Trinity Women's Rowing updates

It has been awesome hearing from so many of our own Trinity athletes who are feeling the lengthy summer already - the summer is really only half over but the preparations that people are making physically sound excellent. The picture is of the Trinity men and women who were competing at the US Club Nationals (not including some of the incoming freshmen). We'll be missing some very important juniors to study abroad programs but will have to adjust. As much as it's not comfortable or helpful for the team, I do recognize the value of a study abroad experience. However, the returning athletes have to understand that they have to hit the ground running on their return and be ready to contribute at a higher level then they left the previous May.

It's also been really encouraging hearing from our incoming freshmen athletes - there is some great sculling experience, height, and ability in the group and I'm looking for them to become a cohesive and motivated class.

Finally, I'll be interviewing an assistant coach candidate tomorrow afternoon and will try to keep everyone updated as I know more.

Week 2 - BRC Wednesday

The second full day of practice for the Bulldog Rowing Camp finished today and I realize this must be incredibly boring for readers of the blog and it really doesn't pertain to the Trinity Women's Rowing mission. However, it does help me organize my thoughts and provide a little bit of a record of what kind of rapid progress can happen in a camp environment.

This morning's practice we worked on some drive mechanics with the "Sass" and saw some of the campers really bite into the idea of driving the boat past their blades whereas others found it really challenging. We ended with some 45 second blasters against a younger boat and perhaps we felt a little too good about it. Right before the mid-afternoon lecture, Coach Tynan and I did some dead lifting, Turkish get-ups, side presses, and some KB push-ups. It felt great to lift...it has been simply a really long time since I've done it. Coach Card put up an excellent dead lift personal best.

The lecture was a repeat of last Friday's guided meditation and relaxation. Too many distracting noises to make it truly excellent but nevertheless I think everyone enjoyed it.

The afternoon session was more of a fun attempt at getting the athletes to feel acceleration by hanging on to the end of the boat and rowing by sixes. Very challenging but just a lot of fun...where else are you going to get a chance to do it?

Bulldog Rowing Camp Day 2 + Monday Check-In

Great day on the water in pretty rainy conditions - it promises to be rainy all week and right now we're in a very foggy bus on the way back to campus. Kids are very much asleep and are doing that continuous head roll...I guess they worked enough today.

I'm working with the second girls boat and this morning we did a demonstration illustrating the importance of achieving a strong bodies over position and attempting to produce a strong push off the foot stretcher. We met with mixed success but made great progress from the beginning of practice through to the end.

Completed a great workout with Coach Tynan - the Filthy Fifty and put up a solid time of 21:12. My burpees were of very poor quality and I could have made the jumping pull-ups harder. However, not feeling in great shape makes it harder to do each exercise better. Ironic I think.

Our second practice was legitimately excellent with some balance work, abbreviated slide rowing, and more emphasis on bodies over to allow the boat to keep running. Could be a challenging night in the dorms because of the rainy conditions but we'll make the best of it.

Week 1 Complete

The first week of Bulldog Rowing Camp finished yesterday and I have to say that the collection of campers made it really enjoyable. The racing went off smoothly with only a couple of epic crabs in the beginner boats but some very close racing in the boy's and girl's finals. It's always interesting to get a chance to speak to the parents about their son or daughter's potential in rowing, their work ethic, their enjoyment of the camp, and their behavior in the dorms. Getting a chance to know the athletes in a living environment is very different then just seeing them at practice - one can only act for so long before the true colors come out.

Now I'm back in Hartford blitzing through some work and especially recruiting - we're lining up our visits for the fall and getting in touch with as many qualified scholar-athletes as possible.

Bulldog Rowing Camp Day 5

Friday's sessions at the boathouse were a little bit of a mixed bag. The morning session with the girl's second boat was solid with some emphasis on the back end of the stroke to the top of the wall and then some all eight work back to the dock. The added sense of balance and boat run was good and it looked like they gained a little bit of confidence in being able to move out of bow together. We then rowed back to the 2000m start and rowed 5 boats across with the girl's first boat and three boy's boats for some 20 stroke pieces. I thought the athletes did a nice job of being competitive throughout the workout and were able to sneak away with one piece and then be right in the mix for the others.

