Race Week. . .

Every year I forget how overpowering the double whammy of spring break and the NCRC Invitational is. That's me up above, climbing the mountain of paperwork up to our race this weekend and trying to make sure 17 schools with a total of 95 boats get good, fair, and safe races this Saturday.

Practice is a pleasure; yesterday I hopped on the erg with our athletes and it felt great to challenge myself and immerse in the physical instead of the intellectual. This morning's row was challenging (fatigue, nasty cross-headwind, etc) but there were glimpses of a breakthrough there; I'm looking forward to finding it.

Not much time for reflection on Daffodil; looking forward at the moment.

Daffodil Cup

Wet. Very, very wet. The rain didn't let up all day, but the good news is that the wind forecast (20+) proved entirely inaccurate, with good flat water for racing all day long.

I'm going to keep this short and will post a longer recap on Monday as I'm wiped. Overall good impressions; both varsity 8's in 5th, both varsity 4's in 4th. The Women's 8 was slowed by some "oar-to-oar engagement" with a rival crew off the start and lost the lead pack. I don't know if we would have been on terms in the race, but we're looking forward to giving it a go next week. Our Varsity men's 4 looked really nice and was pretty close on the crews in front; only a quick beep of the horn out of 3rd and not that far off 2nd as well.

First sprint races today for a few of our novices, and major props to our coxsawins today who did multiple races in those prior mentioned wet conditions; good teamwork and support all around. Looking forward to a couple days rest and we're back at it Monday afternoon in preparation for the NCRC Invitational next weekend.

What a day it has been. . .

Coaching is a game of highs and lows.

Today began last night, when my partner & I hosted the women's team at our house for dinner and heard a bit of news that's been on our mind since then.

This morning we were up early, and took our team as well as two launches to Vancouver Lake to put in the racecourse there. Around 1400 small buoys get clipped to seven two-kilometer long lengths of cable over the course of three and a half hours-- part fundraiser, part community service. We take great pride in doing it well and the course looks fantastic. There is something hypnotic about the lengths of small buoys stretching off over the flat water; it makes me itch for racing.

Back to Portland, launches back in, home for a quick shower and lunch.

Up to the office for about an hour and then to hitch up the shell trailer, only to get a huge flat on our rented truck. Lucky for me Novice Men's coach Max was there and helped me get it changed in a timely manner.

Down to the boathouse for practice where we had a wonderful row that left me very excited for tomorrow. Had to run while others supervised loading the trailer to make it to Les Schwab before they closed-- fantastic folks as always got our tire fixed so we can have a spare for the drive tomorrow.

Finally home, but this whole time my thoughts have been on the news from last night; that one of our team members was in the hospital with appendicitis. Another teammate spent most of last night in the ER with her and Novice Woman's coach Meghann has been up there since we got back from the lake this morning. She had successful surgery a short time ago and I'll be headed up there in an hour or so along with many others on the team once she's awake and can have visitors.

The low today was contemplating a member of our team struck from proud and strong athlete to patient; everything else we did seemed very unimportant in comparison. The high has been the people I'm fortunate enough to be around every day; athletes, friends, coaches, colleagues. The level of competence, care, concern, and the quality of everything we've done this day has been tremendous.

I am fortunate indeed, and there's no other group of people I'd rather travel to race with tomorrow. Although I'm very excited to see how we do, our thoughts will be always to the south, and thinking of our teammate and hoping she'll be joining us again soon.

Mo Racing

Racing 3-25 from Sam Taylor on Vimeo.

Spring Break, day 2. Article in the Oregonian this morning about binge drinking for spring break. . . I don't think our athletes are indulging in such at the moment, and I hope not otherwise as well. I'd say binge rowing is more correct.

Good technical row this morning, continuing to work on connection as the rate ramps up and with a little bit of work on starts. This afternoon was AWESOME as we got a women's varsity 8 together and met up with Rose City Rowing Club to do some 2' pieces. DIII rules allow informal scrimmages against junior programs within 50 miles. It works out very well for us since RCRC is about 4k downstream. The men took advantage yesterday afternoon and today it was the women's turn.

The big breakthrough for us today was intensity on the drive; I was incredibly pleased to see the attack on each piece and the level of commitment from the crew. We certianly have a lot to figure out still on the technical end, but overall our speed was very good and we were taking seats from the RCRC varsity at base cadence, which is a very good sign. As I told the women this morning, RCRC is very well coached, strong, and experienced-- if we can race with them we're in the ball game in our confrence.

To work on in the next two days: starts. Most especially keeping the current intensity and drive while staying composed on the recovery and keeping our timing and technique established.

