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Sleepy day (rowing blather)
Feb. 7th, 2013 05:03 pmTired today. This has been the first full week of crew practices, and they occupy a large portion of my free time on weekdays. When all is said and done, a crew practice out on the lake takes up about 3 hours of time - two hours biking there and back, an hour or so on the water. I coxed twice on Monday, once in the morning, once in the evening, and didn't have a coxbox for either practice. Both boats were brand-new novices, some of whom had only been in a boat once before. Not ideal learning conditions, from my perspective. After Monday's evening practice, I convinced the head coach to put me in the single for one practice a week, during which I could work with a novice boat and coxswain and actually coach them.
Tuesday mornings the whole team has a land workout for morning practice. These are fun when the team is so large that things have to be split up into stations. The ranks have swelled with new recruits this spring. Some of the new novices clearly have other athletic experience, while others are taking on crew as a first sport, so there's a lot of variation in strength and skill in the land workouts. I like it that way, actually, as I've always been bad at these sorts of land workouts. I'm not especially coordinated and I run slowly. I do girly pushups. But if I stick with the workouts, I do get noticeably stronger and faster, and that translates into better rowing.
Wednesday morning, I finally had a coxbox. That practice went pretty well - we got to the point where I started having the rowers do pause drills at flat slide (aka arms and back or arms and body). We also rowed by all 8 for a bit, and got in some power 5's and 10's. By next week, I hope to teach them how to do racing starts. Our first "regatta" is the team's Alumni Duel, the following Saturday the 16th, where the team invites the alumni back to the lake to race the current rowers. A great, mellow chance for the novices to see what racing is like before taking on other competitors.
The team has a motorized safety launch, which I hauled down to the lake and back many times over the fall. Hauling the launch back and forth and putting the motor on and taking it off were obnoxious activities that were a real slog - I would invariably spill a bit of gasoline while attaching/removing the gas line from the motor, and the tires on the launch cart went flat, making it impossible to roll back and forth. On top of all that, the launch couldn't keep up with the boats when they rowed full speed, and the motor was so loud that nobody could hear me, especially after the megaphone was reclaimed by its owner. Also, I've discovered that I'm not especially good at jockeying back and forth near the crew with this launch. Probably because if I want the rowers to hear me, I have to get really close to the boat.
Occasionally, though, when we ran out of gas for the launch or something else happened or just when I felt like it, I coached from the single instead. The team's one functional single is light and easy to carry down to the water, and easier for me to maneuver next to another shell. The lack of motor means it's quiet enough for the rowers to hear me, and I can demonstrate maneuvers on myself.
Many rowing teams constantly struggle to track down a sufficient number of coxswains, and this team is no exception to that. Without a launch, it's pretty much impossible to teach new coxswains on the water, but having me accompany a boat in the single appears to be a pretty good workaround for the problem. This morning, it also helped that the novice cox's boat had an experienced rower in stroke seat who could also explain things to the coxswain.
I think my favorite part of teaching this coxswain was a moment when we came in to shore and prepared to bring the boat back up to the boatyard. I instructed the coxswain to tell his rowers to walk the boat forward, which prompted him to ask, "So, why do I need to tell the rowers to walk the boat forward, when it's blindingly obvious that's what they should do?"
A great question, with multiple answers, and an important moment in explaining rower-coxswain dynamics. My explanation revolved around the fact that rowers need to do everything in a coordinated fashion, and also around the idea that the coxswain is in charge of the boat and rowers shouldn't get ideas about how to do things.
We don't have practices scheduled for Friday mornings, so, for better or worse, I'll go to the Rec Center to use the accursed Fluid Ergs instead. And I think I'll sleep really well this weekend - at least until it's time to get up and go to a crew study party at 8 am on Saturday (I'll use the time to work on manuscript-writing instead).
Tuesday mornings the whole team has a land workout for morning practice. These are fun when the team is so large that things have to be split up into stations. The ranks have swelled with new recruits this spring. Some of the new novices clearly have other athletic experience, while others are taking on crew as a first sport, so there's a lot of variation in strength and skill in the land workouts. I like it that way, actually, as I've always been bad at these sorts of land workouts. I'm not especially coordinated and I run slowly. I do girly pushups. But if I stick with the workouts, I do get noticeably stronger and faster, and that translates into better rowing.
Wednesday morning, I finally had a coxbox. That practice went pretty well - we got to the point where I started having the rowers do pause drills at flat slide (aka arms and back or arms and body). We also rowed by all 8 for a bit, and got in some power 5's and 10's. By next week, I hope to teach them how to do racing starts. Our first "regatta" is the team's Alumni Duel, the following Saturday the 16th, where the team invites the alumni back to the lake to race the current rowers. A great, mellow chance for the novices to see what racing is like before taking on other competitors.
The team has a motorized safety launch, which I hauled down to the lake and back many times over the fall. Hauling the launch back and forth and putting the motor on and taking it off were obnoxious activities that were a real slog - I would invariably spill a bit of gasoline while attaching/removing the gas line from the motor, and the tires on the launch cart went flat, making it impossible to roll back and forth. On top of all that, the launch couldn't keep up with the boats when they rowed full speed, and the motor was so loud that nobody could hear me, especially after the megaphone was reclaimed by its owner. Also, I've discovered that I'm not especially good at jockeying back and forth near the crew with this launch. Probably because if I want the rowers to hear me, I have to get really close to the boat.
Occasionally, though, when we ran out of gas for the launch or something else happened or just when I felt like it, I coached from the single instead. The team's one functional single is light and easy to carry down to the water, and easier for me to maneuver next to another shell. The lack of motor means it's quiet enough for the rowers to hear me, and I can demonstrate maneuvers on myself.
Many rowing teams constantly struggle to track down a sufficient number of coxswains, and this team is no exception to that. Without a launch, it's pretty much impossible to teach new coxswains on the water, but having me accompany a boat in the single appears to be a pretty good workaround for the problem. This morning, it also helped that the novice cox's boat had an experienced rower in stroke seat who could also explain things to the coxswain.
I think my favorite part of teaching this coxswain was a moment when we came in to shore and prepared to bring the boat back up to the boatyard. I instructed the coxswain to tell his rowers to walk the boat forward, which prompted him to ask, "So, why do I need to tell the rowers to walk the boat forward, when it's blindingly obvious that's what they should do?"
A great question, with multiple answers, and an important moment in explaining rower-coxswain dynamics. My explanation revolved around the fact that rowers need to do everything in a coordinated fashion, and also around the idea that the coxswain is in charge of the boat and rowers shouldn't get ideas about how to do things.
We don't have practices scheduled for Friday mornings, so, for better or worse, I'll go to the Rec Center to use the accursed Fluid Ergs instead. And I think I'll sleep really well this weekend - at least until it's time to get up and go to a crew study party at 8 am on Saturday (I'll use the time to work on manuscript-writing instead).
