September 2001
Rivers and Lakes
There I was, belatedly posting my August column and working on writing this monthís. The next day, madmen attacked my country and with it the civilized world. It was not the first attack talk to anyone who lives in Israel, or Spain, or Colombia, or numerous other countries with varying degrees of deranged evildoers on their soil who gleefully murder innocent people. But the scale of these attacks certainly got everyoneís attention. I will refrain from addressing the politics in this forum, but I will offer my sympathy to everyone affected. I may be in Europe, but my thoughts are in the USA. God bless America.
This Fall, a program I used to coach is moving to a new rowing site. I had a say in some of the issues, since I was still coaching there when the search for a site began (and was briefly shown the ultimate choice as a possibility) and because I am the Secretary of that programís Friends organization. But credit goes to the folks who live in Williamsburg, Virginia, who have invested so much of their time and energy into making this move a reality. While I cannot take credit for finding the site or being involved in any of the negotiations which made it possible for William & Mary Rowing to move there, I can offer some vague commentary about what to look for in choosing a place to row.
These thoughts conveniently corresponded with the 2001 World Championships, held on the Rotsee in Lucern (about 45 minutes by train south of where I live). In most years, the Rotsee is normally the site of the most important international regatta of the year other than Worlds. There is a reason international crews flock here every year, and that they cheered the selection of the Rotsee as the site for this yearís main event. The lake, whose name means ìRed Lakeî in German, although I have never seen anyone call it anything other than its German name, is sometimes referred to by rowers as the ìGötterseeî the ìLake of the Gods.î It is a fantastic place to race: a natural lake, 2500 meters long and eight lanes wide at the narrowest (about ten lanes wide in the warm-up area), bounded by mountains which block the wind, surrounded by a nature preserve which means protective vegetation, and a ten-minute easy walk from the center of the city (and only five more minutes to the train station, with notoriously efficient Swiss trains going everywhere else on time).
So, what is the perfect place to row? Most people do not really have the luxury of a choice they just have to use whatever body of water is there. But if there is a choice and we had a choice in Williamsburg, Virginia what should someone consider when selecting a site?
A racecourse is nice. Being able to have room for a 2000 meter shot without bends for at least three racing lanes is a boon for any program. For a college or high school program, it also means the ability to have home races, which cuts down on travel. The racecourse must be protected, or at least predictable. When I coached at William & Mary, we had a racecourse on the James River (Henley-length, oddly enough, since we measured distances off existing duck-blinds along the course which happened to be the length of the Henley course apart, with other duckblinds at approximately the Barrier, Fawley, and the start of the Enclosures Iíd like to meet the duck hunters who accidentally came up with these measurements). It was quite a nice course, but three of the four races I tried to run there needed to be moved to an inadequate alternate course because of uncooperative winds, so I gave up even trying to schedule home races (frankly, our ìalternate course,î though a fine stretch of river for practice, was one of the worst race courses I have ever been on). If the site does not have 2000-meters straight, that is still OK for training purposes and some smaller match races (rivers do not always cooperate for 2000 meters so there may be little choice, but do not do what they do in Philadelphia and think you can hold meaningful championships on such rivers).
When considering sites for William & Mary, I did point out a compromise the racecourse need not be the training venue, but could merely be a nearby site. Although I cannot think of any place off the top of my head, I am aware of some programs which hold their ìhomeî races on different bodies of water than they train on (is there a crew which trains on the Schuylkill River, that dreadful river that runs through Philadelphia, but holds its home races on the Cooper River, a wonderful racecourse in nearby Camden, New Jersey, which is far too small to serve as a training base? Villanova University, maybe?).
This compromise results from the fact that a racecourse and a training site do require different specifications. In Williamsburg, we feared that we would be unable to train on certain bodies of water suitable for racing because of restrictions on motor boats (we solved that issue ultimately by developing the worldís first environmentally-friendly motor boat). But think of the Rotsee for one example.
The Rotsee is a wonderful place to race, but I would not want to train there. First, it is too short for training 2500 meters just does not allow steady-state. Second, the environmental issues mean that there are no coach boats allowed (motorboats only allowed for regattas). Not having motorboats would be fine if the bike path were good. But much of the view is obscured by trees, and peddling up and down hills (and sometimes avoiding cows) is not conducive for a coach trying to pay attention to a crew I have coached on less-than-ideal bikepaths before, but still did found the Rotsee on the worse end of that scale. And the fact that it is protected water means that when crews who train there are faced with even slightly-bumpy water, as happens often at races on other courses, they are not prepared.
