March
After just completing our final workout of the week, I'm now back home reflecting on our week and have been paging through my journal looking at the work we've logged in the past month. Amazing it's March already. Just writing March in my journal is enough to bring to make me feel the proximity of racing. There are five weeks until Trials in Sarasota. When we arrived at Canal 54 on Feburary 1, it felt like the body of work ahead was too big to fully grasp, but we are now cresting into familiar territory. The time ahead is equivalent to our typical Clemson Camp from the last few years. Unlike those camps, we are much further along. Our selection was done in November and our quad has now covered about 2,000 kilometers together not including time in doubles and singles. When we were planning back in the Fall, this is where we wanted to be at this point in the year: all four guys healthy, strong, and the big parts of the boat moving well together with time to fine tune with small changes. Two weeks ago, Dave Gleeson flew from California to coach us for a week. Dave coached Peter, Tom, Brian Deregt and I in 2012 while we were training in Newport Beach. Dave has been licking his chops and waiting for a chance to coach our quad but with kids and a business back in California its difficult for him to get away. He rowed under Igor Grinko all through the 90s and was in the M2x and M4x leading into Atlanta where he was the spare for the quad that won silver. Dave was then brought on by Igor to be his assistant and ended up coaching the W2x in Sydney. He is a wonderful man with a wealth of knowledge; we were very lucky to have him out for a week. Immediately upon his arrival, I was reminded of how professional he is and how he knows exactly what he wants. I was happy to hear that he initially liked what he saw but there was still plenty of work to be done. Peter and I refer to Dave as the " Suspension Doctor". He has an amazing ability to look at a crew and tell who is using their body weight effectively. He was working with us on collectively getting our weight off the seat and typing it to the handles together. We did lots of drill work and by the end of the week we were exhausted but rowing noticeably better together. In Dave's absence we will need to stay on each other about continuing to engrain the changes he made with us.
After Dave flew out, we drove over to Sarasota to take part in biomechanical testing with Dr. Valery Kleshnev. We were very lucky to be included thanks to Reilly Dampeer of Potomac Boat Club. Reilly went out with us for a technical session in the morning and actually reiterated a lot of the same things Dave had been preaching. It's rare to get that type of continuity between coaches! In the afternoon, we did a rate step 2k with force sensors on our pins, oars, footboards, and seats. The piece began with 100 meters of max pace off the start, then shifting down to 20 spm and shifting up all the way to race pace and sprinting by the end. The next day, he explained to us what the data meant and where we can improve. We arrived back at Canal 54 with a couple concrete ways that we could improve our cohesion technically and make our rigging suit us better. This week we split time between doubles and the quad so that we could feel each other a little better. We'd like to think that spending all this time in the quad makes us become closer technically, but it seems crucial that we are staying in touch with moving the doubles fast to truly be in tune with what works between every possible combination of the four of us. Ben Dann and I were not at our best last summer, but now seem to be back on the same page and feeling the easy speed that initially brought us together. I may never know what plagued us last summer but the solution was getting out of the boat,changing the stimulus,and focusing on basics. Needless to say, being back on the same page with Ben bodes well for the 4x. Additionally, the fact that every combination we put out of the four of us seems to be putting down the fastest times we've seen in doubles both impresses me with the quality of the two boats but also consequently makes me cautious about the trap of thinking we are fast. Fast doubles give us the building blocks for what we need to create but we also need to make sure improvement is showing up specifically in the quad. In a situation like ours, where we are not qualified for the Olympics, where we have to beat the deepest field of non qualified quads ever in order to make it, and not to mention having to first beat the talented and exceptionally powerful California Rowing Club 4x, it would be delusional to ever think something is good enough and to overlook something so crucial. Yet, it's still a concern. Our quad from 2015 NSR was raw and untrained but it also exceeded our expectations in a lot of ways compared to our 2014 boat, but those things were thrown out the window when we were beat at NSR's. It was an example of alot of things going wrong at the same time and showing that no matter what you need respect your opponent and honor race day. You cannot just show up at the startline and expect to magically appear at the finish line because of something you did in training. Its a performance and its all we are judged on. So there's definitely an inherent humility in the way we are training and the way are approaching this race because the last two times a Craftsbury quad lined up against a California Rowing Club boat, we lost. For this reason, we have all tried to be particularly reserved in our comments about how the boat is going and while its hard to supress all of our excitement, defending against complaceny is of the utmost importance.
I see that when we make internal improvements whether it be on pieces or making positive technical changes, I tend to get the same rush of energy as I do when I win a race. It's important for me to not categorize those things in the same way. I know that everything, in training or in a race, is work and it is constant and never ending. Its a fools errand to think for a second that you have seen the last of the work. By doing so I am causing myself more pain down the road by lulling myself into a period of complacency only to be reawakened by the brutal honesty of the work and/or competition. It is extremely rare to find someone who can maintain a balance amidst what others perceive to be success or failures; it is much easier to be at the extremes of the spectrum, descending or ascending. I'm not talking about the type of complacency that makes you sleep through practice or sandbag a hard workout, but fractions of a percent of complacency that come from feeling something in the boat and saying, " Yup, thats it. " Its great to recognize that but that comment should not signify arriving at a destination--there is no such thing. The focus should simply shift to repeating it. Coach Gluckman has often reminded me of the difference between the master and the apprentice. " The apprentice can do it once, the master can do it all day." The balance comes from detaching ourselves from the results and committing to the work and to the process. Athletes like this are rare. I strive to be one but there are still many holes in my reasoning. It is particularly difficult to adopt a process driven ethos in a team boat just because of the nature of having multiple egos and voices on board, but even so, it seems like training in the vacuum of Canal 54 is shaping us into a process driven crew. Without anyone really noticing, quality workouts have piled up, improvements have been made, and our belief in each other has grown.