Best Memories

Spring break is off and running; we had a great erg and lift around noon and hit the water around 3:30. Excellent row; eight and a pair out as we're still missing a few but we got some great work done working connection and holding onto force against the blade as the rate goes up. The pair was impressive all day, keeping up with the eight throughout. Waiting for the dock, though. . . stroke let go of her oar. It went around all the way parallel to the shell. I thought they were done for. Amazingly, they stayed calm (ish), relaxed, and got the blade back to stay dry.

Had a prospective rower out today in the launch as well and got to talk about my vision for the team and what I value in a program. I have one memory I keep coming back to as my ideal of what a DIII program should be. One year I had the fortune to coach a crew that made it to the national championship and earned a place on the podium. This was a dedicated group, hard workers, intelligent, the whole package. Best of all they knew how to have fun. The highlight of my year was having multiple coaches and rowers mention to us at the national championships how we were having the best time there.

To me, this is the perfect program; performing at the highest level, enjoying spending time with teammates, and having a tremendously great time doing so.

Friday Morning Racing

Friday Morning Racing from Sam Taylor on Vimeo.

Last practice before spring break; with a few folks already out we put together some Men's and Women's boats and went out for a racing practice. Did a bunch of 2' pieces with boats lined up next to each other, rates over 30, letting people get competitive and tear things up a bit.

Good fun, and now we're off until mid-day Tuesday. Over the years I've found this break is both excellent mentally (people get away from school and rowing for a few days) and physically, as everyone gets a chance to recover from the little aches and pains that build up by this time of the year. Personally I'm going to the coast for the weekend; looking forward to a couple days out of town to recharge, refocus, and get ready to roll into racing season.

Test Sucess!

Good tests this morning. Most important for me: everyone pulled. That's never a given in the middle of the spring season, when nagging injuries and illness can take their toll. People have a few aches and pains, and some have lost a few days due to sickness, but on the whole the squad is very healthy this year.

Overall we saw the numbers from the test today that we expected. Because we've spent some additional time on the erg this spring our athletes delivered exactly what we challenged them to; consistent aggression, solid numbers, and most came in within a second of their overall goal pace. To be "off" on this squad today you were two seconds away from your target split, which to me is actually just fine.

I sent this link to the team once we were done today; I saw it when I got home and it seemed very applicable. The point? Now we're done with erg testing. We'll still do our Monday erg workouts, but the goal of the last eight weeks of erg training was to gain the fitness and consistency we demonstrated today. Now we need to shift our focus to the boats and transferring that fitness into racing speed.

This starts tomorrow morning. I'm looking forward to it.

Bladework

Practice 3.17 from Sam Taylor on Vimeo.

Practice today was an easy row. Some of the women went out in pairs, and I took an eight with some of our most experienced rowers as well as a few who learned to row with the novice this fall. The goal was bladework, specifically the easy carry of the blade on the recovery and the smooth squaring prior to the hands hooking up to the catch.

In the video above you can see the 'before' shot; 2 & 4 are both a little late to square and as a result the catch is not as far to the bow as it could be and a little late. My favorite drill to work the concept is pause at the gunwhale; with the hands anchored to the gunwhale the only place to go on release of the pause is up. The 2nd half of the clip is the 'after', as we work into a pause sequence. 3 was having many of the same issues earlier in the row but did a nice job making changes and has progressed towards 'more correct', as did the others.

Good water today and no fisherman. I thought we had excellent focus today and got a lot of good technique work done while allowing for recovery prior to tomorrow's test.

Strangeness

Directly across from my office is the swimming pool. For some unknown reason there's a huge amount of air moving out of the pool into the hallway today, and when the doors to the pool are shut the whistling of the air moving around the cracks in the door is highly unnerving.

After making the call to cancel the race I spent a chunk of Friday afternoon out at the boathouse, working on a shell. The boat was on slings outside the bay and I was in a t-shirt in 55 degree sunshine. I was starting to doubt the forecast and my senses. The next day, though, dawned wet, windy, and wild. We made a good call--Vancouver Lake would have been completely unrowable. We got in some solid practice and intra-squad racing and I think the team was appreciative to be able to go home after 90 minutes of rain instead of ~5 hours.

We have a short week scheduled as Saturday is off for the spring break long weekend-- we'll take Saturday through Tuesday morning off and then get in three days of double sessions (as well as one race, now) before the Daffodil Cup on March 28th. This week we wrap up the erg focus with our 2nd, and final, 2k test Wednesday.

Preparing for a good test at this point is all about sharpening and recovery. Our workout this afternoon will provide the sharpening-- about 3/4 of our usual volume of work, with some solid time spent at 2k pace to help the athletes find their rhythm at test pace. Tomorrow morning will be a fairly easy row without much time at pressure to allow for recovery. If we plan things right, the test results should demonstrate a solid gain of fitness from four weeks of hard work.

