I apologize for the delayed update. Switzerland appears to be Mac-unfriendly,
so getting the software to connect on-line from home (and getting it to
work) has
been more difficult than expected. At the office, there is a firewall
that keeps me from accessing my site properly. I think I am almost sorted
out, however. I still need a new name for this column, however ("The Wandering
Rowing Coach" might just as well refer to what Rachel Quarrell calls my
"wibble-factor" as my never settling down anywhere).
The weather around here has been unseasonably warm, although there is still plenty of snow up in the mountains. I have taken up cross-country skiing, something I have not done for twelve years. Great exercise.
Weather patterns are not controllable, but we should be able to figure out what to do if they get in the way. I noted, with a wry smile on my face, that Torpids got rained out yet again in Oxford this year. This is the annual winter bumps race on the Isis, which has been marred almost every year in recent memory (my recent memory, that is) by the weather. There are theories that changing weather patterns are dooming this event, but I am not entirely so sure. I have seen old photos of Torpids races, in which the Isis had burst its banks and was in full flood. These days, such conditions would cause the races to be canceled for safety reasons. Back then, folks were more cavalier.
In 1998, the final day of the Dad Vail Regatta was rained out because of dangerous flood conditions on the Schuylkill. There was some criticism of the Race Committee which canceled that race, because the conditions were rowable. But I felt that the Race Committee was justified, because the conditions were not race-able. It is one thing to have a crew or two who are familiar with the river practicing under the direct supervision of a coaching launch, it is quite another thing to have a whole lot of visiting crews trying to follow temporary race-traffic patterns and then getting set to race in these conditions.
I have written elsewhere about why the Schuylkill is a lousy river to hold a championship race on even under the best of circumstances. But that is where the Dad Vails remain. But, I would argue, that the Isis (the Thames River in Oxford) is just a lousy bit of river, full stop. And there is a big difference between a championship regatta, such as Vails, and a silly bumps regatta such as Torpids. In fact, when I was in Oxford, one of my more radical ideas was to do away with Torpids altogether. This year’s cancelation provides a good opportunity for me to revisit that idea.
Bumps races, for the unitiated, were invented by accident. The story I know (I am sure that in Cambridge they have their own story) is that one day, back in the early 1800s, students from two Oxford colleges (Brasenose and Trinity, I think I remember hearing) went out for a row to a pub (I do not know where they started or which pub they rowed to – I suspect they boated from upstream of Folly Bridge and rowed up to Godstow before Osney Lock was built). Both crews rowed in wide, heavy wooden boats, each complete with their own compartments for keeping the tea service and picnic supplies. On the way home, one crew got out in front of the other. The trailing crew, given how narrow the river is, decided to try to ram the leading crew instead of overtaking it. Bumps racing was born. The tradition developed as a way for crews to race each other on bits of river which were too narrow and winding for traditional side-by-side racing.
Today, bumps in Oxford involve all the college squads. Crews are split into divisions based on the previous year’s finishing order and not on speed. The crews row in the best equipment they can afford. And then they try to bump each other for four days at a time. People are injured, sometimes severely, and expensive equipment is destroyed. It is an exciting spectator sport (even more exciting than standing at Eliot Bridge during the Head of the Charles). It is also idiotic. When I first arrived in Oxford, someone explained it to me and I thought she was pulling my leg. No, indeed, bumps racing is a reality.
I have coached many crews in bumps, I have rowed in bumps (won my blade in Eights Week 1995), and I have even coxed in bumps (Torpids 1993: now there was a story never meant to happen – and after that experience I staunchly refused to ever do it again under any circumstances). It is as bad as it sounds. But it has grown into such a tradition that most Oxford rowers do not see beyond the world of bumps racing on the Isis.
I conceded that I could never do away with the tradition, although I did once, in a fit of disdain for the OURCs, the governing body of rowing in Oxford, threaten to withdraw my crews from the league (the only way the OURCs can enforce their silly rules and fines is to demote crews in bumps – if a college does not enter the races and does all of its racing elsewhere, then it effectively cannot be assessed sanctions).
But even in a world in which bumps racing continues, Torpids needs to be re-thought. First of all, the Isis floods every winter. Even if the actually four days of racing happen to fall on days when the river is safe, we can be certain that training will be heavily disrupted by the flooding. For example, in the last Torpids I coached (1996), the regatta came off uninterrupted – all four days plus “Rowing-on” (the qualifying day the previous week for crews in the lowest divisions). However, between Rowing-on and the actual regatta, the river flooded and was closed. Crews were unable to make their final preparations – and in the case of several of my crews had not even practiced starts yet (more on that later).
