I returned to Oxford for a wedding this month. Cindy McCreery, three-seat in the 1995 Wolfson Women’s First Eight, got married. Half that crew was in attendance (the others being in far-flung places like Africa – two of the nine - or doing crazy things like participating in a bike race over the Pyrenees on a tandem bike). We borrowed some oars from Wolfson (and from Magdalen, where she had done her previous degree and met Angus, now her husband) and formed an archway at the exit of Magdalen Chapel.
Summer is, of course, the time of year of rowing weddings. The season ends, and people have a chance to settle down. Rowing weddings are great excuses for reunions of sorts. Even when, as is the case with this particular crew, we keep in touch and a the core in England see each other on a very regular basis, certainly we reflect on what it was which brought us all together in the first place.
I missed another rowing wedding in May, sadly enough. Two of my former rowers at W&M got married in Williamsburg. Unfortunately, while I can pop up to Oxford quite easily for a weekend , getting to Williamsburg from Zurich is not quite as convenient. Certainly the event in Williamsburg was packed with Tribe rowers from the last few years, and both Christie and Bill were part of that amazing group, which must have made the festivities have an extra air. I am sorry to have missed it.
One of the odd things about Cindy’s wedding was that despite what brought a group of us there it was not actually a rowing wedding. I suppose, however, that it follows on the particular and peculiar crew of which Cindy formed a part in 1995.
The 1995 first eight was an odd mix of people, and not the stereo-typical rowing geeks. The brain-power in that crew was pretty developed, and in a wide range of subjects. Indeed, these were scholar-athletes, who did a sport in order to help them focus better at work or in the lab. They were all accomplished athletes, but not necessarily overly obsessed. They were all late-comers to the sport of rowing, and most of them had even spent years laughing at obsessive rowers. Basically, this was just a sport they thought they would try while they had the opportunity, but had no intention of getting heavily involved in.
This particular experience was magical for all of us. It was not just the boatspeed, but rather how it all came together.
It is said that every true rowing coach has to have “that crew from [insert year]” of which to eternally reminisce and tell tales. This one is mine.
I personally have never coached a faster women’s crew, and consensus seems to be that they have never rowed in a faster crew. Some on the outside might ask where we get this from: but markers can be deceiving. Sure our finish position in bumps was exactly where we started. And our trip to Henley ended in an open-water defeat at the hands of Imperial College London, by far the fastest collegiate eight in Britain. But those markers do not define the trip, or the speed.
There are those at Oxford who complain that colleges such as Wolfson, which has no undergraduates, have an inherent advantage over the traditional undergraduate-based Oxford colleges when it comes to rowing. They complain about experienced rowers, or about post-grad schedules, or what-not. I would actually argue the contrary – we were at a huge disadvantage. We did not have a regular intake of experienced rowers when I was there, but had to train them from scratch ourselves just like everyone else. And we had an overwhelming number of scientists, many of whom also worked in various labs, which meant they were not often available to train as a group during daylight hours. So finding the time to train them all was problematic.
It is certainly fair to say that the key person in this story was Mary New, perhaps the toughest athlete I have ever coached. Mary was tiny, but more than made up for her size through her athleticism, much of which was in her head. Rowing is 90% mental, after all.
Mary had rowed in 1994, and was sick of the attitude which had prevailed at Wolfson when she arrived. Basically, the Wolfson women were the laughingstock of the river, by far the worst program on the water. Not having experienced rowers and not having many practices on the water naturally resulted in not having any speed (even moving in a forward direction seemed challenging, from what I observed). Spring 1994 saw a turning point, as the 1994 crew got tired of being dreadful and started training, first under James Hopkins (an excellent novice coach) and then under me. But this was not the crew around which anything long-lasting could be built. Mary, alone of the 1994 athletes, was.
In Fall 1994, we started over from a formula we had developed over the Summer but with some new bodies. Mary was always willing to row with novices, in the recognition that they were the future. It is not that she enjoyed rowing with novices (often stroking and being rushed into the ground by far bigger women), but she did not have the arrogant attitude prevalent among many who have rowed a little and think that rowing with novices is demeaning. Instead, she had another arrogant attitude – she hated losing. She knew that the best way to win at Wolfson was to instill in the novices the right approach to rowing, to convince them that this was something they wanted to do, to lead them, and to make sure that when it mattered we could and would win races.