So that leads to conditions. An ideal training site is protected, or at least partly so. It is good to have options. I distinctly remember Charley Butt liking to use rough days to take crews into the unprotected Charles River Basin to do 20s and 30s at high rates in order to learn how to deal (as a cox, I swallowed my fair share of Charles River water in the chop). Although this was a bit extreme, it underscored the need to have the option of training in rough water. And it underscored the need to have the option of training in relatively good water. Certainly, the Charles had enough bends that we could find somewhere to run fair pieces on decent water, or do tech practices, even on windy days (the ìCharles River Headwind Ruleî notwithstanding we were convinced that no matter how many sharp bends we went around and how many times we spun our boats, we always had a headwind). That said, I remember one day out in an eight with Kris Korzenowski trying to find somewhere anywhere where we could do technical work without being blown into the bank. As Kris K was getting more than a little frustrated, I was experimenting with angling the boat in various directions and having people who were not doing drills tap, back, or do unusual motions with their oars in order to allow those who were doing drills to get a few in before we blew too far.
One site I looked at in Williamsburg would have afforded open water and protected water. However, the open water would have been right in front of the docks. If winds kicked up, the water in front of the dock would have been unrowable, meaning that crews could not get to the protected bit, and especially not novice crews. When picking a site, always remember to think about whether novice crews could learn there safely.
Then comes the amount of water available. I mentioned above that the Rotsee is an inadequate body for training, especially in the Fall and Winter, because it is too short. There should be room for long-distance rows unmarred by constant turning.
There should also be room for all the water traffic. This means it is good to avoid sites where there are too many other users, particularly motor boats. One site we were seriously considering for William & Mary failed for this reason.
But then there is the issue of how many crews will be using the water at any one time. There needs to be enough space so that they are not all tripping over each other. If there is a race or just some crews using the racecourse for pieces there needs to be a separate area for other crews to use. At crowded times of day, there needs to be enough room to avoid accidents, and so that crews are not constantly stopping and waiting for each other. And then there is the coaching launch situation.
The coaching launch situation caught my attention while I was on a training camp in Aiguebelette, Savoy (France), in Spring 2000. Before then, I had pretty much trained on bodies of water which were large, or rivers where a launch would kick up a wake but go on by quickly enough, or where coaches coached from bikes. I had coached from launches where I had been separated from my crews because I did not want to wake down other crews on the river, and where I felt bad having to wake others down, but it was never a huge issue. Aiguebelette was a dreadful place I hope never to go back to.
Ignoring for a moment that during our training camp the wind blew in from the one unprotected side of the lake, making conditions about as challenging as we see every day on the Zürisee (the notoriously rough body of water I train on now and which we were trying to escape by going elsewhere for a training camp), but I found the restricted size of the lake to be an additional challenge. Basically, the lake is about 3000 meters long and maybe 750 wide (there is another arm to the lake, but it is off-limits for some reason). If there are coaches out there with motor boats, then they simply wake everyone. Itís basically a big oval with boats going round and round. With a river, if a coach comes by in his motor boat he is soon gone. With a lake this size, there is no escape. Everyone was waking everyone else down and if we wanted to be able to watch our crews, there was nothing any of us could do about it.
One possibility is to require ìwakelessî launches, realizing of course that even single sculls and canoes kick up some wake. But even without much wake, a small ovular lake is in danger of over-crowding. So judge a lakeís size with the number of potential users, including non-rowers. A lake surrounded by fisherman, even land-based fisherman, can shrink accordingly in terms of rowable water.
Of course, if the lake is too big, it is also unprotected.
Rivers are good for flexibility sake often with varying conditions on windy days, which is good, and there is an option to move off to other parts of the river if traffic or conditions dictate. But rivers usually have bends, which can be severe. If picking a river, try to find one which at least has a long stretch of water without too many sharp bends. Short rivers have all the disadvantages of lakes with none of the benefits.
