Portland Fall Classic

Sunday was the 2nd annual Portland Fall Classic. Last year was the first for this race, and this year the organizers took it up a notch and got a lot more attendance. There were about 175 boats racing in three flights, and as a bonus we got a strong east wind-- a direct headwind for most of the course. The challenge for Lewis & Clark at this regatta is that while our boathouse is only a short row from the start (1.5k), the return trip from the finish line is more then 8k in plenty of chop and wakes.



Our women's 8 for this race is best defined by potential-- four freshman, three sophomores, and a junior. This boat has developed a ton throughout the fall and I think most importantly learned a lot about the level of work required to compete in college varsity crews. Props go especially to a novice athlete who was tapped to fill in after one of our athletes had to miss the weekend for a family event; she did a great job.



Our women's four had a very solid row and took first in their event; I think the headwind was actually a good thing for this crew as it let them focus on the lower rate, long and connected rowing we've been doing through the fall.



The men's four pounded down the course and just missed out on a win. As it was, the challenge for them was then the spin and row back since. . .



Two of the guys had to jump into the Novice 8. We had oringially planned to double just our varsity freshman who was new to sweep this year. As it turned out, one of our novice men fell ill saturday night with a high fever and we had to put in a 2nd-year rower. As such, the novice men's 8 rowed exhabition but still powered through and put down the fastest time of the day. Big props go to the two chaps who doubled up; that's roughly 32k of rowing on a Sunday.





The two novice women's 8's were boated up as roughly even boats for the long row and both represented well, finishing 2nd and 4th out of six boats. This even boating goes a long way to helping them work together as a team and bringing all the athletes along for the spring.

All told it was a great race and one which bodes well for the future of high quality head races in Portland. The course itself showed off the city to great advantage, starting behind Ross Island and then racing down through downtown under the bridges. There are excellent spectator vantage points throughout. We're hoping the regatta holds onto this date because it makes for a very good complement to the Charlie Brown.

The fall season for us this year was a 'tour of the Wilammette'. . . first in Salem, then Corvallis, and finally on our stomping grounds both upstream and downstream from our dock.

Thoughts from Charlie Brown

So, this post was delayed. I have no good excuse, except for being pretty fatigued after the weekend. The coaching never wears me out-- my enthusiasm for that part of the job is limitless. The running of races, and the work which goes into it, does. I needed a little break, and have been doing very little other then the necessary the last couple of days.

Since the raw results are up and available, I thought I'd do a little pictorial review of the first flight of the regatta and offer some insights into the races a few of our boats had.



Our novice women had a great day. This is the "B" four, the "A" four being long gone in their race-winning effort. It's good to look at our results in the context of the fact that we had between 1-2 weeks fewer on the water then our other DIII competitors; at this time of year that can make an enormous difference. We're banking on the fact that the extra week or two in spring will also make a huge difference in our speed come the spring season races.



The men's team put their small boat training into great effect, but were unfortunatly held up by the realities of open river racing. This pair had the fastest time of the day by quite a bit, but cut a buoy and got a penelty as a result. They actually hit the buoy-- but it went down the wrong side of the hull. Oops. Our other men's pair was also having a fantastic row but lost a skeg to river obstacles and was unable to complete the piece. It's a big challenge to row a head race in a pair any way you cut it.



Like the men's pair, this novice men's four had the fastest time of the day but cut a buoy and got a one-minute penelty. They came back with a vengange in the 2nd flight and won the novice eight by about a minute. This is a great group of guys; they fit Lewis & Clark to a T: independant, individual, thoughtful, but also very driven.




Our women's varsity 8 succeeded at the primary goal we set out for this fall-- be able to translate any lineup into speed. We only did a total of ~2-3 practices in lineups fairly similar to this one, and we finished only ~20 seconds behind the winning crew. I don't know how other people prepared for the race but the signs are positive to me that the work we put in translated to a good ability to generate speed.

One more note about fall season and head racing in general that we work to communicate to our athletes. This is a means to an end. It's a celebration of fall racing, a chance to demonstrate our work, and an opportunity to compare ourselves to the competition. It's not, however, what we're training for. In the end the fall season is a way to set us up for a better spring, and it's important to look at our fall results in that context.

