I’d always been curious about rowing but had always believed that I didn’t have the right physical make up to do it. I’d also never seen or heard of any local clubs, or even knew anyone involved in it. Like most other people my only exposure to it was watching Redgrave and Pinsent pick up their Olympic gold medals every four years or randomly catching the Boat Race on TV. I’d used the indoor rowing machine on many occasions at the gym, but that was it.
I first became intrigued in actually doing it as a sport at a work sales conference in Dublin, Ireland. As with many other similar meetings we had an external speaker come along to use as a motivational tactic. These took on various forms throughout the years, including the Olympic gold medal cyclist Chris Boardman, a hostage negotiator, a blind marathon runner, Olympic gold medal swimmer Adrian Moorhouse and a host of others. Being sports mad, I always find these really interesting. But I know there are many people who find the whole thing completely irritating. In fairness, there is always a tenuous link between the experience of the presenter and how that can be applied in a business context. It’s very hard to make the leap from someone sat on a bike as a living with one sole aim to win a gold medal, to convincing someone in hospital to buy a sticky dressing. Having a clear plan, meeting targets, playing to your strengths etc are very relevant but it’s an analogy only. I just like hearing from professional sportsmen and getting a glimpse in to their world. One of the perks of the job as far as I’m concerned.
On this particular occasion, the presenter was Garry Herbert. He was the cox for the Searle brothers in the coxed pair at the Atlanta games. He famously cried his eyes out on the podium whilst the Searle brothers towered above him and looked slightly bemused. It’s a very inspirational race. They beat the Italian Abagnale brothers who had been unbeaten in the run up to the games, and they did it through sheer guts and determination. Garry showed the race during his presentation and explained the psychology that they had deployed to win against all the odds. As part of the session he asked for volunteers to row on an ergo for thirty seconds. I can’t even remember why, but being me, I volunteered. It turns out I did ok, Garry made some comment about being impressed with the metres gained and I won whatever challenge it was that he’d got us to do. It may not have been much, but it was enough to get me thinking. Garry completed his presentation and I made a beeline afterwards to say how much I’d enjoyed his talk. He seemed genuinely grateful I’d said something, I think he’d been fairly nervous. I guess it can be pretty daunting to stand up in front of a group of strangers, even if you have won an Olympic gold medal.
On the way back from the conference I got chatting to a colleague of mine and mentioned that I fancied getting in to rowing but didn’t think I had the right physique. He encouraged me to give it a go. ‘What have you got to lose?’ was his remark. He had a point. When I got back home I searched local clubs and found out that there were two not far from me in Burton-Upon-Trent. I literally had no idea they were there. Based on no other reason other than one club looked slightly more appealing than the other, I emailed the club secretary of Burton Leander and enquired about joining. I got a response pretty quickly inviting me to come along to a Sunday morning club session to meet him and have an introductory session, so that’s what I did.
The introduction basically involved a guide around the clubhouse and a lesson on how to row properly on an ergo. The club consisted of a weights room, indoor rowing area, club meeting room complete with kitchen and bar, and a boathouse filled with all sizes of rowing boats from single sculls to Eights. As a member you were allowed to use any club boat and had access to all the facilities for a very small annual membership fee. The clubhouse was right next to the river Trent, and I got to watch the club members row up and down the river in front of the landing pontoon. I was made to feel very welcome and any doubts about being the wrong physical size were dissipated when I looked around and saw all shapes, sizes and ages of those involved. I agreed to come back the following week where they promised I would get to go in a training boat to learn the basics of sculling. Now this was completely new to me too. I wasn’t aware that you could row with two oars i.e. sculling. I had only previously seen people in what I learnt were sweep oar boats i.e. single oar, where you had crew members rowing on different sides. I also learnt that rowing on the right side of a sweep oar boat was called ‘stroke side’, and the left was ‘bow side’. Confusingly the rower at the front of the boat was also called the ‘stroke man’ and the person at the back was at ‘bow’. The stroke person generally set the rhythm of the boat for the other rowers to follow. The person at bow generally steered the boat with their feet using a foot plate attached to the rudder underneath the boat, unless it was a coxed boat which in that case the cox would steer using a pulley system. If there was a cox, they would set the tempo, steer and drive the race tactics. Without a cox, this fell to a nominated person within the boat to make the calls. Confused? Yep, I was too.
Burton Leander as it turned out was more of a sculling club. Most of the boats were used for rowing with two oars each, and of course you could only row single boats by sculling. The minimum for a sweep oar boat was 2 people, which was called a pair. As I later found out, these were the most tricky to row as balance was crucial. But as a beginner at Burton Leander, sculling was the way to learn. That following Sunday I got in the ‘yellow boat’ which was very stable and was attached with a rope to someone on the pontoon so they could reel you back in if you were struggling. The first experience in one of these was quite nerve wracking even though it was virtually impossible to capsize. The technique of placing the oars or ‘blades’ in the water was something you had to get used to whilst learning how to balance the boat using your body position.
It took some time, but slowly I got used to sculling.
It wasn’t long before I was put in an Octuple, an eight man sculling boat. This was fairly safe for everyone because with that amount of people even a complete novice can’t cause the boat to capsize. It also meant that the person behind me could coach me by talking me through the movement and exercises designed to improve technique. The coaches talked about not ‘catching a crab’ which I learnt was not some STD reference, but instead meant not getting your blade stuck in the water because you’d got it twisted. I would catch many crabs throughout my rowing time. A particularly spectacular one occurred whilst rowing in an eight in preparation for the Head of the River race down on the Thames. I unwisely decided that I could tighten my Velcro straps on my footboard whilst rowing. In turns out you can’t. The next thing I knew I was underwater after effectively catapulting myself out of the boat. Bobbing up out of the water I started laughing as the rest of the crew looked at me, trying to understand just how I’d managed to end up out of the boat.
I managed to capsize on numerous occasions whilst in the single scull. Having taken up rowing quite late on I think I was overly nervous about trying not to make a mistake. This didn’t help. Being relaxed is the best way to keep balanced. On one occasion I caught a huge crab in one of the long stretches of water a couple of km’s up river. I ended up upside down but managed to get myself back in and get going again. As I was completely on my own no-one actually saw me do it and by the time I got back to the club I had completely dried out. A clubmate helped pull me in to the pontoon and noticed a large amount of water sloshing about in the foot well. He asked if I’d capsized, and I flatly denied it. There was no other logical reason for the water in the boat but admitting it was a no no. It was just a recipe for relentless ribbing from the lads, so I kept shtum.
The coached outings were great fun and I learnt a lot. The real way to make improvements though is to master the single scull. Once I had learnt the basics in the yellow boat, the next step was to learn to row solo with extra stabiliser floats attached to the rigging. This was to get you used to the narrower design of the single scull and lean balance before progressing to scull without the stabilisers.
It’s fair to say I was very nervous to begin with, as most novice scullers are but the coaches and club mates were very patient and supportive. The challenge was to progress to be good enough to earn a place in the crew boats with the aim of entering races. After a few weeks this is what happened and I began to train in a quad (four man sculling boat). The river in Burton is a great stretch of water. You can row around 4 kilometres from the clubhouse upstream before turning back round. This was great for training sessions as we tended to do drills and exercise on the way up the river, and then do races on the way back down. The feel of a boat moving fast through the water when you are going at full speed is pretty exhilarating and I soon got the bug for racing.