What you see in the mirror is unfamiliar

An acquaintance uses video as a coaching aid. It’s a great tool, and the first use of it clearly shows you things about your rowing stroke that you never would have absorbed in a millions years of verbal coaching. My shoulders are slumped, I’m not pivoting through the hips properly, and my hands are slow through the finish. These things are more than likely related,  and the images taken on the weekend will be in my head next time I jump in a boat – I may have some chance of sorting a few things out thanks to that. On the plus side, the leg drive looked OK, and the action at the finish was nice, just too slow.

So what actually happens is different to what you think happens, and your ability to objectively assess a given situation is enhanced by possessing a slightly removed point of view.

I’ve almost finished reading (Slamin’) Samuel Pepys  Diaries. It’s the concise version, where they leave off the wenching and servant girl fiddling, but leave in the excessive compulsive theatre going. He documented, in highly personal, breathless detail, the reign of Charles the Second after the restoration. It reads like a soap opera, and it is quite amazing how Charles was quite thoroughly ruled by his libido. The shame from Pepys’ point of view was that this meant the rest of merry England was ruled by Charles’ libido too. Public policy wasn’t high on Charles’ agenda, but having regular public sessions with my Lady Castlemaine/various actresses/anything in a skirt was. All now just interesting distant history..from our removed point of view.

We get married, start jobs, fight in wars, make sweeping value judgements and fail to pivot correctly at the hips. How well or poorly we do seems to be only really clear with the benefit of some form of distance, be it temporal or physical. If we can gain that perspective we are lucky, if we have yet to, what can we do?

I like to smile and think about the next stroke (and wait for the video).

My friend has a phoenix tattooed on her shoulder.

…and other than a brief remark about how it was symbolic, she’s never explained its meaning, and I’ve never asked her why.

What does a phoenix think about when it is a pile of cooling ashes and feather-dust? Does it’s consciousness remain inviolate somewhere, a soul whizzing about read to jump back in to it’s freshly minted frame? Dunno.

If I was a phoenix, I would probably be thinking “oh crap not long now before I go through the whole thing again”.

But then again, I might also be thinking about how smashing it would be to have the strength and power in my pinions back, and remembering the buffet and thrust of the air around me as I bathed in invisible twisting spirals high in the air.. I might think about the surge of adrenalin that came from executing a difficult maneuverer with speed, grace and elegance, and I might think about the white hot joy that exploded in my chest when streaking ahead of every other creature in the sky.

I wonder if I’d be aware that I was a phoenix, and that although I had a choice about  what I could think, I had none about what I was. I wonder if that would bother me? I wonder if I would realise that, for  mythical bird with pyro-phillic leanings, I was getting a bit self obsessed? I wonder if I’d just get on with it instead?

Lucky I am not a phoenix, hey? (Been running laps, Canning to Mt Henry bridge, fitness is climbing, might go rowing soon)

Tough feet and good circulation

I’m not ever  going to throw my weight behind the interventionist God theory, but the savvier reader will note that I capitalised “God”, so  you can probably read from that that I have some sense of the infinite. As an aside, sometimes I describe myself as a cultural Catholic, because when your faith system is older than about 2000 yrs you get to use that adjective, and deny all responsibility. Be that as it may, whatever gods/Gods are out there goofing off in the firmament have had a good chuckle at this errant rower in the past week.

Lately, I haven’t been rowing at all. Instead I’ve been running about 40 km a week, and have set myself the task of competing in the Perth City to Surf half marathon in a few months time. This has been a stop gap measure, keeping me fit-ish while I sorted out my relationship with rowing-we’re working through our differences in an adult manner, in case you were wondering. Being absent from my lover has proved hard though, so after weeks of procrastinating, I returned to active training last Monday..

..at a different club.

I felt a little like Kim Philby must have felt when travelling to Vienna to join the Comintern. Or not. Friends at the new club described it in glowing terms, which led me to go and see the Men’s Captain, and sign myself up. So far, so good, see you on Monday at 5 am. No problem.

