Thoughts roundup Wednesday

Good post this morning on Vern Gambetta's blog-- he's an athletic development coach and author who's thinking often meshes with mine. Check it out.

I attended a wedding this weekend for an athlete I coached from raw novice up through four years of highly successful college rowing. As I caught up with her and with all her teammates from those years I reflected on how often their efforts inspired me to give better efforts as a coach. The best teams have that synergy of trust-- the coach trusting in the athletes desire to improve while the athletes trust in the coaches desire to help them succeed.

After a couple of years of staying away I finally gave into Facebook. As of now, I'm not "freinding" current athletes. Why? Mostly to keep a sense of professional distance, I think. That said, it's been a lot of fun catching up with alumni and old freinds, which I think is the main point of the service.

We had the Division of Student Life retreat downtown yesterday. While it put me a little behind on work I was greatful to meet many of the other staff members who contriubte to the student expereince here at Lewis & Clark and to consider ways to enhance what we do by working with all of them.

It rained this morning while I was coaching at Lake Oswego. . . I'd forgotten what that was like.

Nice practice this morning with the Lake Oswego masters group. It was a study in contrast with two boats out-- an eight and a single. I captured a few shots of the fantastic water with my new camera.



With the single everything I worked on involved slowing down, working the basic sensitivity of balance and the finer points of bladework. Because the single is such a responsive boat the main challenge is to get the sculler to take a risk-- challenge themselves to be a little longer, a little sharper even if it's a little more unstable.



With the eight the work was all focused on connection and creating a dynamic acceleration through the drive. In the eight the sensations each rower feels are more muted. By using drills such as feet out and pair add in I tried to give each athlete the sense of the effect they were having on the run of the boat. We made some breakthroughs today and the balance and run was much improved at the end of the day.

Wisdom from Alumni

The athletic department is working to set up some profiles of alumni student-athletes, a "where are they now" kind of effort. Our own Lucinda Boyce (3-seat in the 2006 conference champion WV4 above) made the cut and had the following words of wisdom for current student-athletes:

"Play a sport. Even if you're terrible. Get on a team, there is nothing like it in life and you're missing out if you're not a part of something like it. And, pick a major you think you know nothing about, take a few classes, get to know the teachers, and see what hooks."

I also especially liked this quote from former track athlete Kirk Reynolds:

"Devote more time to your athletics. At a place like L&C, you will always have academics as your top priority, as it should be. The challenge is to make athletics be co-curricular with your studies rather than extra-curricular. It is possible to do both equally well. Most Division-III athletes use academics as a cop-out excuse to avoid achieving all they can in their athletic realm. Have courage, and do both well."

Environmental Editorial

So this isn't related to rowing directly, but. . .

I was reading this, specifically this line: "Other likely effects include increases in the intensity of extreme weather events". . .

Thinking about this last winter.

And now feeling the effects of this.

So are these unusual or extreme weather events related to "global climate change"? I don't know, and I'm certainly not qualified to make that judgment.

I do know it's REALLY hot.

Morning on the River

Hot days in Portland mean perfect mornings on the river. The day before I head out for a week-long vacation the water was awesome and the temperature just right. Summer rowing at its best.

Teaching and Learning

I've started heading out with the Lake Oswego masters program three days a week, filling in while they go through a coaching transition. It's been nice to be back on the river again, if challenging to pull myself out of bed. My favorite part is simply getting back to teaching the stroke; how to place the blade, how to set the body, developing connection through the lats, the rhythm created by run. They're a long way from their next race and we're able to slow down and make each session varied and hopefully help them develop better skills for their fall season.

Meanwhile I had a learning experience myself this weekend. On the bike I did a race I had hoped to do well at and quite frankly bombed; it was a frustrating and disappointing performance. Looking back on the training I've been doing the last few weeks it became easy to see why. I've been racing often and recovering often, but neglecting the all-important development of the aerobic base. You can never do to much base work, you can never have too big of an engine-- and when you leave it alone your fitness plateaus rapidly and results suffer.

This is something to remember for next spring as well. It's always tempting to bang out more 500's at a racing cadence in the spring, but it's vastly important not to neglect the aerobic base.

So for me it's back in the launch, teaching, and back on the bike, learning again to put in the long miles and rebuild my base for cross racing this fall.

As the mercury creeps towards 90 on the first day of July in Portland I wanted to give a shout out to two of our women's team alumni from the class of 2005 (05' Women's Varsity shown above).

Abby Broughton (two seat) continues to tear it up on the national rowing scene; she won a gold in the women's lightweight quad and silver in the women's lightweight double at the USRowing National Championships that finished up this past weekend. Read all about it.

And in the coaching ranks, Becca Carlton (stroke) was just named assistant coach at the University of Minnesota. Becca has some solid coaching chops already and I expect we'll see great things out of her in the future.

Congrats to both!