We will get a chance to see how well our boat holds up this week as we begin to poke our head out and line up next to other crews. This week Canal 54 will also be home to defending Dad Vail Champs FIT. We are scheduled to do some work with their varsity 8 on Thursday. On Saturday we are planning on doing a few 2ks with Georgetown's heavyweights and possibly Northeastern in Sarasota. The following weekend we are hoping to do some work with Harvard. In other words, every thing I just wrote about the process goes out the window. We can't wait to throw down with some eights.
Here's a clip of the testing with Dr. Kleshnev thanks to Reilly.
Biorow test
After Dave flew out, we drove over to Sarasota to take part in biomechanical testing with Dr. Valery Kleshnev. We were very lucky to be included thanks to Reilly Dampeer of Potomac Boat Club. Reilly went out with us for a technical session in the morning and actually reiterated a lot of the same things Dave had been preaching. It's rare to get that type of continuity between coaches! In the afternoon, we did a rate step 2k with force sensors on our pins, oars, footboards, and seats. The piece began with 100 meters of max pace off the start, then shifting down to 20 spm and shifting up all the way to race pace and sprinting by the end. The next day, he explained to us what the data meant and where we can improve. We arrived back at Canal 54 with a couple concrete ways that we could improve our cohesion technically and make our rigging suit us better. This week we split time between doubles and the quad so that we could feel each other a little better. We'd like to think that spending all this time in the quad makes us become closer technically, but it seems crucial that we are staying in touch with moving the doubles fast to truly be in tune with what works between every possible combination of the four of us. Ben Dann and I were not at our best last summer, but now seem to be back on the same page and feeling the easy speed that initially brought us together. I may never know what plagued us last summer but the solution was getting out of the boat,changing the stimulus,and focusing on basics. Needless to say, being back on the same page with Ben bodes well for the 4x. Additionally, the fact that every combination we put out of the four of us seems to be putting down the fastest times we've seen in doubles both impresses me with the quality of the two boats but also consequently makes me cautious about the trap of thinking we are fast. Fast doubles give us the building blocks for what we need to create but we also need to make sure improvement is showing up specifically in the quad. In a situation like ours, where we are not qualified for the Olympics, where we have to beat the deepest field of non qualified quads ever in order to make it, and not to mention having to first beat the talented and exceptionally powerful California Rowing Club 4x, it would be delusional to ever think something is good enough and to overlook something so crucial. Yet, it's still a concern. Our quad from 2015 NSR was raw and untrained but it also exceeded our expectations in a lot of ways compared to our 2014 boat, but those things were thrown out the window when we were beat at NSR's. It was an example of alot of things going wrong at the same time and showing that no matter what you need respect your opponent and honor race day. You cannot just show up at the startline and expect to magically appear at the finish line because of something you did in training. Its a performance and its all we are judged on. So there's definitely an inherent humility in the way we are training and the way are approaching this race because the last two times a Craftsbury quad lined up against a California Rowing Club boat, we lost. For this reason, we have all tried to be particularly reserved in our comments about how the boat is going and while its hard to supress all of our excitement, defending against complaceny is of the utmost importance.
I see that when we make internal improvements whether it be on pieces or making positive technical changes, I tend to get the same rush of energy as I do when I win a race. It's important for me to not categorize those things in the same way. I know that everything, in training or in a race, is work and it is constant and never ending. Its a fools errand to think for a second that you have seen the last of the work. By doing so I am causing myself more pain down the road by lulling myself into a period of complacency only to be reawakened by the brutal honesty of the work and/or competition. It is extremely rare to find someone who can maintain a balance amidst what others perceive to be success or failures; it is much easier to be at the extremes of the spectrum, descending or ascending. I'm not talking about the type of complacency that makes you sleep through practice or sandbag a hard workout, but fractions of a percent of complacency that come from feeling something in the boat and saying, " Yup, thats it. " Its great to recognize that but that comment should not signify arriving at a destination--there is no such thing. The focus should simply shift to repeating it. Coach Gluckman has often reminded me of the difference between the master and the apprentice. " The apprentice can do it once, the master can do it all day." The balance comes from detaching ourselves from the results and committing to the work and to the process. Athletes like this are rare. I strive to be one but there are still many holes in my reasoning. It is particularly difficult to adopt a process driven ethos in a team boat just because of the nature of having multiple egos and voices on board, but even so, it seems like training in the vacuum of Canal 54 is shaping us into a process driven crew. Without anyone really noticing, quality workouts have piled up, improvements have been made, and our belief in each other has grown.
We will get a chance to see how well our boat holds up this week as we begin to poke our head out and line up next to other crews. This week Canal 54 will also be home to defending Dad Vail Champs FIT. We are scheduled to do some work with their varsity 8 on Thursday. On Saturday we are planning on doing a few 2ks with Georgetown's heavyweights and possibly Northeastern in Sarasota. The following weekend we are hoping to do some work with Harvard. In other words, every thing I just wrote about the process goes out the window. We can't wait to throw down with some eights.
Here's a clip of the testing with Dr. Kleshnev thanks to Reilly.
Biorow test
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