The monday morning pre-dawn was dark and wet. While getting ready for training I heard rain on the roof, and ignored it, pretending it was just the wind-rain on the roof sounds nothing like wind, by the way. When I saw beaded water on the car windscreen, I said to myself “Heavy dew today”, and finally, when it started to hammer down on the freeway, I reminded myself that “Perth is famous for its short-lived winter squalls”. Yeah, it was a filthy morning, and it pretty much rained all day.

This new club is much larger than my old club, so there were a few people milling about when I arrived, and after a short while I had met some of the guys I would be training with, the coach, and was looking about for blades for our 4+. We found the blades, and I wandered toward the back of the building, where the boat deck pushes out horizontally  some thirty feet into the Swan River. The boat deck, and the entire building, is built on piles that suspend it above the water. The boathouse is a little higher up, to keep it clear of the tide, and to reach the deck you walk down one of two ramps. The ramps project from  a couple of large doors, and between the ramps is a space where the deck doesn’t quite reach back to the building. Monday morning the tide was in, so there was about six inches of water covering the deck.

If, at that point, a celestial voice had whispered in my ear, or an angelic restraining hand had fallen on my shoulder and halted my onward progress, I would have spent this Sunday developing callouses on my knees instead of my hands.  Since no voices or hands were in attendance, I carried on.

At the top of the ramp, I paused. The deck and ramp looked slippery, and it occurred to me that I should be careful, especially since I wasn’t familiar with the club and it’s buildings. I looked at the space between the ramps on my left, and in the floodlit pre-dawn thought “That’s a concrete footing that supports the back of the building and the edge of the deck.” Expecting to step on a concrete block, just below the surface of the water, I stepped boldly out into space with two oars held under my arm.

And plummeted bodily into water up to my chest. The water was cold, and the shock of sudden almost full immersion caused me to call on my lord and saviour in fairly explicit terms. I mean, no-one nearby would have any doubt about who I was talking to. Oh well. The blades under my arm stopped me from falling all the way through, as they bridged the space, enabling me to scramble out, dripping, embarrassed, not quite re-born, fucking mortified actually. I got to my feet, made a few weak gags, and even joked with a crew member that that was a good icebreaker.

My composure regained, and back inside, I helped my crew lift a boat off the racks, and we walked it out onto the submerged deck to get it ready for the session. The rain was getting heavier, and there was a little lightening about too. Lightening is the only thing that will stop rowing training: think about it, you’re the tallest thing on a highly conductive perfectly flat surface, and you’re holding a big pointy carbon rod. While we were standing about, the coach made the decision that due to the lightening we wouldn’t train on the water, so we hoisted the boat back onto shoulders, and walked it back inside.

At this point, someone said..”There’s blood on the floor: who’s bleeding?”. I looked down, and yep, in the process of falling through the hole, I had somehow managed to tear a number of beautiful lacerations into the ball of my foot. Rock-and-gold-plated-roll. This entire little episode has left me with a handful of stitches, and I’ve been limping like a pantomime sailor ever since. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of mineral water, as the prophylactic antibiotics they put me on mean no drinking, not now, not at all, not on your life sunshine.

While getting patched up I’ve come across some interesting folks including the club members who helped me to strap up the gash, cracking jokes as they did so. Then there was the doctor at the surgery who sutured me up, telling stories about her marathon running training regime. She was the lady who made the remark in the title of this post, while jabbing me with needles and pumping me full of local anaesthetic. Apparently I bled all over some vintage doctor’s surgery magazines, although what they were doing under the gurney I don’t know. And of course I would have been completely lost without the young lady who drove me to the surgery, and has patiently listened to my wingeing for the past week.

Maybe that was the point. Maybe the angels pushed me.

Bastards.

Reverse evolution

Like the dolphins and whales, I have spent what seems like a geological age out of the water. If I’m feeling brave I may expand on it in future posts, but for now, I feel the pull, but the cold and dark are putting me off. There is a head race in two weeks time, and I’d like some points, or at least a competitive time. Will this be enough to get me out of bed tomorrow morning at 5am?

