing the pair more than any other boat, so I've been looking forward to this for awhile.

And contrary to all the snide remarks I'm sure the guys are making, no we did NOT flip. Actually, we had a very good row, didn't hit anything and managed to go straight, thus proving that the old guys do still "have it." Next outing is tomorrow at 6am, and any challengers are welcome from the ranks of the oarsmen. Nobody will be allowed in the first boat that can't beat the coaches in the pair. I might be kidding, or I might not........

Off the erg some more

That is my broken toe, right foot, next to my big toe. Notice that it's just a little......bent.

I was planning on getting on the erg again this coming week, as my back has been really loose and easy. Not for awhile now, I'm on crutches. This sucks.

Next Christmas?

For those who haven't hit this link on row2k, I now call attention to the Streetrower. I'm not sure how well this would do for us here in Pittsburgh (the site says they can customize some gearing), as the hills here are steep and ever-present, but this looks like a lot of fun. Apparently it's even possible to build one of these for a bloke my size!

The only information I don't see on the site is how the legs get involved in the stroke and if it's possible to lay back a little more than I see in these shots. Everyone seems to be rowing a little short in the finish for this coach's eye. But hey, everybody's a critic. It looks like a great idea and I would love to take a Henley vacation sometime to try one out. Any readers out there who've been on one?

These would give an all-new way to look at erg tests, as there is a banked bike track here in Pittsburgh, just over the Highland Park bridge, and a bike path that follows our main training areas on the Allegheny and Monongahela. Why race against the clock when you can race for real, head to head? Those miserable flooded out March weeks might be a thing of the past.....

Thoughts for the novices the night before

Before you push off the dock on Saturday morning, I want you to know you're the most successful novice crew Central has ever had. A lot of people have offered congratulations to the coaching staff, but I believe you, the athletes, are the sole people who deserve the credit and congratulations.

Traditionally, novices are victimized by low expectations. The first year of rowing is supposed to be a learning year, with good fundamentals, awards for "participation," and a few races tacked on to the beginning of regattas as a "bone" to "keep the novices interested." Sometimes the best athletes from the novices are taken from their classmates early, to fill out a struggling 2V or 3V. The rest are politely expected to struggle on, hamstrung, and "race well" or "show good sportsmanship" or "represent the team." These are great characteristics to have, and we encourage them. But in other words, crews with low expectations didn't care if the novices lost.

This year, you 18 men accepted the challenge of higher expectations. In order to meet these, you have trained harder than any novice crew at Central, you have achieved faster erg scores that any novice crew at Central, and you have raced with determination never seen from a Central novice crew. No Central novice has ever pulled faster than seven minutes on at 2k erg, nor has any Central novice raced in the finals at the New Jersey championships, until this year.

When great accomplishments are expected from a person or group of people, many times it is seen as a disadvantage or an obstacle to be overcome. Barack Obama wrote eloquently of the struggles his father had being one of the first Kenyons to earn a college degree in America, football teams with "something to lose" are seen as disadvantaged against teams with "nothing to lose, playing with house money."

However, I disagree with the "conventional wisdom." The only disadvantage high expectations have is the perceived risk of disappointing those with those high standards. If a poor crew that has not trained well and does not expect to do well goes out and loses their race, then they have fulfilled their low expectations. If an excellent crew that has trained well launches and wins their race, they have fulfilled their high expectations, and *most importantly* have defied the risk of disappointment and defeat. That excellent crew would take not satisfaction in their win if there had been only one other very poor team in their race.

Given the choice, when pushing off the dock, I would rather be the team with high expectations than low expectations.

I've though at length this week about expectations, goals and definitions of success. I've become ashamed about what I said to the novices after the race on Sunday. I got too involved in one race and it's outcome; I forgot to recognize the long-term goals that have been accomplished this year. The Central novices are competitive. People talk about our races. The overall level of the team has been raised by the novices. Because these main goals have been accomplished far beyond my own expectations, I have to be proud of this group. Both boats could come in last this weekend, and I would still be proud.

Why? Because they have showed determination, courage and character. They already are the best group of Central novices ever, and are well on their way to being the best class of Central Catholic oarsmen ever.

So do not fear disappointment this weekend, gentlemen. Before you race, take a moment to calm your anxiety and focus on how far you've come. Concentrate within yourselves and within the gunnels. Focus on your blade and your coxswain. Row like you know how and accept the challenge of high expectations, because that is what you've done all year, and that is what will make every one of you exceptional Central oarsmen in the future.