Andy’s Weblog

Like bulls at the gate we await the start.  Nerves give way to excitement, excitement to aggression.  Mike bangs the gunwales with his giant hands, like prehistoric man banging clubs as a show of force before battle.  “Alright, let’s do this thing.”  The beauty of the rolling start is that the transition is subtle.  Before you know it, you’re in it.  Wilmington is 3^rd at the start, San Diego 4^th, and Pocock 5^th.  We are racing between 33 and 34 strokes per minute and Mike is definitely on his game.  We have a good rhythm and I am ready as the pain tide floods.  We are now well passed the “oh shit” moment and fully committed to the pain.  By the first split at Riverside, we have a 9.548 second lead over Wilmington, 9.796 second lead over Pocock and a 15.876 lead over San Diego.  What we don’t know is that, way back in 16^th place, Minneapolis Rowing is charging hard and trails by only 3.941 seconds.  Mike and Stormy had warned us that Minneapolis would be “gunning for us.”  Their stroke seat, John Jablonio, is a member of the Rocky Mountain Rowing Club.    

The yellow pyramid shaped one mile marker does not congratulate me on finishing the first of three miles.  The yellow pyramid shaped one mile marker mocks me, a crushing reminder that there are two miles left to go.  Minneapolis is now 3.559 seconds behind us.  I hear Harry’s breath behind me, perfectly in sync with my own.  That’s something.  Focus on that.  We take two breaths per stroke, 66-68 breaths per minute.  Saliva flies from my mouth and nose.  Spitting would upset the rhythm.   I am in control.  I am having The Tammy Talk (with all I have invested in this sport, I want to be there for every stroke) in my head.  My reality shifts.  It is not that I have only completed one mile and have two long miles to go.  It is that I have already completed one mile and I only have two miles left before this amazing experience is over!  I begin to tear off giant chunks of pain and chew on them voraciously.  The pain is empowering, it is my fuel.  It is my friend.

This is so much better than last year.  Raedene has developed a calm and steady pattern of alternating Power 10’s; first for leg drive, then for length.  Then leg drive, then length.  As a coach I used to tell my coxswains not to continuously repeat the same command, as it would desensitize the crew and dilute the command’s intensity.  But this is different.  Raedene is not calling the same thing out of desperation, or because she doesn’t know what else to say.  Raedene knows exactly what she is doing.  Raedene is a natural born killer. 

Through the Powerhouse Stretch we swing and fly.  I don’t even remember seeing the two mile marker.  At the Cambridge turn our lead over Minneapolis has increased to 4.520 seconds.  All other boats are no longer in sight.  We are alone, with 1980 somewhere far ahead of us.  Out of the Cambridge turn we begin our sprint at 37 strokes per minute.  This is part of our race plan.  Mike told me on the way to the starting line, “when I go, be ready to go with me.”  I am.  He does.  We all do.  It is tremendous, vicious, primal.  We are through.  It is over.

Rocky Mountain Rowing Club maintains its’ 2^nd place ranking by 4.780 seconds over Minneapolis.  Today, out of 26 boats, only Rocky Mountain and Minneapolis are fast enough to stay within 5% of the winning 1980 boat.

Hi all, the final youtube chronicling the Olympic trials is up and running.  Do check it out and feel free to leave comments!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94gJAn_8s9U