Flash in the pan!

While I was away.. I’ve had over a week’s break from rowing and writing, but now am getting back to where I’d like to be. Sometimes I find things spill over from one area of life to another, and the last couple of weeks has involved putting effort into balancing that out. Without blathering on, I’ve hit the town quite a bit, and have deliberately stayed off the water. What can I say? I just wanted a break while I thought about…stuff. Enuff said!

Back on the water yesterday though, and have been giving the gym a bit of a go as well. I managed three of the endurance sets in the gym yesterday afternoon, working up to four, so happy with that. Yesterday morning saw me do my normal ten km on the water, said hello to the social rowers, loads of kids training-four or five quads from one school alone. So, notable things? On the water yesterday morning? Not really, just the normal solitude of the 5:30 am start, and the pleasant tiredness after. But off the water? Well..

The universe sent me a message today. It said “De-clutter your life, dude!” and the way it did it was very 21st C. My flash drive, which contains all of my life, finances, uni stuff, photos from trips overseas and locally, pretty much everything I hold dear, decided to get infected with a worm. Since I use a Linux PC at home, this little bastard must have come from work, so I am pretty unhappy with that for a start. The best advice from the IT department was to take everything off, format the drive, and put it all back on. Somewhere in this process, my personal folder, um, evaporated. Dunno if I dragged when I should’ve dropped or what, but the result was clear. It was gone. It took with it all of my financial info, budgets, important things about some travelling that I intend to do, bank details, family birthdays, dates and phone numbers, and probably a load of other stuff I don’t remember. After all that the worm was still there.

Despite having my stomach drop through the floor, I began to think about what this meant, and even though it’s a royal screw up, I will quite happily recover. Anything vital I can replace, so I began to think why I was keeping this stuff anyway. I realized that I didn’t know. It might be interesting to have the booking information for a skiing holiday from three years ago, but I’m certainly not going to have my quality of life improved by it. Same for loads of old garbage, files, photos, whatever. It’s pretty much the same as physical clutter, in that it takes looking after, sorting, keeping neat, but doesn’t really do anything.

The flash drive is now in the bin, and I do need another. I think I’ll get a smaller one.

(On the water tomorrow morning, maybe ergo sprints tomorrow night, we’ll see. Need to put some weight on!)

Black smoke

Have you ever seen an old, over loaded truck pull away from the lights on a hot day? Belching black smoke, filling the air around it with bitter fumes and wasted energy? I had a similar experience recently, except it wasn’t a truck, it was a person.

Somehow I found myself in a mildly grumpy mood Sunday afternoon. I’ve always found the best thing to do in times like this is to be active and let the endorphins loose, so I went and found a rowing machine, and settled in to do a few kilometres. I’d warmed up, and was about to launch into a viscous sprint set when an acquaintance arrived and began complaining about any number of people we knew in common. After a while, all I could see was that truck labouring along, making loads of noise and blocking out the sky with negativity.

Since I was in a shitty mood to start with, I could have done without this assault, and after listening as politely as I could for about fifteen minutes I eventually packed it in, and said, “Sorry mate, I’m going home”. Was not pleasantly disposed to training after that.

Monday morning at 5:20, the wind was starting to rise, and the session on the water looked to be rough and difficult. Then again, you don’t get up at stupid o’clock for a haircut, so I rigged up, got in, and pushed off. After an ordinary couple of thousand metres, I made it through the bridge and around to Aquinas Bay where the water had flattened, and the wind was dropping. The rest of the row was good, intensity was there, and the ten kilometres flowed away under the keel of the scull with a nice rhythm. I was back, hosing brine off the equipment by twenty to seven, and the universe was a good and pleasant place.

This struck me as a good example of knowing when to let go, and when to persevere. Taking a break Sunday afternoon was right, persevering Monday morning was right too. There is tension running through decisions like these.

