Scheduling

Very quiet in the office this week; I've hardly heard from or seen anyone as people wrap up the short week of class and head out for Thanksgiving. A good time to grab a cup of coffee and work on scheduling the spring season.

All the regattas are set, of course, so mostly what I'm doing is trying to figure out the practice plans. Which days to erg on, which days to row. What kinds of workouts. When are the erg tests. Making sure the practices are both technically and physically set up to send us into racing prepared, and that we're doing enough both on the water and the erg to perform well on the test days and on the racecourse. Basic questions that come up every year are things like; how many test days are enough? Is this too much work? Is there a good balance in the training?

The main reason we make plans is to have something to change.

Pioneer Crew wishes you all a very happy Thanksgiving-- I'm looking forward to it. Long bike rides scheduled for tomorrow, to stimulate the appetite, and for Friday, to assuage the guilt.

Elk Rock Cleanup

Today was our annual, sometimes biannual, service project at Elk Rock Island. About 5k upstream of our boathouse, Elk Rock Island is the tip of an old volcano that represents a unique habitat in the Portland area. In co-operation with Willamette Riverkeeper and the City of Portland Parks Department, we've gone to Elk Rock for the last four years to do trash pickup and habitat restoration.




Looking upstream from the north shore of Elk Rock are the cliffs; this is probably my single favorite spot on the river. Because of the hard basaltic rock, the river can't erode the cliffs or the island, so the flow here is deep and fast.



Looking downstream into Milwaukie Bay. We row past this spot often and it's cool to contribute to the upkeep of a part of the river on our regular stomping grounds.



The group, post cleanup. Obviously the Ivy pulling got to us after a point. I've always enjoyed this event as it's a good chance to catch up with team members in the late fall, when contact is limited. The only downside today was the late notice for the event limited the size of our group; still, we got a lot of good work done.

A reminder. . .

This post serves as a life lesson, both for me and for our current athletes, and maybe even for a few future athletes. . .

I just got off the erg. Now, I don't erg much anymore. I've turned to cycling and ride almost every day, race year round, and have a good time doing it. I put in between five and eight hours a week on the bike and consider myself in good shape.

Bike racing takes a break between the end of November and the middle of February, and I consider this a good time to do a few different things to mix up my workout routine. Thus, after a short ride up to school today I jumped on the erg for the strenuous workout of 2 x 15 minutes.

This, delicately put, kicked my ass.

The reminder is this: if you're away from the erg, the erg is a huge challenge. If you train regularly on the erg, the erg is a powerful tool for building speed on the water.

Fumes

Sunset over the Willamette, from the sculling course. As forecast, we did our final row of Fall 2008 Thursday, taking three doubles out onto a fast-moving, much higher, and debris-heavy river. It was a nice goodbye to a good group, and we then put the boats up and shut the bay.

Only to open it again the next afternoon and get on with sanding, washing, and painting six sets of blades Friday, Saturday, and again yesterday. 20 cans of spraypaint later and THAT chore is done. Painting oars is a once a year PITA that must be done. We changed our blade design this year, eliminating the black blade with orange chevron in favor of an all-orange blade. This is both new and old; Lewis & Clark prior to 2002-2003 used an all-orange blade. We'll add a decal yet to be determined for a very cool professional look come spring. In the meantime, we can see the blades much better now.

As I mentioned I'm glad that's over with. By yesterday I had a strong headache from paint fumes. Public service announcement: don't sniff paint.

Driving the Desk

As of either yesterday or maybe Thursday it's time to give up on driving a launch this fall and start driving the desk full time. Yesterday was the last row for the beginning rowing course; we had a good session and I used the time to work on some warm-up sequences for our team in the spring. We have a big pacific storm hitting the coast right now and today & tomorrow will be unrowable; I'm hoping to get the sculling course out for one more session Thursday. After that weather and darkness will take over the river and we'll close the bay for winter.

Then for me it's the desk, or the boathouse work bench. The theme becomes 'get ready' as the next three months are spent trying to do as much as we can to prepare for spring season; travel plans, race permits, clothing orders, training plans, boat repair, and of course recruiting. The more of these things I can get done now the less there is to do in spring when time is precious.

But of course none of us get into coaching for the paperwork. During all these tasks, essential as they are, my mind will be on the water.

Into Winter

Here's the view for our athletes for the next twelve weeks. We had our winter training meeting Wednesday evening. With Division III rules, we can't require or assign anything and cannot hold practices in the off season. As such everything is left up to the athletes. The primary point of the winter training meeting is to make sure the team has the knowledge to go about training themselves over the winter break; we don't need people to get crazy fast (although that's nice) but we do hope everyone chooses to be fit, be active, and be ready.

I drove down to Oregon State again yesterday and picked up our 10 'new-to-us' ergs. They're in great shape; new handles and a couple of other small repairs and they'll be set to go for our spring season. It was also great to catch up with a friend and former Lewis & Clark assistant coach who's now coaching at OSU. Our discussion reminded me that the challenges and rewards are truly all the same regardless of the level of rowing. The rules and money are different, but in the end, rowing is rowing.

Wet Leaves

Spent the weekend relaxing; it was wonderful. Except for the fact that the huge tree outside my house has begun its annual dump, and there was at least an hour spent raking, piling, and stuffing wet leaves into the yard waste bin. Wet leaves are the theme of cycling here as well-- rain this morning and lots of leaves on the road made for a slower, more cautious commute in.

Other signs of fall are the early admission deadline come & gone. We have some excellent prospects I'm very excited about-- both from an athletic standpoint and also from a personality standpoint they have the potential to bring a lot to the team. Our attention now turns to the group for regular admission; to anyone out there who's reading but has not been in touch yet drop me an e-mail! We love to hear from you, and we can probably give you some excellent advice about your application and an idea of how you might fit in with the team.

Posts will be a little less frequent the next few weeks as we lead into the holiday season, but I'll try to get an update up at least twice a week.

Oh, and most importantly-- REMEMBER TO VOTE! If you don't vote, you don't get to complain.