For the Friday afternoon lecture I took the campers through a relaxation induction series that got them to focus and block out distractions, increase their body awareness, and then find a relaxed state of mindful rest. At worst the campers fall asleep and at best they feel totally engaged, refreshed, and energized. It was fun to get back into it and see the type of reaction the athletes had to a new experience.

The afternoon session was more difficult because of boat traffic and a mixed lineup of girls had a tough time racing against the other mixed lineup. It was bouncy enough that we never really got into a consistent rhythm and I think the campers were frustrated.

Bulldog Rowing Camp Day 4

Heading to Vespoli now for a tour of the factory after two quick rows this morning. I took a mixed girls boat and we did a lot of back end stabilization work and I was really excited to see their progress as they were able to balance the boat far more securely by the end and started to see some actual free run. With two novices in the boat I was pretty impressed by their concentration though I was staying on them consistently.

There has also been some discussion amongst the coaches about how to create an amazingly competitive team atmosphere and one that reflects a commitment to training to win. That's kind of tough to define and it probably evolves more quickly than we think.

Congratulations to the USRowing MIT Development Camp Trinty rowers...Mina and Deede were able to win their heats in the 2x and Mina won her heat in the intermediate 1X. Our commitment to sculling has to continue and I hope more and more athletes will get involved.

For full results from USRowing Club Nationals please click here

Bulldog Rowing Camp Day 3 recap

Rowed twice yesterday with the second girl's boat and a more advanced girl's boat in the afternoon. In the morning we continued to work on feeling good power and body preparation though it was challenging to continue to concentrate over the entire duration of the practice. In the afternoon we worked on feeling acceleration and some starts to feel great connection. All in all successful day!

Bulldog Rowing Camp Day 2

Two sessions today with beautiful weather on the Housatonic River. Worked on the fundamentals of how to sit on the seat to allow for good torso mobility and how to hold on to the handle in order to be able to hold your body weight on the handle. The first session was primarily rowing by sixes using hands away and bodies over pauses and primarily rowing legs only and legs and back with straight arms. The second session moved into all eight rowing one and two strokes at a time with full strokes letting the blades skim on the water. The coxswain steered an excellent course and the rowers did a great job of paying attention and supporting one another. Tomorrow's plan will be to try and gain a little bit of time on the slide and to enjoy the free run of the boat that the rowers earn through their efforts. We'll also try some problem solving games to get their minds tuned into the idea of improvement.

Bulldog Rowing Camp Check-In Day

Day 1 of Bulldog Rowing Camp Week #1 and there are over 30 campers staying in our dormitory for the week aiming to improve their fundamental grasp of boat moving. I'm planning on looking at the very basics with the two groups that I'll be coaching and trying to minimize 'scattered' effort and find a couple of clear focal points that the whole group can key in on quickly and effectively.

Fab Five Recent Movie List:

1. Gran Torino

2. The Skeleton Key

3. Wanted

4. Role Models

5. Footloose 1984 version

Congratulations Derek and Kristen

The day came and went and my brother married the love of his life, Kristen Wright on July 11, 2009. Fantastic stuff with family and friends from the Maritimes, Ontario, Washington State, Germany, England, and California gathered in Worcester, MA at St. George's Cathedral for the ceremony.

There's something so fascinating about how quickly time accelerates on a wedding day and how there are surges of anxiety, relative calm, excitement and emotion. Depending on how close you are to the event it's not unlike pre-race jitters or the pace of a championship regatta - though I don't mean to minimize or blow out of proportion either event because they're very different.

I felt simultaneously proud, excited, close-to-crying, and happy for them both which scarily enough is close to how I feel when I see a crew I've been working with exceed their previous performances, transcend themselves, or just battle incredibly courageously.

So to my brother and my new sister-in-law, here's to traveling a shared path of joy, experience, and change together.