One further aspect to consider is randomness. The mud at William & Maryís old site is one example. I had tide charts, which were accurate but were also relative to the mood of the mud. One day Iíd be out at low tide no problem, the next day the river had turned to mud at high tide. I tried to get explanations from two single scullers who used our docks one was an officer in the Coast Guard, the other a distinguished marine scientist both understood tides and neither had a clue how to explain the unpredictable amounts of water in our river (or not in our river, as was often the case). Some of my rowers still tell the story of how I attacked the river one day with a broken shovel, trying to dig a trench (the mud filled itself in behind me and I ultimately conceded defeat). We lost many practices, sometimes for days on end, to the mud. When I felt crews were missing too much water time, I was known to call practices creatively such as my infamous midnight rows.
The river I first learned on the Squamscott River in Exeter, New Hampshire, was tidal and unrowable for most of the day due to mud and exposed rocks (causing our practice times to move around chaotically), but at least it was predictable. Thanks to the nasty bends and lack of any straight bits (the ìstraight stretch,î as we called it, was about 700 meters long with nasty curves on each end, and our home racecourse was 1500 meters with a long gradual bend and a short sharp bend, so almost all of our races were away since no one wanted to race there), it was also a great place for a coxswain to learn to steer. We also had some major issues with driftwood (donít ask we ran over so many things that we became very good at rowing in boats with missing skegs). No one wanted to come race us on our course, and I am not sure we did either. My all-time favorite bend is sharper than 90-degrees, maybe two boats wide at high tide, with a bridge across it (so if the cox does not steer it exactly he hits the abutment, unless he runs aground first), and where fishermen plunk their eel-buoys down in the middle (can you make this corner while doing a slalom?). Oh, and it is a blind corner, too, meaning that thanks to a hill under the bridge there is no way for crews coming at the corner from opposite directions to see each other before they collide. Yep, thatís where I learned to cox. I do not recommend it. But, on a positive note, to this day I can maneuver an eight effortlessly around some rather tight bends even in traffic.
Then some rivers have too much water try rowing in England during the Winter and watch the stream run by at high rates of speed as the rivers burst their banks. Of course, much of the problem in England is dreadful water management, and much of the reason that fast streams are unsafe has to do with locks and weirs which were built to ìmanageî the water. But it is certainly a concern. The locks also break up the rivers into small chunks where they would otherwise be rowable for longer stretches. Then there is the Tideway the River Thames in London which is an animal unto itself.
I think the new site for William & Mary Rowing successfully balances many of these concerns. I have not really analyzed it in person, but I trust the folks who have. The old site we used was very nice, but not a long-term solution mostly for two reasons. First of all, it was silting in, and the situation with the mud was getting noticeably worse by the year. Second, for unrelated reasons not worth discussing here, there was no possibility to build a boathouse. So we had to move. We needed a place where we knew that if we showed up, we could practice (no surprise mud). And we needed a place we could build a boathouse. We also needed a proper home racecourse, although as I mentioned above I was willing to consider a two-site option.
So, what is the absolute worst body of water I have ever trained on? Hands down, it is the Isis (as the Thames River is known in Oxford). The only bit able to be used for training is 2500 meters long (being generous) blocked by a lock at one end and a nasty bend at the other (which can be rowed through, but there is a series of bends upstream that make training upstream impractical). It is maybe 3.5 boatwidths wide at its widest, maybe 3 at average (assuming coxswains could steer), and it has the ìGutî in the middle - a nasty s-bend which less-experienced coxswains simply canít manage with a crew coming in each direction. If this river were not pathetic enough, forty programs are trying to use it. At some times of day and year, it is essentially a parking lot. And, just to make sure crews still cannot train properly, drunken punters seem intent on ignoring all river traffic rules (I never figured out why they even wanted to punt on the Isis anyway, since the Cherwell River is much prettier and more scenic).
Where I train now, the Zürisee, does rank up there for different reasons. It is simply too huge. Winds can come for literally 20 miles unblocked. Even on days when it is not windy, motor boat traffic ensures bumps. The worst are the ferries (to avoid confusion, my German-speaking readers should note that in English, the term ìferryî is much more broad and includes all the passenger ships which ply the lake, not just the cross-lake ferries). These things stir up the water unimaginably, and their wakes donít like to dissipate, but can come at us from miles away, bounce off a seawall, and come back. Ugh. The ferries do not run from November 1 to April 1, so we take advantage of the Winters (on non-windy days). But there was a period of four weeks during the 2000 racing season when the only way our juniors could train was to either go before 5 a.m. (so they could get back in time to get to school, which starts very early in Switzerland), or to simply go for long warm-ups at regattas on other bodies of water. We solved this partly last year by moving most of our boats to a different town on a different lake with no ferries, but then the commute was problematic (not just in terms of time, but also because we never had enough cars, and this alternate site was so remote that public transport was not a viable alternative).