Tomorrow some thoughts about Fall Classic.

A little Break. . .

I know, recaps were promised. Soon, I promise. Really.

Charlie Brown & Fall Classic

Woof. I think I speak for the athletes and coaches when I say I'm really worn out after our two head races yesterday & today. I just wanted to congratulate our athletes on an excellent fall season, and to briefly say how incredibly grateful I am to work with such a fine group of professional coaches; both yesterday and today their dedication, hard work, and skills made two very well-run regattas possible.

I'll post some recaps and discussion tomorrow, but in the meantime. . .

Charlie Brown results can be found here.

And a great photo gallery of the first flight of racing at the Charlie Brown, including shots of our Varsity Women's 8, Men's pairs, and Novice Fours, can be found here. Many thanks to Dr. John Rudoff, a local masters rower, for these pictures.

Fall season's in the bag.

Wrapping it up

And just like that, our fall practices for the varsity squad are done. We finished up our last three days on the water under clear sky with great stars and something I'd never seen before on the river-- shooting stars. I think I saw five or six in the last three mornings. Yesterday included one with a trail of fire across the sky. . . very cool, and distracting for a coach trying to focus.

Wednesday was some longer pieces working on rhythm, yesterday was some racing pieces vs. the men's four, and today was a fairly short, technical row with some rate builders. We've been talking about getting the catch locked on, especially as the rate goes up. To all the rowers out there. . . don't think about the catch. Be ready for it, body tall, arms long, moving with your boat on the slide, blades square, BAM! you're in and driving.

We're hosting the Charlie Brown regatta tomorrow, named in memorial of a great coach at Lewis & Clark and a tremendous contributor to the Portland rowing community who passed too soon from cancer. Looking forward to a fairly big race; eight schools are attending and entering anywhere from one up to about 15 boats. Should be lots of fun. We're mentally ready and physically ready. Technique wise. . . mostly good, sometimes it's more like:

ERGO!

AWESOME workout this morning on the ergs with the novice & varsity women all together. We did 750 meter pieces with three athletes taking turns on each erg. I'm very excited for a number of reasons:

- Some really great performances today from both novice and varsity finding new limits and discovering their strength.

- We tested our new erging space, which will be tremendously enhanced by the addition of 10 more ergs this winter. This will let us run full-squad workouts in the first few weeks of the spring season.

- There was a great attitude and get-to-it-ness throughout. Good support from teammates to each other and a wonderful vibe that I hope we can continue to replicate every chance we get to work the squads together.

Plus, the men reported cold temperatures and fog this morning. . . so it was a good day to be inside.

More from Oregon State

The river at Oregon State flows very quickly. There's forest on both sides and just upstream from their boathouse is downtown Corvallis; downstream takes you away from town. It's very quiet and very pretty this time of year.

More about our workout.

We went into this session with no delusions of grandeur. We are a Division III team with aspirations of national-level ranking. Currently I'd put us somewhere in the 15-20th-ranked DIII group. The Oregon State women are top-20 ranked in Division I, the men top-15. They far outgun us in terms of their training, recruiting, and available talent.

So why race? Primarily because it's of huge value to put yourself up against faster crews. It's important to do so in context, however, and offer ourselves the opportunity for improvement. Had this been a 'regular' head race (say, 5k upriver against the clock) we wouldn't have had very much to gain. Since it was a workout-- 12 x 3' pieces for the women, 5 x 6' for the men-- we had ample opportunities to test ourselves against faster competition and see if we could improve our own performance to match.

The woman's 8 was a great example of this. We were spectacularly outgunned, and in the first set of 4 x 3' finished behind by many lengths. The next two sets were slightly higher rates (better for us, being smaller) and the coaches also went to greater lengths to keep the workout close. I could see an excellent response from our athletes as Oregon State worked through us-- each time it took them longer to pass. They still passed us, but our athletes experienced a lot of growth in making it more challenging each time.

