ACE Series, Part 12: Putting a Bow On It, But Not Bowing Out

Photo: Hannah Wagner Photography

So, as it turned out, I bought a $4,000 teddy bear for my daughter—the price tag said £25 but all the extra lessons added a bit of markup.

We lost on Henley Wednesday, for those just checking in. We drew Cork Boat Club in the first round; based on strong results at the Metropolitan Regatta, Cork Regatta, and individual international achievements they were seeded as one of the top four crews in the Thames Challenge Cup Eight event. The Wyfold Four, on the other hand, went in against Thames Rowing Club 'A' and yet Potomac was the seeded crew. Thames made Saturday; the Potomac four de-rigged on Wednesday as well.



The draw is ruthless and to expect otherwise is a mistake. The Stewards' goal is to see the fastest crew win each event, not seed the round of 32 in a proper snake-draft bracket or make sure that the top four make it to Saturday or whatever it is.

(Hell, the Princess Elizabeth Cup draw made no bones about giving a Wednesday pass to the historically fast junior eight from St. Paul’s School, even though they full well could have paddled through just about anyone on that first day. Seriously—how good was that crew? If you ain’t first, you’re last.)

My crew and I never went into the race with any goal other than a win in our minds, and even as captain it felt like bad juju to even do any contingency planning with regards to a first-round loss, for the eight or the four. And Henley for us was never just the racing but what we'd get to do in the days prior. We got to tune up against Cornell over five minutes (bad), Temple over Fawley and the Stewards (better) and some quick pieces against Shiplake (best), the kind of scrimmaging and general mixing-it-up that we rarely get to do stateside.

We were also generously invested in by sponsors—like U Apparel, Oatly, and Level Agency—and supported enthusiastically by friends and family. Heading to a regatta where not only everyone you know is closely following you but actually is jealous of your trip is a different experience indeed.

"My crew and I never went into the race with any goal other than a win in our minds, and even as captain it felt like bad juju to even do any contingency planning with regards to a first-round loss, for the eight or the four."

Lastly, having watched this crew come together as an outsider for several months and then an insider for the last few weeks, there's very little if anything I could second guess about the choices we made in preparation. So it's not like a whiteboard session prior to the race would have prepared us any better for the disappointment, mild surprise, and silence.

But while bodies and spirits might recover after a few days, our wallets would not. Drowning our sorrows commenced almost immediately, followed thence by a comprehensive after-action analysis that the National Transportation Safety Bureau would have been proud of.

Hundreds of dollars later and with the sun barely setting on Wednesday evening, we moved onto the final stage of post-race grieving: the ceremonial making of promises. Ex-lightweights pledging a return to 159 (well, 165, anyway—for the Head Of The Charles); the three-seat who would win the triathlon every year if he didn't always get lost yet again pledging to win the triathlon; the long and lanky vowing to turn into the thick and explosive. The more money you spend on Pimm's, the more elaborate the pledges become.

By the sounds of it we'll spend all of August flipping tires on Water Street, digging new divots in the Exorcist Stairs, and drinking whole milk by the keg. Lucky for us, while it'll be extremely warm, it will also be unbearably muggy.

"The more money you spend on Pimm's, the more elaborate the pledges become."

But that’s at least a week, probably two from now. A few of the Henley squad carried on into USRowing Club Nationals—not me.

As the oldest of the group, I'm a B-17 coming in for a landing full of bullet holes, missing a few crew, and sending sparks off the runway on landing. It'll take more than a weekend hanging out with the baby and some low-key masters racing before the mechanics have me ready to fly again. In fairness, I can barely imagine what the refractory period would look like after three, four, or even five days of racing. So at least the one-and-done has that as a silver lining.

With a clock time of 6:37 at the end of the race, that’s a little over $7.50 per second of racing when I tally up the rough cost, pre-Pimm's. Lord knows what it'll be after airline change fees, gifts for the family, and a few days more than planned at the Fawley Bar.

But I bought more than just six and a half minutes down the track and a teddy bear I've been lamenting the lack of club racing in America, so I'm not upset about being smacked down by European clubs coming from an actual vibrant and exciting ecosystem. The smug part of me that thinks I'm a great rower is upset, of course; the smug part of me that thinks I'm always right feels vindicated.