Tension is a useful idea. I don’t think it’s the same as conflict, rather tension seems to be the controlled interplay between opposing energies or ideas, whereas conflict is chaotic, and more likely destructive. Right now, I’m noticing the tension between writing immediately about my sessions while they are still fresh, or letting some time pass first. One gives the most vivid recollection, the other, a considered position. Yesterday I rowed, ran and went to the gym, had no energy left at the end of the day, didn’t write, and today the result is a more thoughtful set of ideas. Last week I was writing immediately, and ended up with “what I did on my summer holidays”. Both have their places, and the tension between them is keeping me thinking about what to write, and how.

Having started to think about tension, and creative tension in particular, I’ve been seeing it everywhere. Right now I’m loading myself heavily with work, study and rowing. I’d also like to write for print publication, so all of these things are pulling at my time. If they didn’t demand attention, I know I wouldn’t do any of them well. As it is, it seems they are all progressing, driven by the tension between them. The energy held by things in tension can be released later to do productive work, and this is the energy I’m trying to use, rather than waste it. It’s too precious to let go in any other way.

Short, like my haircut.

No water time to write about, but an interesting gym session and an 8km run today, so worth noting. Also managed to catch up with the coach, and things are looking better there.

The run was sunny and hot, and I was tempted to lose the blue singlet, but modesty forbade me. It is a Saturday after all, and people out on a weekend constitutional would be stunned by the glare from my lily white…parts. The wind was stiff and boisterous, whipping foam off the water and into my face, coating my sunglasses in saltspray. On the back straight, with the free-way on my left and the river on my right, the wind slowed me to a trot. Good resistance training.

The gym was more interesting. Today I had an assessment, and the instructor gave me a stack of free weight exercises designed to pretty much destroy me. Lots of leg work, lots of core work, and the balance in upper body. The new program is designed to aid endurance, so higher reps, and free weights to encourage to stability. Without going into detail of the exercises themselves, it consists of rapidly pumping though 3-4 sets of twenty repetitions of each exercise, with a brief rest between. Today was one set with the instructor, then one on my own to practice. Tomorrow, I will give it a real go, and see where I end up. Potentially, on the floor.

I saw the coach at the café the rowers frequent this morning, and she let me know that the other squad is moving out of singles on Friday, into bigger boats. Hence this rower will be able to take a single out at the same time, and get a bit of coaching…awesome. So a good day on the rowing front. Legs are still a bit sore from yesterday’s sprints, this morning’s gym, running this afternoo…legs are still a bit sore.

Balancing my equation.

Sprints hurt. At the lowest level, any timed athletic event can be expressed as a balanced equation between elapsed time on one side, and the participant’s ability to withstand mounting pain on the other. Here’s some ergo sprint results that express my equation.

1000m, 1^st attempt, 3:20.4 sec elapsed, 500m split 1:40.2, average rating 32/min. (highest split I saw on the monitor was 1:27 something)

1000m, 2^nd att, 3:30.4, sp 1:45.2, 32/m.

500m 1:41.7, 34/m.

After only three sprints tonight, I was knackered. No other word for it. Ideally, I’d like to be able to complete a few more before thudding onto the concrete insensible, but baby steps. Next time, we’ll add another 500m. This part of the training is important as it replicates racing, so I can’t really avoid it, no matter how much I’d like to.

A race piece can be complex. On the ergo I use the same stroke pattern as the quad I rowed in last year used as it’s race plan, and in this description I’ll assume that we’re talking about a race piece on the water. A race is 1000m, consists of roughly 100 strokes, and the intensity, speed and length of those strokes has a large influence on how fast you can get from one end of the course to another. The same is true on the ergo.

The start consists of a number of quick, shortened strokes to get the boat up and moving. Usually ¾ of a stroke, ½, ½, ¾, full. This first five is followed by five ¾ length strokes using lots of leg drive, but not much pivoting body movement, then another five ¾ length strokes using the same leg drive, and adding body movement. By this stage the boat should be moving at close to full pace, and be sitting high in the water. Since these modified strokes don’t require a full recovery or leg drive, they are very quick- on the ergo I can manage about 50 per minute in this portion of the piece.