Andy

4/25/08 - This is it. We nap. We brood. We itch with the anticipation of, well, everything. No more thought, just do. The wind continues to pick up. The sharks swarm around us. Is that rain? I am not numb. I am not scared or nervous. I just am. Energy, energy, energy… let’s do this thing. Headwind; 1/4 headwind. Chop. We are in the fastest heat. Volpenheim and Read, Olympic Champions from the 8+ in 2004. Beery and Boyd, the fastest pair from NSR #1. The lead sharks, the dominant predators. Our number one priority - maintain contact as long as we can. The judge calls the lineup from lane one to lane six, “U.S. Rowing Training Center, U.S. Rowing Training Center, U.S. Rowing Training Center, U.S. Rowing Training Center, U.S. Rowing Training Center, Ashland…” deafening silence, holding breath, the light turns green, the horn sounds, we go. 5 stroke start then twenty high then settle, but we don’t settle and twenty becomes thirty, then forty, then fifty. This is battle. It is ragged and rushed and ugly and that is what it takes to stay on the stern deck of Micah Boyd and Dan Beery for 600 meters. That is what it takes. The grand paradox of this event is that in fifteen years of pulling an oar, we finish dead last and I am elated.  There was no point in rowing our own race.  With the ¼ head wind as bad as it was, there were not going to be any personal bests this evening.  The water was perfect for the time trial, but we coasted through that.  So this was it.  We had before us the truly incredible opportunity to do something that few would ever get the chance to do.  So we went like hell, lasted 600 meters, gassed out and hung on to cross the line, no rudder, big headwind, in 7:52.  We pulled a Tiff!  We hung around the finish line to thank every boat for a great race.  All are gracious.  Jason Read, bowman in the winning pair, says “It’s an honor to go to the line with you guys.”  Sunday morning, Carl, Steve and I stand in the drizzle at the last 100 meters for the A final.  Volpenheim and Read win by open water, with Boyd and “the Hurricane” Beery in second.  Volp and JR will be the representative 2- to take a shot at the Olympics.  As they paddle by the shore I bow in “we’re not worthy” fashion.  Volp, the oldest guy on the team, points at us and shouts, “Out of my way, Sonny!”  A perfect end to a great week.  Now if I could just find my dentures…

4/24 Athlete meeting with US Olympic Comittee and US Rowing.
US Rowing states that if you or your representative is not present at role call, you will be disqualified. Michigan is a no show. They are officially scratched. 18 boats. We are in! We will now be able to use tomorrows time trial as a race rehearsal. Tommorow night at 6:40 p.m. we will line up, head to head, shoulder to shoulder, and stroke for stroke with the best athletes in the country, some of the best in the world. This is everything we ever wanted in our journey, and we got it because we showed up! and that, dear readers, is the row/life parallel.
Andy

4/23 - from Jim Millars house on Carnegie Lake, New Jersey
We pull the Hudson pair down and rig on the dock. focusing on not dropping any nuts or washers (which I do. sorry Jim) the first pair comes lumbering into view. The bowman is wearing a black singlet. On the back, in small white letters - USA. This is our coast of South Africa and these are the great whites. One by one they go by, the predatory fish of the United States National Team. One by one we say hi and good morning, recognizing most by face and a few by name. Surprisingly, they seem to recognize us as well. Probably the youtubes. One rower says, “good luck guys, but not too much.” With fifteen national team pairs among nineteen pairs competing for eighteen spots, I assure him that we are just here for comic relief. But we are here!

4/16/08 – Pain and suffering revisited

Today’s 500’s hurt.  These are not like the 500’s in Sacramento.  These are mad.  There were no grand epiphanies.  No eagles flew out to check on our progress.  There was only pain.  This is what Medcalf had in mind when he spoke of pain and suffering.  There are no relevant measurements.  The point is to attack it with such ferocity that it is completely unrealistic.  The point is to willfully put yourself in harms way.  The point is to immerse yourself in that dark and terrible place and see what looks back at you.  As the John Gable poster says, “Great challenges offer the greatest rewards.  How we meet them reveals the truth in all of us.”  The truth hurts.  We spill out of the boat, collapsing onto the dock.  Carrying the boat back to the boathouse I fight the urge to vomit.  I am too tired to vomit.  I might drop the boat.  Otherwise I would welcome it.

“There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.” — Aeschylus

4/17/08 – I don’t remember going to bed last night.  This morning we are back at it, 4 x 300 meters.  This workout allows us to focus on specific elements of our race plan – the start and settle (lengthen), the body with a power 20 at the 1000 meter mark, and the sprint at the finish.  These pieces are everything they should be; crisp, light, strong, economical and fast.  Steve says, “That might be the best we have ever rowed.”  I agree.  We have been rowing and racing the pair together for 5 years.  Then, 6 days before we leave for the Olympic trials, we find another level.  Fourteen months of training for these precious few moments. 

64 weeks.

576 hours.

34,560 minutes.

Approx. 700,000 strokes.

2,857 strokes taken for each stroke in the race.

4,937 training minutes for each minute in the race.

This morning, with no one to see it, we flew.  And that makes it worth every one of the 2,073,600 seconds.