Well Poop.

Which is to say we just had to cancel our season opening regatta. The 10 AM forecast was calling for winds of 16, gusting to 24, straight up the course. After some time on the phone with the coach from Willamette we found a date that worked for us during spring break and decided to give that a go instead.

So that's unfortunate, but I'm glad we made the call today before loading the trailer and heading up the road to the lake. We'll practice tomorrow and hopefully get some good work done on our home water instead.

Crews looked great this morning, pumped up and ready to race. My goal for tomorrow's practice is to try to harness that competitive energy and get some really solid pieces done within the squad.

Updates. . .

I've noticed a correlation between cold weather and lack of desire to write posts. I'm not sure if anyone has a scientific explanation for this, but it seems to me that when we're practicing in the cold I write less. So there you go.

Yes, it's been chilly. It's actually fantastic right now-- sunny, around 47-- but the mornings have been hovering right around the freezing mark. Rowing in this is pretty basic-- get out, warm up as much as possible, and keep moving. Very few drills, very little stopping. The upside has been some hard work getting done the last couple of days; our athletes are probably getting tired as a result. I've heard the Wisconsin coach (Chris Clark, who coached the IRA-winning Wisco men last year) quoted as saying the benefit of training in cold weather is the only way to stay warm is to work very, very hard. I think there's some truth to that.

We've got our first race coming up Saturday and I'm looking forward to it. We'll be doing a dual race against Willamette University. They've got a strong program and I'm sure we're in for a dogfight; it should be interesting. Our lineups have been settling down and we've introduced some more starts and other race-day strategies.

I'll be sure to update post-race if not before.

Ongoing Progress

One of our athletes sent me the above picture, taken on Friday morning after we tried to launch and got fogged off. Our dock is in the middle of the fog bank dead center, you can see the river and Willamette Park in the clear. The fog on Friday was patchy and frustrating-- one minute the river would be clear, the next completely covered over. Although I was quite frustrated by the missed opportunity I clearly remember as an athlete how welcome unexpected rest can be.

Today was much better. We got smart and went behind Ross Island and as a result got a great row in. On the woman's side we boated an eight and a novice four and went out for some solid independent work; both crews made lots of changes. A bit of redemption for the crash-n-bash last Saturday.

Another highlight was a sighting of a Willamette River Otter. Jim & I spotted one on shore during the rest between a couple of pieces; it was trotting along and almost seemed to be following us. Very cool.

The eight did three pieces before we linked up with the four to work on our starts and high strokes. When I got home I started geeking out with data from our Speedcoach; this will be my first spring season using one of these gidgets. We have yet to calibrate the system, so we don't know how accurate in an absolute sense the speed is yet, but it was very interesting to me to look at data from the pieces and compare relative speed to rate. Already I can see that we have some work to do with our 'stride' strokes after the start, and also with maintaining good send and speed through the main body of pieces. I'm pretty excited to get this system calibrated and start working the data into the main body of our workouts.

Here's the graph of our last piece today; 4' of 2' @ 25, 1' 27, 1' 30. Things were starting to come together well at this point and you can see a good build of pace and rate throughout.

Lucking Out.

Tuesday Women's 8 from Sam Taylor on Vimeo.

After a night of listening to rain pound against the windows I was sure we were in for a serious weather smacking this morning; instead we woke up to the above-- perfect flat water, sunshine, mild temperatures. Just awesome.

Took advantage and did a nice steady state row in three segments; working on blade height, then on connection, then on timing into the catch. Overall pretty good, missing a little on the 'just right' scale but that could well be due to people being fatigued after yesterdays' erg set. I need to keep in mind that asking the team to reach beyond themselves on Monday afternoon will mean tired legs on Tuesday morning and plan accordingly.

Into March

I took advantage of our Monday morning off and a glorious March morning to sneak in a bike ride before work; temperatures above 50, sunshine, and lots of climbing up small old Portland streets to get to Council Crest twice. What a great way to start the day. One of my favorite things about the small streets that wind through the west hills is the cheap geology you can see in the potholes; first the asphalt, then older concrete, and finally at the bottom streets paved with flat river stones. Every now and again the tracks from the old trolley car that ran up to Council Crest peak through. I may be geeky, but I enjoy being able to see little glimpses of the city's history.

In the office now and preparing for this afternoon's erg sets. The men are scheduled for steady state work on their own, while the women are getting together for 8x500m, partner rest. I'm looking forward to seeing a continuation of Saturday's breakthroughs today.