If I’m on the ergo, at this time I am often undecided as to whether I want to carry on with the piece or not. There is always a danger of over thinking, and if I give myself the luxury of thinking about anything that isn’t “GOYOUBASTARD!” there’s a danger of blowing up, and pulling out. Not good. Not as much danger as in the second section though.

The second section is twenty long, flat, full pressure strokes. Rating is lower than the first part, but still brisk-I rate about 32. These should be the most powerful strokes in the race, and every single stroke needs to be as hard as I can possibly make it.  The boat (or ergo) should be singing a song of speed, and have real momentum.

At this point, my legs start to be actively painful. My breathing is now ragged, and I’m desperately drawing as much air as I can in each breath. I’m most likely to crack now, as there is still a long way to go, and I know that each stroke will only hurt a bit more than the last one. A few years ago I was a pack a day smoker, and sometimes I wonder just what lung capacity I have left.

I find this section mentally really hard, and anything can distract me. Now is not the time to wonder about work problems or complicated relationships, or anything other than the next stroke. Consequently, if I can nail this toughest part of the piece, I’m rapt.

After the twenty big strokes, I drop the rating back to about 28, and attempt to breathe big and deeply. The idea here is to maintain the speed through the water, while recovering from the exertion of the start. Explosive power is now traded for endurance, as the next twenty strokes get hammered in. All going well, the piece is half over.

Now we get to the good bit. During a race, this is where I get fired up and the red haze descends. The boat is moving through the 500 metre mark, and I will know that no matter what, the finish is now closer than the start. During real racing, I’ll have an idea if I’m close to the other boats, and if racing in a coxed crew, the cox will begin to “motivate” with some passion.

Different people do different things here. There is a balance between going too hard, and leaving it too late. I’m tired, but I need to give everything I have by the end of the race. I’m still working on how to do that best.

I pick up the rating and pressure for ten strokes, and lift the boat speed as high as possible, moving back into an explosive power type of stroke. This is followed by ten strokes at a lower rating, breathing and recovering. Another ten at full pace and pressure, five recovery, and then full pace and pressure for as many strokes at it takes to reach the finish.

After the boat has crossed the line, or the ergo counter has ticked over to zero, I’m all over the place. My breathing is super fast, almost out of control, my hamstrings are playing a tune, and my whole body shakes. If I’m on land and I get off the machine, walking is tricky, and I am likely to need a little sit down. Every part of me hurts. My eyes hurt. The backs of my knees hurt, the top of my head hurts. But the piece is done, and that’s a good feeling.

Quietly marvellous

An eventful few days. The boat club is heaving with schoolkids on an annual rowing camp, the Perth Sky-show has been and gone, and the hottest one hundred was won by a British bluegrass band. My little world is settling into a good pattern.

Ten km on the water this morning. The course was empty on the way out, with only a masters age sculler on the river with me. In the way of older guys with great technique, he motored past me after about 2km, with great balance, long strokes and low rating. I only hope I achieve a similar economical style before I’m his age-sometime in the next six months would be good.

There was an easterly, but most of the course was sheltered, and in the calm parts there were ducks paddling, and cormorants fishing. I disturbed a large water bird somewhere in Aquinas bay, and the sound of his taking off startled me. The splashing and thrusting of his take off was the loudest sound outside of the boat for nearly half an hour, it was that quiet.

Sorry, no, a louder sound occurred a few minutes later when I missed a mooring buoy by a metre. It sounded like “duck”. Middleclass joggers on the foreshore were startled, and returned to their virtuous sweating non-plussed. I can only imagine the breakfast table conversations in Mt Pleasant this morning, and it’s a pity they weren’t around the other day when I capsized: “What did he say about a “punt”?”.

As I came back down the course, the schools groups were coming up. I have yet to master rowing in an (exactly) straight line, so between checking my line and keeping an eye on schoolboy quads and eights, I drifted a little to one side, and copped a puzzled look from a coach in a dinghy. Other than that, this morning’s row was quite uneventful. A stunning sunrise, a few passenger planes in the sky making me jealous, and the river gurgling beneath the scull’s carbon hull.