Our men's four had a similar day. They lined up for a series of 1-1.2 kilometer pieces, upriver. Timewise, they ran about six minutes. The men have been in small boats for the most part, and mostly doing technical work and steady state. This was a wake-up call of the first order, and we were dropped rather quickly on the first few pieces. Our guys kept on the fight and reduced the time gap on each piece. By the end, we had taken a 20-second gap down to under 10 seconds. Again, still a loss, but major learning and improvement for us.

Workouts like Saturday's provide a lot of confidence and motivation when the chips are down against crews more similarly our speed. The push for us is to move ourselves closer to Oregon State speed-- and we've actually beaten some of their boats in the past (admittedly, our men's varsity 8 beat their freshman 8, but we'll take it!). We may not get top-20 Division I speed this year, but if striving for that level lets us get top-10 Division III speed, that's an improvement.

Challenge, as always, is the core of improvement.

Video from Oregon State

I'll write up the complete story of our trip down to Beaver Nation on Monday, but for now here's a couple of video clips from the racing this morning. It was an excellent experience for all of our athletes; we may not have won a ton of pieces (counting all boats, I think the score goes OSU; 30, L&C, 2) but we got an excellent workout and were able to test our rowing and our fitness under duress. Superb preparation for the two-race weekend coming up.







HUGE thanks to Oregon State for being incredible hosts, welcoming us into their workout, and lending us the equipment so we didn't have to bring a trailer.

Potential

Two signs of potential the last few days, things that help get me excited for spring.

Wednesday one of our novice women came down to fill a varsity seat for a sick teammate. She was a little nervous, did a great job, and came off the water excited about the rowing she'd just done. Only rowing in her fourth week she showed great poise and then dropped me an e-mail after practice, asking for more suggestions. Each practice the novice increase their ability to contribute to the team, and as a result our program grows stronger.

Today we did 90 second pieces, preparing for tomorrow's workout at OSU. A woman's 4, woman's 8, and men's 4 all out lined up and racing. All three boats had excellent rows and most importantly, the woman's 8 lineup showed tremendous improvement and drive after the shaky row yesterday. By their own evaluation, yesterday was 2/10, today 8.5/10 (what's the .5?). Obviously, we've still got things to improve on (1.5, apparently) but the change, willingness to challenge themselves, and the overall improvement are very promising.

Put these two things together and I'm looking forward to spring.

In the Dark

This is not from practice this week, but it gives you some idea of why we aren't posting a ton of video or photo evidence of our practices right now!




It's part of the deal.

Yesterday we had an excellent row; we temporarily set aside some of our long-distance work and did some shorter pieces; 2 x 5 minutes and then a 3 minute and 2 minute piece. There was truly excellent racing and it's good to see when the lower rate work translates well to fast rowing.

Today was another excellent row for our woman's four, while the woman's 8 had some challenging pieces. We'll be back in action tomorrow and working to make a few changes, focus on some fundamentals, and get the speed we saw Wednesday back in the water.

The men have been in small boats of late and are continuing to work on developing detail skills. This is the sort of work that pays off big as we start the spring build.

This weekend we travel to Oregon State for a scrimmage/joint practice. Doing a workout with a PAC-10, Division I program will be a good challenge for the crews; my hope is that we'll get a good sense of the effort, professionalism, and seriousness of purpose required for success at a high level. At the same time, I hope we can bring our sense of fun and love of the sport and share a bit with them about what makes Division III rowing enjoyable.

Back at it.

Practice on the water resumed this week with a very nice session. The focus is on rhythm and the transfer of weight onto the footboard. The timing of the leg drive with the placement of the blade is one of the most difficult and essential skills to master; in crew rowing the problem is compounded as not only the individuals but the whole boat need to time this operation together. We made good progress this morning on pushing the boat as one.

Two short weeks remain in our fall segment; hard to believe it's almost over. I sent an e-mail to the team yesterday reminding them of the focus-- making gains for the spring:

"Think a little on these questions for the next two weeks. . . take something away from every practice. This is the time of year that's dark, it's getting cold, school builds up-- these are all challenges to work through, and there are still gains to be made. Think long term, because that's the goal. . ."

The goal now is cementing technical gains, and understanding the physical process, so we start off better in January then we would otherwise.

A week off?

That's right-- no practice this week. I slept in this morning.