Second, bumps racing produces an extra level of danger not present in other forms of racing. Given that conditions are never good – even if the river is open and deemed relatively safe, we’re still talking about a fair amount of stream during the Winter – we should think very hard about running bumps races even with the safety precautions the OURCs take. Safety issues for such a regatta are not just a matter of what happens when a bunch of boats pile into each other and sink, with rowers getting gored and the like- the cliched “carnage in the gut.” There are also other pressures to get the races off on schedule regardless of whether crews are ready. Sometimes crews have good reasons for delay – which would be taken into account in other forms of racing. Sometimes the delay is due to ineptitude. But whatever the reason, the races are under such time pressure (mostly due to the inflexible nature of the rules, also to the fact that whatever flexibility there might be gets pushed aside because of the early sundown in Winter) that I have on several occasions seen races run with one or more crews facing the wrong direction – in the worst scenario I remember, a crew was taking practice starts on the course the wrong way when the start gun was fired (I do not care that the crew involved was completely in the wrong, the race should not have started. If this were a lone incident, I might forgive it as an error, but it was symptomatic). When races do get delayed, darkness sets in – and races have indeed been run in the dark (ok for most forms of racing, but certainly not ok for bumps).
Third is the issue of the training calendar. To prepare for a bumps regatta in late February or early March makes absolutely no sense. The racing season is in the Spring – colleges attend regattas starting in late April, aiming to peak for Summer Eights (the main bumps regatta at the end of May), and if they are good enough to carry on until Henley. Any sensible training program would not involve preparing for bumps in February. To race most successfully in Torpids would mean setting line-ups early enough before the race, getting the rate up to race-pace, and working on starts (especially important given the nature of bumps). These are things a sensible squad would not be doing in February if it is trying to peak in late May/June. The Winter months are a time for development, a lot of skills work, and improving the level of fitness for which a base would have been established in the Fall. Preparing for Torpids gets in the way and means that the crew will not be as fast during the racing season ahead.
Some folks may remember that I used to take this to an extreme – I decided to use Torpids as a way to give crews race experience but did not care much how we did so long as we were getting experience. That means I kept the rate low until about a week before the regatta, did not work on starts until a day or two before, and did not necessarily practice in set line-ups. In 1996, about half the crew which we entered as the Wolfson women’s first boat rowed Torpids on the wrong side (well, my point was that there is no wrong side, merely a less-accustomed side), I had women sitting in seats would not normally race in (including a stroke with no previous stroking experience and someone in seven who rushed so she could learn not to rush), and a couple of my strongest women were left on the shore because their academic schedules had made scheduling practices difficult during the short Winter days, so they practiced only on weekends and did followed my erg routine. The second boat, which won blades that Torpids, contained an unlikely stern pair both of whom were leading first eight candidates (and indeed made the crew when it mattered – but I would argue learned a lot from sitting in those seats for Torpids). I might add that I also preferred to keep the good equipment on the rack until after Torpids.
A much more useful thing to train for at that time of year is the Eights Head (actually, there are two main ones - one for women followed a week later by one for men – and separate ones for schools and for vets, although schools and vets are not excluded from the main two). This is the biggest event of the year for British head racing, with hundreds of crews heading down the 4.25 mile Tideway course in London. It was for this race that I would dust off the good equipment, and would try to field my strongest line-ups, including those whose schedules had made practice difficult for Torpids.
One of the sad consequences of Torpids these days is that the final day of Torpids seems to fall on the day of the Women’s Head. When I was in Oxford, Torpids got pushed a week later in order to allow for more time for flooding to subside. Back then, we foresaw no conflict, because the Women’s Head had generally come two or three weeks after Torpids (which should have become one to two weeks after the change in Torpids dates). Somehow since then, the schedule has shifted and now there is a conflict most years. Someone at Wolfson asked my opinion about that a year or two ago. My advice: since Torpids is likely going to be canceled anyway, send in entries for the Women’s Head. If Torpids is canceled, then the crews still get to race in the biggie. If Torpids goes ahead, there is a decision to make: either race Torpids and scratch from the Eights Head, or (my preference) race the first three days of Torpids and then head to London on the Saturday and scratch from the final day of Torpids.
The Eights Head is too important an event to miss. I was always shocked how many Oxford men’s crews would refuse to stick around an extra couple of weeks to do the Men’s Head. This event should be the focal point of Winter training (not least because it isn’t likely to be canceled).
After the Eights Head, take a few days off (or save those days off until Easter weekend, depending on the calendar), and then get back down to business training for the upcoming racing season.
Of course, the Isis does flood at other times of year too. That is why any sensible training program should take the long-term view. I am not one to believe that practices should be micro-managed. Things happen – floods, injuries, illnesses, equipment breakage. Too many problems make for serious trouble. But if the training plan is sensible and long-enough term, then it is possible to work around the problems. We cannot help the weather, and if weather makes rowing impossible, then there must be alternate possibilities. Those possibilities must be part of the plan, otherwise the athletes will walk away saying that there is no way for them to be competitive under the circumstances.