The only thing I noticed today was that my balance is ordinary during heavy effort and higher ratings. When coming forward fast, hands low, blades off the water, I tip from side to side rapidly, almost like speed wobbles on a push bike. The choppy water is partly responsible, but I reckon it has more to do with a sloppy finish and rushing forward too fast. During the next session I’m going to do some work on controlling my motion as I move forward, and slow the last third of the recovery. Rating comes from hands, not rush!

That was pretty much it. The simplicity of this morning’s session was profoundly satisfying. On the water by 5:30 am, off the water, washing the boat by twenty to seven, and having coffee on my balcony by seven fifteen. The first five km was light and slow, the second was a bit heavier, and the last thousand metres was brisk. While race pieces might be a few weeks away yet, I can feel my level of ability building, and if I put away three or four sessions a week like today, I’ll be more confident coming into competition. Ten km is only taking about an hour-a few months ago it was closer to ninety minutes. This alone is a good sign, and in a week or two, I may build the morning sessions to twelve km.

Rowing is full of metaphor: effort, balance, rushing, and rhythm. Occasionally finding them on the water is a good start.

Only the facts.

Since I last wrote, the training has continued well with four sessions tucked away, but I may have undone some of that good work via the mechanism of “planned hedonism”. It’s Australia Day today, and most of the country took yesterday off and had a four day weekend. I did the same, had a solid night out last night, and Saturday night too. Surprisingly, the hangover hat is absent. My secret? White spirits. Not that the guy in the boat condones substance abuse.

Saturday and Sunday sessions were eight km runs at a five minute km pace, followed by a short resistance set: crunches, push-ups, dips. I’m not sure if these do anything, but they hurt, and that usually means that something is working hard. Why is it that pain equals virtue?

Yesterday, with the day off, I had time to spend longer on the water, and rowed to the far end of the training course, up to Shelley water. There and back is about twelve km: as far as I can comfortably row in one session. It’s been a while since I explored the far end of the course, and I’ve never rowed there in a single. Since my aquatic adventure, I have been a bit more focused on balance and posture, and have a new appreciation on getting home dry, so it was pleasing to get there and back in one piece.

A bit later in the day, I wandered into the gym and completed the standard routine. The core strength exercises are getting easier, and I notice the difference in strength and balance in the boat, although it’s only been a short time since joining the gym. Even so, the training rationale is about to change.

For the last eight or nine gym sessions I’ve been aiming for “hypertrophy” or increased strength, and have been performing three sets of ten repetitions of the heaviest weights I could manage. Next is to maintain or even drop the weight a small amount, increase the repetitions, and build endurance. That will continue for the next eight or nine sessions, then back to hypertrophy.

Moving from hypertrophy to endurance in the gym is one change, the other is to add in some extra cardio-endurance. If I can squeeze it in, this mean more weighted runs, maybe some ergos to test the pain barrier. It’s about time I did some thirty minute sets, and the idea of rating pyramids is floating about too. A rating pyramid is to start on the ergo at a particular rating, maintain that for a particular time, then increase the rating for a slightly reduced time, repeat to a limit, then go back down. An example would be five minutes at rating twenty, four minutes at 22, three at 24, two at 26, one at 28, and then back down the other side. These are killers, but great for endurance. Then there are plain old pieces. I need to set a schedule for the next few days..what was that about pain and virtue equivalence?

Normally I would attempt to tie these latest training reports to some thought or issue that had been swirling around. I’m not going to do that today but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything going on mentally-in fact, the opposite. There are a number of things on my mind, but none of them are fully developed or resolved. In the last few days, rowing has made space for these thoughts to move around, one of the reasons why I adore it so much.

A while back, I was lucky enough to spend some time in London, and briefly hung out at a rowing club on the Thames tide-way. My introduction to the club and the river was in a double with a chatty Englishman. He made an apt remark as we pulled out in to the brown current. “Once you get out on the water, everything else drifts away”.