Mary even convinced me. At the time, I was a bit down on the whole thing. I hated bumps racing (for which Oxford colleges traditionally train), I hated the Isis (the pathetic bit of river on which forty programs try to train), I hated rowing politics (particularly bothering me at the time were petty undergraduate politics at squads run not by the coach but rather by heavily-politicized undergrad rowers), and I was sour from confrontations with the British rowing establishment so dominant at Oxford, especially concerning the place of women which had caused me previous confrontations, most recently and notably before that a short-lived stint coaching the Oriel College women. The fact that I was finishing up my doctorate gave me a good excuse to cut back on coaching. Furthermore, I thought I wanted to get back in shape and win a seat on Wolfson men’s first eight (although that last idea eventually fizzled out as the men’s captain was inept – at best he did nothing, at worst he chased almost everyone away).
Mary convinced me that somewhere in this mass of novices we were going to have a fast first eight. This was a bit of faith. Of the novices willing and able to train, none was particularly talented. Of the novices who were talented – or at least athletic – none of them were interested in rowing and were all doing so just because they thought they would give it a try once in their lives. They made it quite clear they were not interested in training to be in a First Eight. This was especially true as these women were athletes who competed in their respective sports at fairly high levels. Now they were splashing around in boats which did not go fast. Rowing is not as easy as it looks, and it was quite a drop off to go from their high athletic standards into novice eights which did not train often and did not set up let alone move very fast. So they all said they were not interested.
As the year went on, however, one after another of this group fell in love with the sport. They gradually quit their other sports and stopped making fun of obsessive rowers. Indeed, they became obsessive rowers themselves. The only exception was that they still could not do much with their schedules, so training as much as everyone else on the river was still not an option.
Quality, not quantity, is something too few crews remember. During the Winter months, we continued to train as a squad, although it was abundantly clear who the stronger athletes were who would eventually fill the seats in the First Eight. We got on the water when possible, but otherwise I set ergs. I also knew that since these were serious athletes, they could be trusted to work out on their own. Enter the most flexible training schedule I have ever run – and the model for all future flexible training schedules I have continued to use to this day.
Due to England’s wonderfully predictable rainy winter, Torpids was canceled for all but a tiny handful of crews who got to race one day. Torpids dinner went ahead as scheduled, with much merriment. The social side of a team sport such as rowing should not be doubted. For it was at the Torpids dinner that many of the athletes began to realize they liked each other’s company off the water. These were people they thought they could row with. This meant a willingness to commit to rowing out the year. We then entered a crew in the Eights Head, about which can be said: we finished. I think the women were simply amazed they could actually row 4.25 miles in one go.
The crew was, in its way, self-selecting. Eight athletes were clearly at the top of the pile: we had (bow to stern) two martial artists, one marathoner, one footballer, two rugby players, a sprinter, and an ice hockey player.
The trick was making them fast. Practice schedules were hard to arrange around work schedules, so we really did not train more. Experience was lacking. I also had a bit of a problem with size: this crew was huge. We had an average weight of close to 160 pounds (about 73 kilos), and that was including Mary New (who tipped the scales somewhere around 115 pounds – about 52 kilos). Now, size is a nice thing in this sport, but not when you are coaching a bunch of women who have been rowing for maybe six months and do not get on the water more than a handful of times a week. Needless to say, the ratings were low, the boat could not set, and we were rushing everywhere.
In April, our brand new hatchet blades arrived (yes, the boatclub was several years behind on blade technology). It was actually the first time I had ever coached with hatchets before (I had previously only coxed crews using them), so I needed to figure out what to do. It was fortuitous that I was also scratching my head about technique anyway, trying to figure out how to make this crew fast. This was also about the time I decided we could move the First Eight out of the old Aylings, which was too small and too flabby for them anyway, into the Janousek, a fine racing boat but much less stable (still too small - what women's boat wasn't - but bigger than the Aylings). I had been protected the Jani from crews not only unable to row it well but also to minimize use (and abuse) of a fine piece of equipment.