For the ìbest riverî category, including only places I have personally been on, I am a fan of the Charles River in Boston. It has almost nine rowable miles, the boathouses are spread out so congestion is minimalized, it has enough straight bits for pieces, a huge Basin (including a racecourse, although the racecourse is not protected and I have raced in some interesting conditions there), and enough nooks and crannies to serve all types. Bits of it are even narrow enough to coach from the bikepath (which I have done successfully).
ìBest lakeî goes to the Estany de Banyoles, in northern Catalonia. Even on windy days, I have yet to see a ripple on those waters. Iím not sure why, entirely, because it is not overly protected (in the foothills of the Pyrenees, but nothing right on top of it). But there is also a limit to water users it is a natural preserve (ìestanyî is an untranslatable Catalan word for a certain type of lake fed by underground volcanic springs). I know some folks like it for training camps, so it is conceivable that it gets crowded at certain times of year, but I have never been there at those times. Bigger than the Rotsee, it seems to me to be more versatile for training purposes. I became fond of it after spending the Summers of 1991 and 1992 there.
There is something to be said about natural race courses such as on the Rotsee or the Estany de Banyoles. Far more popular for international competition seem to be the man-made racecourse-cum-training facility, which are basically enormous outdoor swimming pools as far as I am concerned. They are 2500 meters long and eight lanes wide, meeting minimum FISA specifications, but they have absolutely no character, unless we want to count bad character. Normally, to make such a racecourse requires a pretty flat place to dig, so they lack the natural charm of the Rotsee and the Estany de Banyoles, not to mention the lack of natural barriers like the Alps and the Pyrenees. At a training camp in Munich this past Spring, we nearly froze to death as the winds swept across the featureless plains of Central Germany. These course have no length just to the end and spin and to the end and spin and to the end and spin. Good for measuring timed pieces, but not for a variety of workouts. In Munich, we did benefit from timed pieces, something we cannot measure adequately on our home waters. But I wouldnít want to train there on a regular basis.
Perhaps the worst man-made racecourse I have trained on is the one in Nottingham, which was positioned in such a way as to maximize the wind so it could be used for sailing as well as rowing. The two do not go together, if it is not obvious. A course good for sailing is not likely good for rowing, and vice versa. Numerous British championships are held there and regularly canceled. What is worse than the windy conditions is the fact that the wind usually comes from the side, and the amount of wind and chop varies from lane to lane in my mind, even worse than dreadful conditions for a race is unfair conditions favoring one lane over another. The only thing that makes training in Nottingham useful (at least from the Notts County boathouse the other Nottingham clubs do not have this option) is that the boats can be walked over a small hill and carried to a dock on the Trent River, which is more protected and affords a few miles of rowable water for steady-state workouts. I would not consider this a two-facility a two-site option, because there are no transport issues. The boats are either walked a few feet to the 2K racecourse docks, or they are walked about two hundred meters to the Trent River, and the decision can be made once at the boathouse. For the coaches, crews on both bodies of water are able to be followed by bike.
The best man-made racecourse I have been on is Lake Carnegie in Princeton, New Jersey. They just donít make lakes like they used to in the old days. Youíd never guess this is not a natural body, except that maybe it is too idea to be natural. Still, it is not as protected as Lucern, and conditions are not guaranteed. The squat pine trees of New Jersey just donít measure up to the Alps.
It is certainly nice to discuss these issues in the abstract. Of course, most people do not have the luxury of choice, they must take the water they are given. The issue of choice most often comes up when considering where to go for a training camp. This takes on different considerations, as where someone might want to train is not necessarily where someone might want to call home. In selecting a site for a training camp, the best thing to do is to find a place which contrasts most from the home waters. So if a squad is used to training on a short body of water, then it should find a place it can row for miles and miles. If a squad is used to training on a wide, windy, and amorphous body, then maybe one of these man-made lakes with every hundred meters marked is a good idea.