Addressing the Hiatus

A look inside Issue No. 2 of SportUp's Between The Lines magazine

A lot has changed since 2010. It's fair to say that the Internet is a different place—the landscape of social media 'disrupted' blogging, just as blogging had disrupted publishing. The sport of rowing has grown online, too.

Strange but true: RowingRelated and Instagram got started within days of each other, in October 2010. Since then, I think it's fair to say we've had similar levels of success. (Ha.) But seriously, Instagram, and other social networks, have changed the way we consume media. (You don't need to look any further than analysis of the U.S. presidential election to find evidence of that.) It has also changed the way that publishers, writers, and artists communicate with their audiences. Which brings me to my main point: This isn't goodbye, and we never left.

I referenced Instagram earlier—the network's meteoric rise to prominence carried a lot of people with it. In the rowing world, we were fortunate enough to have been among the early adopters, and saw our audience grow exponentially throughout last year and most of 2016. As a result, we've been able to share—directly with our audience—some of the best photography, videos, and banter in the rowing world. So, our efforts shifted slightly—the social networks themselves have become more of a focus, the audience more of a driving, participatory force. 

And, (since RR has always been a labor of love and not dependent on ad impressions for its very existence) that's great.

However, that time poured into social networks is time taken away from publishing articles. It's not all bad—the success of RR has also meant that I've had less time to publish articles for free, with more paying gigs taking precedence. Also, it doesn't mean I've slowed down in writing about rowing—in my work for SportUp, I've relied on the talent and energy of the rowing community many times in building content for the company, writing features on Row New York (an article that has since been included in our twice-yearly print magazine—see photo above), and Community Rowing, Inc. And I've continued to contribute to Rowing News, here in the U.S., each month.

That's probably a lot more than you cared to know about me. But it's all by way of explanation for the obvious hiatus here at RR. There's no shortage of things to cover—rowing is the font of endless inspiration. We've got more than a few ideas up our sleeves, and we'll continue to post those as we are able.

In the meantime, the RR archive will be right here—six years of content, coaching, and hand-picked videos for your enjoyment, and maybe even edification. If there's something specific you'd like us to look into, please get in touch by posting a comment here, emailing us via the About page, or reach out to us via social media. And for daily updates from around the world, keep tabs on our Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts—we can't thank you enough for sharing your photos and videos with us, and we're looking forward to more as another spring season edges toward the horizon, just on the other side of about a million meters on the erg.

Cheers to that.

-Bryan

Trending posts this month

"I Row Crew" — Rowing in 'The Social Network'

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Like many of the rowing faithful, I've been keeping up with the saga penned by Dan Boyne about the filming of the rowing scenes in David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's The Social Network , and I must say I had high hopes going into the film. The first problem I encountered: the phrase, "I row crew." It was uttered so many times before anyone "rowed crew" on the water that I had trouble buying any of it later. It's understandable that the character of Mark Zuckerberg makes that mistake, since he has no idea about the sport. But when the Winklevoss twins themselves utter the phrase several times, one begins to wonder where Boyne was when these lines were not being chopped or changed. Seriously, who says that? As far as the actual rowing goes, the first scene, which has the twins out training in a pair along with the rest of the Harvard squad, is not all bad — it just ends that way. The line, "Those guys are freakin' fast" is certainly every b...
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The 30 Best Rowing Coaches of All Time, Part 3: The Top 10

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So, are Naked Rowing Calendars a Thing Now?

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Warwick rowers are all in again this year (Photo courtesy of Warwick Boat Club)  The phenomenon started four years ago with the Warwick Rowing men's squad. Then, the following year, the Warwick women's team joined the fray. Now, Newcastle University's men and women are back on the naked calendar train. So, the question is, have rowing and naked calendars become a thing? The above video features the 2014-2015 Warwick women's squad—the third edition of the calendar , and, from the looks of it, the raciest. However, perhaps not so racy as that of the 2014-2015 Warwick men (see below). But raciness aside, all four of these teams have chosen worthy charities and have gone "the full monty" to make sure that those causes have received considerable contributions. The Warwick women contribute to Macmillan Cancer Support —a cause for which Warwick reports it has donated some £5,000. The Warwick men? Sport Allies —a charity that combats homophobia in spor...
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Will It Make the Boat Go Faster? At Marin Rowing Association, Culture is Key

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Hands in after training  My alarm goes off—it’s 4:22am.  It’s been a while since I did this. Immediately, I think back to a college dorm room, rolling out of bed and running down the steps to carpool caravan to Marina Del Rey.  Not this time, though. It’s a Tuesday in late September, and I’m heading across the Golden Gate Bridge to Greenbrae, California, where I’ll meet with the Marin Rowing Men’s Masters squad. Fortunately, it’s an unusually warm morning—and when I roll in, the boathouse is already buzzing with activity.  Launch time: 5:10. Heading out into the Bay before dawn The Marin Rowing Association program has both men’s and women’s masters boats competing to win at every event they attend. In the fall, that can only mean one thing: The Head Of The Charles .  The boat that Coach Rodrigo Rodrigues and I spend most of our time with is the Grand Masters eight—average age 60+. But that’s just one of five crews that launched with us that morning. Everyone’s ...
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Winter Workouts: Why Do Rowers Fear the Erg?

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