4/10/08 - Letting goYesterday we are on the water for 2 x 1000 meter pieces.  Steve and I are arguing about the stroke coach.  Steve’s argument is that by paying attention to our splits we limit ourselves to what we think we are capable of.  I argue that the stroke coach is there to prevent us from going out too hard, getting too deep in the pain tank, and dying.  After our warmup, I am uneasy.  I have a sense of dread that this is going to get ugly.  We sit ready for our first piece; 5-15-115.  That is a 5 stroke race start, 15 high, then 115 strokes.  We go out fast.  Very fast.  Too fast.  Twenty strokes in and the dread is enveloping me.  There is a fogginess in my brain and the fight or flight queasiness that comes from being backed into a corner, deciding whether to throw the first punch or bolt for the exit and knowing that neither choice is on your terms.  I catch a glimpse of the stroke coach – 1:32.  1:32!  That’s insane.  I’m not going to make it.  I can’t keep this up.  I can’t do this.  Dammit!  I cave in to the pain and the fear.  Collapsing inward, I stop.  I am so tight I can’t sit up, can’t breathe.  Steve is as happy as a kid in a sand box.  He thought it felt light and quick and effortless.  He was just tooling along and couldn’t figure out why I stopped.  He didn’t look at the stroke coach.  He wasn’t influenced by external indicators.  He was just going by feel.  “Well, that’s enough of that.”  He reaches forward and shuts off the stroke coach monitor.  He may as well have thrown it in the lake.  The time for external indicators is over.  While talking about the trials with the rolodex coxswain in San Diego he said, “No more thought.  Just do.  Now you are a machine.”We line up again.  Light and quick.  Light and quick.  FEEL the boat. 5-15-115. Sixty strokes in and I can’t hear anything.  Whoosh, chunk.  Whoosh, chunk.  Are we even touching the water?  Don’t think.  Just do.  I am a machine.  One hundred and thirty five strokes later there is no heaving, no cramping, only the palpable sense that something very special is going on here.  The second piece is the same.  Don’t make the boat go faster by pulling harder.  That is what you Think you should be doing.  Just pulling hard makes you tight, short and tired, just like Seattle.  Let go.  Let go of what you Think you should be doing.  Let go of the numbers, the splits, the stroke rate, the theory, the baggage.  We are no longer rowing a boat, two bodies, two oars on a shell on a body of water. We are the boat.  We are the water.  We are omnipresent and invisible, a powerful force and terribly fragile.  Quite possibly, briefly, we are enlightened.  We ARE the machine.  Two weeks to trials and I am still deconstructing, exhausted, vulnerable, and getting closer to the truth.

4/7/08 

Then there is our Ashland Rowing Club 8+.  Man did we have a great time!  Rowing against San Diego, Potomac, Lake Union, Long Beach, Willamette and Marin, we rowed within our race plan to finish third and qualify for the final, the fourth fastest time of both heats.  That evening most of the team piled into Scott’s crew cab to drive over to where the Women’s team was cooking a huge dinner.  On that drive, we all basically reverted to thirteen year old vomit humor and I laughed so hard I cried.  I guess we were a bit giddy.  There is something refreshingly cathartic about laughing yourself silly, no matter what the vehicle.  I will never be able to think about this trip without it putting a big fat smile on my face.  Thanks, guys.  Sunday’s race plan was to be more aggressive. Starting in lane 6 based on a coin toss, we go out hard with twenty strokes high, settling 2 to 3 beats higher than the heat.  We know we have more than what we showed the day before.  At the 1000 meter mark we push and it feels strong.  We do not let up and Rocky Mountain can’t stand the pressure.  We are taking seats and they are unable to answer.  Lake Union is open water behind.  We are catching Pocock, who won last year.  At 1600 meters we take our sprint, still powerful, a bit ragged, but still very aggressive. With two hundred meters to go we have overtaken Pocock.  Convergent water, wind, and plain old bad lane 6 juju pushes us into the lane markers.  Somewhere in that finite piece of real estate Rich, our 2 seat and orator of vomit stories smacks a buoy with his oar blade.  It is just enough of a momentum shift.  Pocock crosses the line three tenths of a second ahead of us for third place.  Marin takes second to Long Beach who wins in spite of, or possibly because of, one of their oarsmen dying in the boat two weeks prior.          We ended up in fourth place - by three tenths of a second.  That was…so much $#%^&#* FUN!!!  It was a battle and we were IN IT.  We did not back down.  We attacked from start to finish.  It was ugly but effective enough and we had a wicked third 500 and sometimes you just have to jump right in and get scrappy and sometimes that’s just the way it is and I’d do it again tomorrow and I know you would too so who’s got frequent flyer miles I’ve got some Cytomax residue left in my water bottle but not THAT water bottle.  WHO’S WITH ME?  GO ASHLAND!

