Manual Spring
For the third year, we GRP Rowers have disappeared from Craftsbury. It’s not that we’re afraid of the two more months of winter we still might face in our homeland. Rather, it’s dictated by the fact that we’re a liquid based sport that really starts up in April. In order for us to be ready to go at the first National selection regattas of the year, we need to head south in search of unfrozen waters. We’ll try to write off our lack of posting on how confused our biological clocks are by manually switching seasons.
Our team is a little different looking this year. We have 2 open weight women, 3 lightweight men, and now 8 heavyweight men. I would say this shift was both partly coincidental and purposeful. Various people moved on to the wide, fruitful, green pastures of life, while others found new locations for their pursuit of rowing. At the same time, as the Olympics near, we’ve specialized a bit more in heavyweight men as it may be where we can have a greater impact. Only mention this because we have new faces and a new approach.
The new team coupled with a change to selection procedures this year has turned our time in Clemson from being predominantly in singles to more of a team boat selection process. I’ll curb my personal opinions on all this for now, but will at least say that I think last year was very productive for our boat moving skills.
Clemson like any home away from home has its pros and cons (or deltas if you’ve recently gone to business school). Here’s a perk:
The weight room at Clemson is unbelievable. Each year, it has been updated and upgraded. What was once a simple Gatorade buffet has expanded to smoothies, Pro Bars, Stinger Waffles, and much more.
Anyways, the pros are things like: 2 buoyed race courses, gracious access to the weight room, enough to do to not go totally crazy but not enough to be too entertained or distracted, a VERY hospitable host team, plenty of vacation rentals, and a nearby Smoothie King. The cons from my point of view are few but important. While there’s a lot of available water here, it is water that is frequently not that conducive to rowing. You face these issues most places. If you want miles and miles to row on, they typically won’t be reserved for rowers. However, compared to other places I have trained I think there are more pleasure boaters, bass fishers, and unprotected winds on this body of water.
I’m not going to lie though, we’ve had a couple 80 degree days already. Don’t worry though, today was not one of them. 40s and rainy. We’re broken down into the 2 houses we had rented last year. Most of us are paired with people we don’t live with back home, so we get to cook with some fresh faces around us. There’s a group of lightweight athletes from Boston training here as well that include our alumnus Josh Ka-nez-knee (or rather Konieczny). Unfortunately, we haven’t intermingled with them that much as our schedules seem a bit different in focus and emphasis. Some of our lightweights have tangoed with them from time to time though. For the next four days, we have former Danish lightweight rower and coach Thomas Poulsen, staying with us. Hope to pick his brain, but he is spread across a pretty large group here with us and the lightweight camp. Additionally, we should have a surprise visit from the one and only Troy Howell tonight as he drops off a new double for us on his way to spring training with Middlebury College, where he is coaching this spring.