Rehearsal Dinner and Wedding This Afternoon

In Worcester MA on a beautiful sunny morning (finally) where my brother will get married this afternoon. We had the rehearsal dinner last night overlooking Lake Quinsigamond and it was a wonderful opportunity to meet with the people who are really influential and special in Derek's life. One of his college friends remarked "That it was like having a window into other parts of Derek's life" and I couldn't agree more. Seeing so many of my relatives and close family friends from all over Canada is also simply incredible - my face hurts from smiling so much (what a great feeling). I'll hopefully have some pictures that I can post later on.

Ridiculous...or is it?

Sometimes to go MUCH faster you have to divest yourself of beliefs that limit what you think is actually possible. Check out this video and see if it changes what you think about gymnastic strength training. I remember my first strength training sessions in high school where it was a scary prospect to try and do 4 x 10 pull-ups. Phew!

Henley Day 8,9,10 and Trip Completed

We raced Friday midday against Henley RC - our plan had been to spend as little energy at the start but to keep our high strokes clean and crisp enough to hang with them. We had a good feeling that Henley would try and blast us immediately and we didn't want to fall into that trap (we simply don't start that well!) Coming out of the island we were very much in the game and were about 3/4 of a length down. I felt really good physically and the boat felt similarly stable to the platform we had when we started to walk back through Marlow RC on Thursday. However, I'm not sure if it was crosswind or a little dip one way or another but we ended up hitting the port side booms at the barrier and Henley walked away. It's an incredibly shocking feeling because you're moving quite rapidly, trying to think calmly, and you're in a great physical rhythm when you have to stop...something like pulling back in a golf swing, or checking your swing in baseball...it just feels wrong.

Either way, Henley moved out to a 4-5 length lead as we extracted ourselves from the booms and we raced hard to get back into it. The verdict was "easily" and supposedly that was a gift from the umpire who could have given us a "not rowed out" verdict but we raced hard enough to get back into it that we deserved a "racing decision".

Our coxswain, Dorothy, was pretty cut up about it but many of us were philosophical about the entire experience. Here are a few of my observations:

1. It's amazing that we could pull the trip off with people getting time off from work, leaving family behind, and training.

2. The amount of rapid progress was really exciting. A comment from another rower who helped us out during our training in the US was "the guys in the boat really knew what they wanted to feel and how to articulate it".

3. Being okay with trial and error...there were things that we tried initially that felt right technically but proved to be flat out slow, uncomfortable, or delivered very little speed bang for our effort buck. And yet, the crew was flexible enough to adapt quickly.

4. Rowing in a crew was really really fun and I think I had lost sight of that slightly - the shared sense of purpose, cooperation, and just those few moments when everyone realizes "Damn, that last piece felt really good!" were really special.

Friday evening and Saturday were all about taking in everything the regatta and the town had to offer. It went by very quickly and we saw a lot of courageous racing, proper and improper British behavior, and the continued excitement of the regatta.

Sunday came quickly and I was able to have a short visit with last year's host, Valerie Nicholson, who had some amazing wedding pictures of her daughter Kathryn and her husband Andrew and also watch the Princeton lightweights win the Temple and the Brown varsity win the Ladies Plate. The other two Yale crews saw their amazing runs end in the final when the women lost by 3 lengths to the GB senior team and the 4+ lost to the Isis Boat Club. All in all, I think we represented ourselves very well!

In the picture above are my good friend and former college roommate Steve Cheng who coxed for Cambridge (Goldie 04 hence the special blazer) and then the Canadian National Team, and Yannis Hodges, who is a former Yale assistant coach, coxswain at University of Rochester, and now an epidemiologist completing his PHD at Oxford. Henley was a great time for reunion as well as competition.

I'm going to be compiling a list of "best practices" on how to best run a trip to Henley because I think there are some really good ways to proceed that make the experience less stressful and really enjoyable. More lodgings, to air travel, to equipment procurement, to ground transport, and meals there are ways to bring a college team overseas that can make it excellent. Having great hosts certainly help and this year Minnie and David Wilson and Keith and Lyn Goodwin went above and beyond for us.

Monday was a day to begin catching up on email and laying out the process for the next four weeks. Big events in progress or coming up...