3/26/08 – Monday we did a 40 minute and a 60 minute piece.  Monday evening I was driving fence posts on my property.  I love working outdoors, especially if I get to lift really heavy things or hit stuff.  A fence post driver is a 28 pound steel cylinder with handles on it.  I call it the Smasher.  It is simple, ugly, purpose built and effective; a big hammer.  Maybe I should call it Steve…  I’ll probably regret that remark on the water later.  Long story short, while driving the Smasher down I caught the top edge of the post and the Smasher came straight down on to my head with sufficient force as to rattle my teeth.  I stood very still for a moment, knowing in the pit of my stomach that this was going to be bad.  As my ears rang and the blood came down into my eyes I could see my wife running toward me with a towel.  Tuesday morning, 36 minutes into a 40 minute piece, I am experiencing nausea and double vision.  A trip to the ER (pulse 50, bp 124/84) and a CT scan suggest that I have a concussion; the Doctor recommends bed rest.  BED REST!  Two weeks before we are to peak and every session counts and there is no time for this nonsense and what kind of cosmic karmic crap is this and how exactly does THIS fit in the row/life parallel? 3/28/08 – Wednesday we are supposed to do racing starts on the water.  My new goal for Wednesday is to walk upright without vomiting.  Thursday goes by without incident as I resign myself to the notion that I won’t be working out.  Now Friday morning, we take the pair out to do the race starts that should have been done on Wednesday.  Rollers, wind and white caps.  We row at half slide, taking on water.  Nothing of value will come of this.  We try starts at half pressure, half speed.  I am nauseous and my head hurts.  Pointless, we take it back in at half slide so as not to flip, which we almost do anyway.  At the boathouse, it is pretty clear that I am not ready to row yet.  Pancakes and Coffee sound much better.  Says Steve, “in the grand scheme of things, forced rest is not such a bad idea.”  On the phone Tammy says, “How many times have you told me that forced rest can be the best thing for you?”  My sis-in-law says, “Don’t mess with this; Bed rest!”  Andy Medcalf emails, “Remember, rest is good.”  So maybe that is the lesson, the epiphanic row/life parallel.  Maybe sometimes you need to be hit over the head with it – Rest Is Good.

3/24/08 had a great talk with Andy Medcalf today.  Given the speed of the lightweight pair at Sacramento, he sounded genuinely excited, if not a bit surprised, at our success down there.  He asked how we were feeling.  I said that Steve and I both felt that we peaked a bit for Sacramento, and were kind of fried.  This week will be an aerobic recovery week, eleven hours of training at low intensity with only 4-5 20 stroke starts on Wednesday for anaerobic work.  Then we make our final charge of all out, brutal, high intensity work, leading us to peak on April 11^th.  From there we will have a 2 week taper to trials.  Andy says there will be between 12 and 15 National Team pairs at the trials, and that their strategy is to “push” at the 1000 meter mark.  “So it’s all about the third 500, then.”  Andy talks about Speed without Fear.  He likens it to a boxer.  The boxer trains on the heavy bag, the speed bag, jumps rope, spars, looks at film, reads about the sweet science, etc.  “But all that won’t amount to a hill of beans once you step in the ring and some guy starts punching you in the face.  It’s just like rowing; thirty strokes in and theory goes out the window, it’s a fight.”  Steve calls this the “oh, #%&*” moment.  This moment usually occurs about 30 strokes into a race, when your brain realizes that you have committed your body to do something that is terribly, horribly wrong.  So to know speed without fear you must immerse yourself in that terrible place and get comfortable with it.  From an outsider’s point of view, the fight is between the boats racing down a course to see who crosses the finish line first.  But what is truly, painfully obvious to all who dare to go there is that the real fight is within.