I thought I knew what exhaustion was. That was before yesterday. That was before I spent 11 hours waiting around outside in 2-degree weather, punctated by 2, yes 2 4-kilometer head races, each raced at 32 spm the whole course. Came home, took a 20 min scalding shower to bring my core back up to temp, downed 2 cups of tea, got into bed at 10 minutes to 7, and slept for 11 hours. How the rest of my crew managed to go out drinking after that i'll never know. For the sake of my ego, i'm telling myself that it has nothing to do with the fact that i'm 6 to 8 years older than they, but rather, that they're not working a hard.
Sometimes that is the case. Like today. My four did 3 x 2K at 24, 26, and 28 spm. We put the pressre down, we powered it out, we moved the boat. On the last piece I gave everything I had left. I save nothing. I wrecked myslef. I totally fucked myself over. I did it as though I were alreading in Bejing. Hence the reason I was so pissed off when after that my coach said, "right. that was good. good attack, that's what we're looking for. On the way back to the boathouse, we're going to do (that's the royal "we," by the way, meaning "you") 2 x 2 min at 32, full-out. I want to see some real pressure here." I hate it when they do that.
'Right', I thought to myself. 'If he want's to see pressure, I'll show him pressure. I want to be in the top 4. I'm going to show him I'm made of tougher shit than anyone else on this crew.' So I powered it down for all I was worth. I had nothing left, but I found more somehwere, and I honked on it. At the end of the second piece I was wheeing, panting, and moaning. I could barely hold my head up. I was done. And then I heard my bow woman start talking, perfectly calmly. We hadn't taken 4 strokes on the wind-down when she starts chit-chatting away with 2 seat. She wasn't even out of breath!
Maybe she thinks that's some sort of a demonstration of fitness, as in 'look at me - you lot are all falling over and i'm not even breathting hard; i'm so much fitter than you,' but as far as i'm concerned, if you aren't even out of breath, you're not pulling; you're dead weight in the boat.
I don't do this sport to haul whiney, whingey little short-asses around and show them the scenery. I do it for the drive, the glory, and the love of the thing. I'm sick of being in a club that rewards my bow-woman's sort of behavior, and holds me back when I train twice as often and 3 times as hard. Don't know how much longer i can put up with this sort of shit.
6 comments:
Did you say 'Hey, fuck face? If you can talk after that, you weren't pulling. Either get in the boat and move it or fuck off and give someone else your seat.'
It is not a nice thing to do and you probably shied away from it because you are a nice person but it needs to be done. I'm a nice person but I have done that to rowers both bigger and better than me who weren't cutting it.
Yes. It causes friction.
Yes. Heads will turn.
Yes. Words will probably be exchanged.
Yes. You will probably never speak to that girl again.
But you have the moral high ground here. I have phenomenal recovery. I can max a 2k to the point where they have to peel me off the floor and carry me to a corner only for me to crawl back to the erg and do another 1000 at the same pace just to see if I can ten minutes after yakking. I can erg pb at UT2 for an hour and half at 20spm and still sprint the last minute in sub 1-30. But I have never finished a race, piece, whatever, in a boat and been able to speak afterwards. At times, holding the oar, breathing and staying conscious has been difficult. She wasn't pulling. Your boat is slow because of her and people like her. Read Pinsent and Foster on the need for a crew to go together as one, with total commitment, all for one, one for all, with total trust in your crewmates or be prepared to watch the wheels fall off on your rowing ambitions. You want people who will die on the line, not before, having given everything on the limit of their balance of high averages and no mistakes. Get in her face. Get her in front of your coach (if you trust him) and have it out with her. Don't let her hide. If she wants to be a recreational rower, she wants to be in another boat. If she's doing it to be able to say that she's a rower, she needs to be either in another boat with the other wannabes or she needs to understand that rowing means throwing up over the side of the boat away from your competitors so they don't know how hard they pushed you.
i'd have loved to, and it wasn't me being a nice person that stopped me. (i'm really not all that nice - i can't imagine where you got that notion.) i bit my tongue because the last time a woman got in her teammate's face for not working hard enough, she was chucked off the squad altogether - by the guy who is my current coach. i'm terrified to risk similar consequences.
CB, That isn't your problem
how is that not my problem? last year, k bollocked a teammate out for slacking off and not pulling. coach told k she wasn't a team player and was brining down the moralle of the squad, and chucked her off. fortunately, k owns her own scull and can afford the racking fees, so she's still around and is our champion sculler. but if i get chucked off, that's it; i'm done. so i keep head down, my mouth shut, and pull twice as hard to make up for the slacker.
It doesn't and shouldn't work like that. Your boat and future plans will go nowhere if she isn't pulling her weight. Logically and physically, you cannot pull hard enough to compensate for her lack of effort. If your times are good enough and your technique competent enough and you're one of the eight or four top rated members of the squad then you can't be thrown off the team - whether he likes you or not. I've had disagreements with crew members and coaches - to the point of other people having to step in but I've never been dropped for having an opinion and voicing it. If you are dropped and this is a university boat club then take it up with the university authorities. You're already building enough evidence to show that your coach is a complete prick who a) doesn't know what he's doing b) plays favourites. Find another boat club. There are ones in Bristol. Look at Bristol Uni's rankings and wins in 2004. They're the same squad. If they didn't final at BUSA, make senior open Henley final rounds (at least the first)or make top fifty head of the river (at least) then they're probably not going to take you where you want to go or provide you with the technical and physical coaching that you'll need to get there.
no CB sorry. I meant that someone else getting chucked out of the team for not pulling their weight wasn't your problem. I didn't realise that it was the person who brought it to the coachs attention got chucked off the team. Best thing to do here is to have a word with the person concerned about it. Try being a bit sneaky. If they do it again then after training ask them if they're feeling ill as you noticed that they weren't pulling as hard as they normally do. If you keep that up for a while then they might start to get the hint.
Other than that then herebes right. You can't and shouldn't jeopardise your talents and targets.
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