So why, you ask, are we taking a week off? NCAA rules give 19 total weeks to DIII programs. We can use those however we see fit, but that's the total number of weeks we have to practice as a team. Lewis & Clark has a fall break this week-- Thursday & Friday there are no classes and most of the students plan to get out of town. Since we stay in town for spring break I've always liked to give the athletes fall break off. So if we were to practice this week we'd be using one of our 19 weeks for three days of practice. We choose to take the week off instead and tack one more week onto spring, hopefullly letting us build into our primary season more purposefuly.

This process of planning the season has always seemed a little ridiculous to me. I'm a big supporter of one of the primary ideals of Division III; that sports should be one part of a student's education and be kept in balance with accademics and other activites. It's always seemed crazy to me, though, that we use weeks to control this-- in theory we could practice 30 or 40 hours during our weeks in-season (we don't, as there wouldn't be much of a team if we did), and not at all out-of-season. Why not set it up at 14 hours a week in-season, and say 5-6 hours out-of-season? Wouldn't that be more balanced, and let people continue to particpate in one of their passions throughout the year?

Anyway, probably not many people are interested in this aspect of my job. The bottom line is, no practice this week and the coaches are hoping our athletes pursue their training individually and in small groups. We'll be back in action next week and pushing through our last three fall races, looking to send the team into winter with some good results.

Pictures from Head of the Willamette

Head of the Willamette

Just got home from the WIRA fall meeting; five hours spent on a Sunday in the fall working on making a championship regatta with a highly diverse association of schools a little better. Collegiate rowing in the west takes many forms and there were several issues to work through. Overall I think we did a good job trying to maintain the cohesion of the membership while addressing individual schools needs.

Head of the Willamette was yesterday; thanks go to Willamette University for hosting. The home team put up a good show; the extra week they've spent on the water showed and they were faster across the board. I was very happy with our crews regardless of results: we stuck to our focus, rowed the target rates (low, long, powerful is the focus) and for the most part had good rows. Much like the debates at the WIRA meeting, this was two schools on different tracks coming together very early in the season for a race: we both have confidence that our preparations will pay of later in the year. It will be interesting to see who's right.

A really excellent part of our regatta was the quality of our travel arrangements; for three weeks into the season we traveled very efficiently. The team worked very well together loading, rigging, and supporting each other on the beach. This may seem a minor point but I'm a big believer that being professional about the details helps set a mood that translates to better results and a sense of pride.

Despite my promise I didn't get any pictures. I know our athletes took a bunch and I'll try to get access to some to post.

The Rain is Back

After a very dry September (one of the driest on record) October arrived with a big hit of rain. I got my annual soaking-without-good-rain gear yesterday during a rather shocking downpour while out with the sculling class. As always after this rite of fall I was extensively overdressed for practice today.

Oregon feels like Oregon again, wet, green, drip everywhere.

The trailer is loaded, almost surprisingly, and we're off to do some race pieces with Willamette University tomorrow. I'll do my best to get a variety of pictures and maybe some video from the bank. As I discussed with the crews this morning, this is a very low-priority race but how seriously you take the early season events feeds into your expectations for the rest of the year. We've had some great rows this week and I'm hoping those hold up under racing conditions.

Up Before Dawn

There are both upsides and downsides to early morning practices. Right now, as we hit October, it's dark for a pretty significant chunk of practice. Lights are critical; the coaches spend about five minutes every morning checking lights, replacing batteries, making sure we'll be seen. Coaching is more difficult-- it's harder to work on what you can't see. Also, it's just plain early. I was out of coffee yesterday and struggled to stay focused in the practice.

Upsides. We're done early, and our practice schedule doesn't interfere with classes. In a sport that practices off-campus and requires people to be present to make boats work, this is key. The water is usually fantastic. There's very little boat traffic most of the time-- or at least what traffic there is (fishermen) tend to anchor and stay in one place instead of waking us.

The best part is being on the river at sunrise. The dawn is incredible this time of year. As John Steinbeck would say, there is something true about starting your day on the water, working towards a purpose.

The video will be low quality, but hopefully you can see the awesome water and get a feel for the amazing light.