It always struck me as mad that Oxford colleges acted surprised when the river was flooded for most of the Winter and rowing on the water was banned. Thus, they were left to scramble, and this hurt them in the long run. I always felt that even those folks who believed Torpids was a worthwhile event should train mentally as though it was going to be canceled and then if it went ahead that would be a psychological bonus.
Among my suggestions for what to do about Torpids, I included rescheduling it as a head race (or series of head races over four days), which to me seemed much more sensible option. Not only would it make more sense in the overall training schedule, but it would also be a lot safer and more likely therefore to go ahead even under high water conditions. Plus, there would be a lot more flexibility in scheduling, and this would allow for crews to head off to better stretches of water on the weekend (including to the Reading Head – the race which used to conflict with the Saturday of Torpids – and now to the Women’s Head).
It was also my idea to adopt a way for crews to withdraw from Torpids. My proposal was a little complicated, but it essentially said that if the river had not been open to a crew for a certain minimum number of days during the Hilary (Winter) Term, or if the river had been closed at all in the week leading up to Torpids, then a crew could withdraw on safety grounds (an unprepared crew which is unprepared through no fault of its own being an unsafe crew). I had coached enough crews with a high proportion of novices on board to know that a certain minimum amount of water time was necessary to race safely. This got adopted in part – the clause based on river closures was scratched so that any crew could withdraw, and then a penalty was assessed to a crew that withdrew (I was opposed to a penalty if the crew was withdrawing because the weather had closed the river, and if they were going to allow crews which were just disorganized to withdraw then I wanted a harsh penalty).
I also note that this year, when Torpids was completely canceled, that the OURCs ran a mini-regatta the next week which involved a head race from which the top finishers qualified for a seeded single-elimination tournament-style side-by-side regatta. That is more like it, and should be the sort of thing which eventually replaces Torpids altogether.
The fact remains that programs should think long-term. Even within a season, a squad should be thinking about what is going to produce the fastest crews when it matters. The human body cannot peak and maintain that peak for a long time. Nor can it peak once and then expect to peak again soon after. The annual training schedule must take this into account.
For years, even before I started writing this site, I have been getting e-mails from folks all over the world asking my advice on one aspect of rowing or another. Perhaps one of the most interesting e-mails I have received in connection with that came last summer from a Canadian fellow whose water is frozen for most of the academic year. He wanted to know what advice I might have to allow him to build up the rowing program at his university. Facetiously, the answer is nothing: tell the students to take up hockey. The more serious answer, after much thought, is to break the mold of conventional thinking, and design a training program which is neither normal for rowing nor normal for the academic community. Keep people around when there is water, travel a little when there is not.
The rowing program at William & Mary was founded in 1985. It owned no equipment until 1988. I am still very unclear what it did for three years, but I have heard that the program’s motto was: “we’re W&M Crew, we run stairs.” Apparently, besides running up and down stairs every day, they did some basic technique on the ergs in the gym. Periodically, they took long weekends to places with boats and tried rowing on the water. Come race day, they would borrow a boat from the host and, not surprisingly, come in last since they had barely been on the water. But we should applaud such dedication and effort.
At the 1992 Olympics, there was a sculler from Lebanon (those were the days before the IOC made FISA force competitors to qualify). This guy was studying in Vienna, where he had rowed for a year or so at the University. It dawned on him that Lebanon had no rowing federation, and no rowers. So he approached the Lebanese Olympic Committee and asked if he could represent Lebanon. They agreed, so off he went to Banyoles with Lebanese flags painted crudely on his oars (the cedar was a little difficult, so it looked more like a green triangle). He had very little in common with the other competitors, and tended to hang out with the staff. He finished last in the E-level final by something like two minutes behind the second-to-last competitor. As he approached the grandstand, at long last, most people there were scratching their heads. Then the announcer proclaimed that this was the first time Lebanon had ever entered a boat in an FISA championship at any level. All at once, the entire crowd rose to its feet and applauded for the full minute or so it took this guy to row past the grandstand. Everyone had a broad smile. It was one of the most amazing and warming moments of that regatta, a regatta not short on theatrics. I am not sure anyone from Lebanon has entered anything since, which is a great shame.
The short is to expect the unexpected and think long. If everything is micro-managed, then there will be no flexibility. That is not to say that every obstacle can be overcome – a record rainfall causing a flooded-out river at the championship regatta, for example – but training during the year will suffer as little disruption as possible from blips on the way. People get sick or injured, academic or work commitments sometimes blow up, the heavens open, the river freezes, or (my nemesis in Williamsburg) the river turns to mud. The thing is to be able to adapt on the fly. Nothing in training can be set in stone. Even if everything is going well, it may become apparent that a different workout should be in order than planned on a given day. Go with it. Just keep the eyes on where you need to be when it counts.
And, if you know the weather is likely to conspire against you, then plan accordingly and do not act surprised if the weather does not cooperate. It should be a bonus if it does cooperate.