Bonus Movie! Getting ready to head over to novice practice this afternoon; final "race" preparations for our fall DIII scrimmage up at Puget Sound tomorrow. Here's thirty seconds from this morning; the sunrise as we docked was unreal. Do I sound like a broken record? Maybe, but it's worth it-- wish I'd had my camera.

Sunrise 10-16 from Sam Taylor on Vimeo.

Why Sport?

Great short video of Simon Whitfield, a two-time olympic medalist triathlete, talking about why sport matters. One thing I tell folks a lot is that whatever your passion is in life, it's the pursuit of doing that thing very well that makes it worthwhile. For me it's coaching, for our athletes it's rowing. When everyone is ambitious it's very easy to get fired up and put a great deal of yourself into the process.

Off the Mic

Sorry for the time between posts-- I've (personally) been rather busy and while I keep thinking up good topics to blog about, by the time I get to the office or home from practice things pop up. A lame excuse, one I'd probably hassle our athletes about.

Good row with the novices this afternoon. We worked hard on exploring the limits of what "HARD" is-- tapping into the sense of how much a person can put into ten strokes. This was preceded by a lot of work on front end, posture, and connection. The risk of asking someone to go very, very hard is that they'll try to take the load without connecting on the feet-- if that happens back pain results. By focusing on the posture first and making sure they locked the catches in well, we ensured that the power transmitted through to the water instead and saw some great run in the boat as a result.

More to follow. Last two weeks of fall are upon us, and racing is near at hand.

Awesome Morning

Great water, great weather, great rowing and racing this morning. Rather then blather on about it I'll just let the pictures do the talking. Great way to go into three days off for Fall Break!

Fall Break Practice 10-8 from Sam Taylor on Vimeo.

Sunrise

First off, our varsity men got their picture up on Row2k as photo of the day-- very cool.

Second, a (somewhat shaky) shot from practice this morning:

I was talking with a novice rower who'd just swapped out of the eight above. She mentioned that in the last couple days she'd seen the sunrise more then she had in the last few years. The Willamette at dawn is incredible-- flat water, sky aglow, hills lit up in the background. It never ceases to amaze me.

Best of Breed

I'm writing from the Las Vegas Airport, not my favorite place in the world, on my way back from the annual WIRA coaches meeting. We had a very productive meeting today getting our diverse association set up to ensure the high quality of the regatta continues into future years.

More fun even then that was the Head of the Dog regatta held yesterday. As mentioned in a prior post, this event has two themes-- the racing, and the contest for the coveted Best of Breed trophy. While we wanted our athletes to put forth strong efforts on the racecourse we also challenged them to make the most of the opportunity to put their creativity to good use.



One of the women's doubles dressed up as Peruvian Banditos (I think I got that right).



Another dressed up as trees, and got an honorable mention at the awards ceremony. This picture really doesn't do justice to the amount of ivy on the boat.



The tour de force, however, came from our men's four entry. These guys showed up at six AM, after several days of preparation, and spent two hours doing construction on the beach. The theme was Apocalypse Now, and most specifically creating a Vietnam-era Huey helicopter on the water.



The creation was substantial and encompassed all senses-- aside from the visual, they also piped Ride of the Valkyries through the cox-box, and set off smoke with about 500 meters to go. It was a full-force effort and they were rewarded justly with the ever-epic Best of Breed.



Tradition has it that the winning boat takes the trophy home and has the responsibility to add to it some memory of their prize then return the next year to judge and award the prize. This one is going to look good in the trophy case.

True Oregon fall weather has arrived; cool, damp mornings clearing into dappled sunshine in the afternoon. The leaves have started to turn and our daylight is rapidly disappearing. There have been a number of rain showers blowing through and the river has risen a couple of feet with runoff; more room to practice along with more debris to avoid.

We've had some excellent workouts and some excellent rows the last few days both discovering and addressing challenges. A lot of this revolves around defining the limits of our current fitness and figuring out how far we can go without loosing the ability to accelerate and drive the boat. This pays big dividends as we turn to racing; understanding how deep you can reach within yourself is at the very essence of long-distance training and racing. I spoke to the women's team the last couple of mornings about the beautiful truths that accompany exhaustive efforts, and the great challenge when you reach that point of exhaustion before you reach the finish. A lesson best learned in practice and applied to better pacing over the course of the race.