Musings on speed

      I spend a lot of time thinking about this boat and there are several things which absolutely astound me about it, and all of us as a group. As a group we discuss the boat, fundraising, technique, power application, pieces, and other odds and ends to a point that is almost hard to believe. We constantly have a text message group chat, several email chains, and all the time we spend together actually rowing to discuss the aforementioned. Basically, it is massively impressive the degree which we all care about the boat and our mutual success.

    Beyond the five of us, we have a dedicated group of coaches and a coxswain who have gone above and beyond to help us more than we could possibly hope. Our club itself, Baltimore Rowing Club, has done a great deal to be supportive. At the end of the day it is us in the boat though. We will be the ones with the lactic acid building in our legs, pushing ourselves against other crews from around the world in hopes of winning some hardware. I might also add we will be doing so looking incredibly classy in our rowing blazers and uniforms.

    In pushing ourselves as far and as hard as we can while still balancing busy lives we have rowed (by conservative estimates) about 6000000 (that’s 6 million) meters. Over the past couple weeks a couple things have stood out to me which I don’t really think I have ever experienced in a boat before and are truly incredibly.

    During the course of a normal row we will row a lap (about 4 thousand meters) and talk briefly about what we could do better. Almost totally organically Josh will make a call and we will do a drill to work on an issue. For instance lately we have been working on inside and outside arm only. The amazing thing is, the change sticks and we get better. I have seen crews work on something for weeks and no change is had, but we do it in a few minutes. Our coach, Jeff, asked us how we figure out drills and enact them so well together with minimal discussion or planning. I guess we are just good. 

    The other thing that amazes me has to do with our lineup. In many boats I’ve experienced everybody has a seat that they sit and that rarely changes. When I was in college I think I sat 5 seat for about two years straight. Most crews are like a machine where all the parts fit perfectly and the boat goes fast, but if you change a part, or move the parts around everything goes awry. In our case this isn’t exactly our experience. We have been rowing a starboard stroked lineup almost since the beginning and we felt that things had been going very well and we were moving fast. We come in one morning (5 A.M.) and find that through some miscommunication our 4 was rigged as port stroked. We figured we would give it a try and see what happened.
 
    Our coach joked that it looked like we had tossed all the pieces in the air and wherever they landed in the boat we would just row that. The boat was still fast, if not even fast. In fact over the past couple months we have rowed five or 6 different line ups. Nearly everybody has sat in every seat at one time or another; the only exception being yours truly has never stroked because frankly, I have no interest in stroking haha. No matter what we do, we are fast, lacking in any sort of self-serving ego that prevents gaining more speed, and have the passion and personalities which make me believe that there is no stopping us.