From my coxing days, I had gained the reputation as a technician. When I arrived in Oxford and found everyone using variations on tradition British technique – a concept I did not share – I found myself in an ideal world in many respects. I got to watch a lot of crews using a technique radically different from the various techniques I was familiar with, and I got to challenge myself to refine my own ideas on technique. I was, of course, influenced mostly by Charley Butt, the consummate technique coach, and the various ideas he distilled to us at Harvard – a bit of Harry Parker’s traditional “Harvard” tech, a bit of old East German tech, and a bit of the tech they were developing at Notts County. I also had my own first-hand experience at Notts County, which was immensely profitable. Needless to say, my crews stood out on the Isis, because they used a technique which looked nothing like what anyone else was doing.
This issue got compounded with our 1995 First Eight. In figuring out what to do with them, I tinkered here and there. I ended up experimenting with the rig. Basically, what I decided was, that with this particular crew, forward body swing was the root of all evil, so I eliminated it entirely. I had them start their bodies early on the recovery before the arms were straight, to use their arms to get them to sit up. Then they reached the pin with the arms not even completely away, and after that there was no point coming any further forward with the upper body. So they sat bolt upright. Since they were in front of their pins, they had to twist their torsos to come around to the catch. This solved height differences. Then it was just a matter of getting the blades in the water and kicking like hell. They not only looked funny, they sounded funny. I did not have time to teach them how to make a more subtle catch; furthermore given their twisted body position at the catch, it was crucial that the blades be in the water so they could kick. So their catches were rather loud. Then came the acceleration to the finish, and the necessarily big layback given the rig. Cha!... Whoosh! (Old time r.s.r readers may remember that in August of that year there was an entire thread on the newsgroup about my rowing technique.)
I had also assumed such a big and novicey crew would need to rate low. That idea did not last. With a little experimenting, I realized they rushed horribly below 36 – all slide and no power - but that at higher rates they realized just how hard they had to kick to keep the rate up on the drives. So we rated high. The only cap on the rating was that we had to be able to complete an entire race at that rate. So race rate ended up around 38-39. This was very do-able, given the elimination of forward body lean. The boat set, there was no rush, and damn they flew.
While the fastest Oxford college first eights tend to train as many as a dozen times per week during April and May (including weights and land-training sessions), I had long before eliminated land-training, and cut the water practices to four per week, never exceeding 75 minutes. During April and May, we usually practiced three times during the week (assuming everyone was healthy – various injuries from days playing other sports meant I usually gave people an additional practice off for injury rest). Friday we usually only had time to de-rig the boat and get it on the trailer – no time to actually practice as well. And Saturday was spent at a regatta somewhere.
That was another big part of the training: regattas. We were certainly not reclusive. I had to make up for lack of experience by finding experience somewhere. So we traveled. I also had another motive: bumps racing is notoriously random. If we weighed our entire experience on bumps results, we might end up disappointed and frustrated that so much time had been accomplished for naught. However, if we moved our focus outside Oxford, we would be able to see just how far we had come and were improving.
This made it fun. As we went to regattas, we squared off against crews we had seen at the Eights Head in early March. Crews which had beaten us were now slower. As the season went on, we were moving higher and higher up the list. We went from the being slow even among crews in the “Novice” category to being competitive at the “Senior Two” level (halfway between novice and elite, for those unfamiliar with British classifications).
We unfortunately never got our much-desired race against the Oxford Blue Boat. But at Henley, Oxford raced a crew under the Osiris banner which contained four of that year’s blue boat and four from the second eight. Class conflicts meant our pieces with them never materialized either. But at Henley, rowing only a few races apart, we posted similar times down the course. And in the week before Henley we were able to clearly beat a college crew which was able to split pieces with the Osiris crew. OUWBC stock, already low, sunk further in my estimation.
Back on the Isis, the bumps charts do indeed note a crew which finished the week in the same place it began – my theory on the random nature of bumps racing held true. If we had put all of our eggs in that basket, it would have been a miserable year. Instead, we had a lot more going for us, and can even laugh about that Eights Week in retrospect.
