Training in Ohio
So I’ve been in Marietta, Ohio, training in the pair for the last week. My partner is Chris Pucella, men’s coach at Marietta College, and he’s graciously agreed to host me and be my partner for one last hurrah–we both recently turned 32 and don’t expect to be able to train for a full summer again. Our goal is to race the senior lightweight pair at Nationals. It’s been over two years since I’ve trained or competed seriously, and it’s fun to be back on the water, but tough also. Since we’re both coaches, this could either be great partnership or go down in flames…one or the other, no middle ground.
My fitness level isn”t as good as I thought. You’re never really as fit for rowing until you go out and do it. I’ve been running and biking and that’s just not enough. The other thing is, I’m not rowing as well as I imagined I would, or nearly as as well as I want my crews to row. So the whole deal is a work in progress.
After a week of two-a-days I’m happy to say my fitness and technique have improved significantly. Our calling card is going to have to be smooth rowing, since it WON’T be massive outputs of power. But that’s fine with me. I’m happy to get connected to the water again and remember what it’s like to move a boat.
Marietta is a great spot for training. There’s virtually endless water on the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers and it’s almost always flat. The town is cool and everyone I’ve met is nice.
Some insights from the last week:
1. Rowing is uncomfortable and not a totally natural movement if you do it right. I’ve noticed that executing a proper recovery and horizontal drive are tough things to achieve. Maybe guys with differently shaped bodies feel “natural,” but I don’t.
2. The release is a complicated, subtle movement, and I kind of suck at it. I tend to get stuck in the water for an instant longer that I want, or my release jostles the boat. Drew Ginn has an excellent description of the finish and release on his blog. He calls it “carving the blade out.”
3. Proper rigging is critical to getting the right leverage and getting comfortable in the boat. I don’t understand why some rowers/coaches understate this.
4. Fitness and strength are the easy parts. Good rowing is tough.
Posted: June 25th, 2007 under training.
Comments: 1
Comments
Comment from Chris
Time: June 25, 2007, 10:46 pm
Re #3, I think it’d be very helpful to your readers if you explained how rowing the pair w/ Chris brought that point home to you. That is, did you two start out w/ an idea of ideal rigging based on certain standard #’s, & then modify based on a row or two (and did you change both seats together, or one at a time), or did you try to guesstimate the best rigging based on your individual rowing experience in other shells and then modify based on experience w/ one another, etc.
Finally, what did you change and how did it change the row (both your ‘feeling’ in the shell and true performance, i.e. did boat speed improve?).
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