1. Signing a contract on a house in Hartford today.

2. My brother gets married this Saturday in Worcester, MA.

3. Bulldog Rowing Camp begins next Monday.

4. Recruiting, recruiting, and recruiting the Class of 2014.

What a great teammate

The crew had gotten together for a pizza dinner and I had bowed out to try and work through a mountain of emails and a housing negotiation...And they brought me a whole pizza! Unbelievable thoughtfulness - so thank you Joe Fahrendorf '06 (and CJRC alum).

Race Tomorrow

We'll be racing the Henley Rowing Club Thames Cup entry tomorrow - they defeated river-rival Upper Thames Rowing Club by 1/3 of a length today in a very fast race. We'll do our best to stay in the game as long as we can...good luck to all of you who are preparing for your own races in the US and Canada and to those of you who are training on their own.

Henley Day 6,7 and ready for the 8

I apologize for how frustrating it must be to click on this blog and see that it gets updated every three days during an event like Henley. Brutal...with such great websites like Row2K and the Henley Royal Regatta official page I'm thankful that you're reading this right now. A quick recap to bring you up to speed:

Tuesday - we rowed once in the morning versus Galway and rowed a Barrier piece with them where we lost by about a length. Again, equipment played a factor in that my rigger was making tremendous cracking noises and it distracted me to the point where our start and high strokes were clearly effected. After the business with Brunswick the day before we really didn't need this. Regardless we finished out the trip, checked over the boat, and did another trip continuing to work on good movement. Felt better and better...Tuesday night we did one more lap working on our race plan and by accident lined up next to the Brown Varsity crew (Ladies Plate entry) - they started first and then we did our start and ended up rowing steady state next to them down the course. I can just imagine how annoying we must have been sitting up 1/2 a length and rowing a couple of beats higher (but still making the boat feel good) all the way down the course. Best of luck to them as they start their campaign tomorrow against MIT.

Wednesday - we woke up early because our race time was 10:00 AM against Twickenham RC. It was simply a lot of fun to get anxious about racing again, to see other crews similarly prepared and ready to go, and then to put it on the line...okay limited preparation on the line. Starting on the Bucks station our high strokes were effective and then very quickly they drew back into us coming almost level. We were rowing 37 for the first 3 minutes of the race and finally touched 36 at Fawley and then began to creep out slowly. It was a slow extension of the lead to the line and while we maintained our speed and rating they dropped off a little more in the final 500. Fun note - we were the first US crew to race at the 2009 regatta!

So interesting to break down the race afterwards and hear the differences in opinion amongst the crew - it's good and perhaps even healthy that it happened. One, it means we were able to speak about and articulate what we felt and two, we felt confident, motivated, or angry enough to say something about it. Stern four felt pretty good about it and I may be generalizing but bow four felt like we were behind and having to overpull. We decided against a second row in the evening and had a quick bite at an italian restaurant near the Three Horseshoes. Travel note: Pasta Bolognese should not look like Chef Boyardee pasta from a can.

Thursday: We rowed even earlier meaning the stands were almost empty as we got to the line for our 9:30 AM race versus Marlow Rowing Club. Marlow had beaten Lea Rowing Club (containing a good high school friend of mine - Angus Laurie who was rowing in the 7 seat - the last time we had seen one another was at the 2005 regatta when I was coaching a Trinity Student 4+...Great to catch up with him!) Marlow had blitzed the start and were faster to the barrier and to Fawley than our times yesterday and that played out again...We were behind almost a length at the barrier and we started to relax into a more sustainable base at 36 and they stopped moving. I noticed their puddles looked the same size and stole a glance over and suddenly their coxswain was in view. Over the next two minutes we had draw level and then in the final two minutes of the race we moved a further 3/4 of a length...A rare come from behind victory! Bobby Kennedy, our two-seat and IRA Champion in 2005, pointed out that in 168 races run on Wednesday and Thursday only 3 crews had won after being behind at Fawley.

I'll have to write about how much damn fun it is to be rowing in a competent 8+ and being at Henley...the expectations, personalities, physiological concerns, and traditions have been really fascinating to note. It's also interesting to get to know some of the athletes that I had coached in 2003-2004 on a different level...

Other topics - Henley picnics, other Trinity alums racing at the regatta, US results, Leander's establishment, heat wave, classic board games, recruiting, and ideas for next fall.