On the first day – the first attempt at bumps racing for all but Mary, remember – we were a bit overwhelmed. This was a crew which had never trailed off the start for the entire racing season (until Henley, when Imperial came off the blocks faster). In bumps racing, however, the crew we were racing against, Christ Church, was by definition ahead of us off the start (there is a length and a half of open water between crews at the start of bumps). No matter, we were substancially faster. However, as we ate them alive, something funny happened – we started bouncing around in their puddles. The crew began to panic – not only were we behind, but suddenly the water is getting choppier, the rowing got sloppier, the rate dropped below 36 and we started rushing. The inexperience hurt – we went from having closed all but a quarter of a length open in the first ninety seconds, to never being able to make up the rest. Well, as this crew had done after every race all year, it learned something. So on Day Two we set out to get it right. We had overlap in the Gut (a narrow bend about ninety-seconds or so into the course from the top starting positions), and Christ Church followed a different line through the bend. No matter, since they had nowhere to go after the bend except into us for a bump. Emerging from the Gut, we had a fair amount of overlap, at least a canvas of overlap – but just as Christ Church was about to come into us, our rudder sheered off (metal fatigue – I learned later a not uncommon problem with Janousek Eights of a certain vintage, even though this boat was basically new – bought in the winter or 1992-93 and remaining on the rack until Wolfson had a crew good enough to use it - the metal for the rudder was poor quality). We went hurdling into the wall. St Edmund Hall, which had been about four lengths back, eventually rowed by, so not only did we not score a bump, but Teddy Hall got credited with a bump on us. On Day Three, just as we were about to bump Teddy Hall before the Gut, Hall bumped Christ Church having a bad day (which means Hall got to stop racing and left us no one to chase). Finally, on Day Four, we scored our bump on Christ Church.
It was not fun at the time. But it did underscore all of the things I believed in.
The crew certainly remembers that Eights Week. But more importantly they remember what we did in our other races. They remember how much we improved from week to week. They remember the overall experience. As we have scattered and moved on with our lives, even many of us still in the sphere of rowing, it’s still a magical feeling today.
What did I learn from this experience? Not that strong athletes can make boats go fast. No, these women tought me the power of the human mind. They trained harder - in intensity - than anyone else I have ever coached. They were efficient with their time. They were determined to do their best and willing to set high goals which would seem unachievable. What made themm great athletes was not their physical strength. What made them great athletes was their mental strength.
Of course it does not take a wedding to reminisce like this, but it is a good excuse. Then there are the stories of Torpids dinner, extra-hot Indian food in London's East End after the Eights Head (with the waiters asking Liz if she really knew what she was ordering), numerous bizarre Indian dinners in Oxford, winning a competition for sponsorship money, road trips, pewter tankards, crews wondering how they had been so lucky to draw us (smiling early in the season, sarcastically trembling later on), being the only women's crew on the river with hatchets when the equivalent men's crew from the college did not have hatchets (not because the men couldn't have them, only because the men's captain never bothered to put the order in), being the only women's crew on the river with "First VIII" emblazened on our shirts while the men had their sex - "Men's First VIII" - on theirs, thus flaunting Oxford tradition which has women rowing with "Women's" and men rowing without the tag, or at best neither with a tag...
and then the story for which I scored massive rowing geek points. The night of Wallingford Regatta was the Wolfson Ball. My date was flying in from the US for the weekend (or more like a little over 24 hours). She got of the plane in Heathrow and boarded a bus for Wallingford (which is between Heathrow and Oxford), where she found me by the trailer. She napped in the back of our towing vehicle to deal with jetlag, while I minded my crews (which were doubling up events in eights and fours to give them more experience). I had brought her extra warm wool sweaters and rain gear, and there was enough spare clothing in the van to be sleep comfortably. She emerged to watch the afternoon races with me, and off we went to the Ball (I had prepared a pretty elaborate dinner, if I remember right, since we had no time to go out for dinner before the Ball). In case my readers are wondering, she continued to visit that Spring, including scheduling another 24-hour visit to correspond with Women's Henley.