Within a four month window, the British isles have the Head of the River, the Metropolitan Regatta, and the Marlow Regatta all in sequence with other events sprinkled in. And yes, while I'm aware of different threads of gossip about which club is doing what and the ways in which British rowing is perhaps a bit too mercenary and certain clubs suck up more than their share of oxygen for a few years at a time, a league where the poles swing dramatically is still better than no league at all.

"But I bought more than just six and a half minutes down the track and a teddy bear I've been lamenting the lack of club racing in America, so I'm not upset about being smacked down by European clubs coming from an actual vibrant and exciting ecosystem."

I mean, here in the US we've got, what? The Club Eight at the San Diego Crew Classic, a series of duels your competition might not even show up for, and then cross your fingers that Vesper and Baltimore show up for Schuylkill Navy, or you're still scheduling scrimmages while you're in the customs line at Heathrow. I think it's reasonable to assume we were faster than a number of the crews in the regatta, though obviously not the ones we raced. But they race Henley every year, us every four to six. There's dozens of club eights on the Thames, and only a handful on the east coast. The Conference of Competitive Club Programs (CCCP) has some work to do.

I think I knew that already though. Maybe I could have saved a couple thousand dollars.

So what's next? Our Masters continued on to the Henley Masters Regatta, where they enjoyed some success (see below).



A few of us slotted into the Club Nationals lineups, hopefully with most of the Pimm's out of our systems. Then Middletown, Delaware for the Diamond States Master Regatta—a fun couple of trips down a 1,000-meter course on a beautiful lake, where we can play with some fun lineups and race for intramural bragging rights more than anything else.

After that, who knows. Everyone's chasing big individual goals, and some guys will hit those. We'll be back at Head Of The Charles, and hopefully host London Rowing Club for a visit in the fall to our own Head of the Potomac. Maybe up to Riverside to keep the Stars and Stripes dual alive; maybe we'll host Baltimore Rowing Club for the first in a Francis Scott Key series of duals. The Henley trip brought a lot of energy to our everyday operations that won't go anywhere anytime soon.

But we still want to win races.

So, we gotta race.

-Peter Clements




 Thanks very much to Peter Clements for the hard typing, bantering, and general great work over the past 12 weeks! You can keep up with him via the Potomac Men's Sweep Instagram account.

-RR

Trending posts this month

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

Image
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...
Read more

The 30 Best Rowing Coaches of All Time, Part 3: The Top 10

Image
The top 10 best rowing coaches, including guess who (Photo © Iain Weir / Rowing Photography ) It's time for the third and final part of our 3-part series on the best of the best in the rowing coaching ranks. These coaches not only command respect based on performance, but have also shown the ability to adapt to new circumstances, build dynasties, and ultimately help shape the trajectory of rowing as a sport. Honestly, it would be easy to extend this series into 10 more posts... But we wouldn't do that to you. As we've said before, the hope is that the following may serve to educate and spark discussion, as both an appreciation of history and of the coaching craft. Also note: As we stated in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, there are few women in this list, but that is a reflection of a general underrepresentation of women in the head coaching ranks in our sport—and indeed (as has been well documented ) a growing number of NCAA sports in the United States. ...
Read more

Will It Make the Boat Go Faster? At Marin Rowing Association, Culture is Key

Image
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 ...
Read more

Winter Workouts: Why Do Rowers Fear the Erg?

Image
Op-Ed from the RowingRelated Editorial Staff Friend. Not foe. (Illustration: B. Kitch) I am really frustrated by our sport when it comes to the erg being viewed as a torture device rather than a helpful tool that people can enjoy. This negative mindset, which is extremely contagious, plagues the sport, preventing athletes from training to their potential and possibly serving as one of the reasons that careers in rowing, at every level, are often so short. When compared to other endurance sports, I have not encountered an equal level of disdain for such fundamental mental and physical endurance training. My main problem is that everywhere I turn in the rowing community, whether it's high school rowers, college athletes, or even national team hopefuls, I hear of people dreading the erg. I've never heard about a cross country runner 'dreading' a track workout. True, basketball and football players may dread running wind sprints or other such conditioning acti...
Read more

So, are Naked Rowing Calendars a Thing Now?

Image
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...
Read more