Boating

by Walter Bradford Woodgate

Thirty strokes a minute is plenty for slow rowing. Some strokes, though good to race behind, have a difficulty in rowing slow; especially after having had a spell at a fast stroke. It is important to inculcate upon the stroke that thirty a minute should be his ‘walking’ pace, and should always be maintained except when he is set to do a course, or a part of one, or to row a start. When once he is told to do something like racing over a distance, he must calculate his stroke to orders, whether thirty-two, -four, -six, -eight, &c. But when the ‘gallop’ is over, then the normal ‘thirty’ should resume. It is during the ‘off’ work, when rowing or paddling to or from a course, that there is most scope for coaching, and faults are best cured at a slow stroke.

In training for a short course, such as Henley and college races, a crew may be taken twice each day backwards and forwards over the distance; the first time at thirty a minute each way, the second time at the ‘set’ pace of the day, over the course, relapsing into the usual ‘thirty’ on the reverse journey. The ‘set’ stroke depends on the stage of training. A fortnight before the race the crew may begin to cover the course, on the second journey, at about thirty-one a minute. A stroke a day can be added to this, until racing pace is reached. If men seem stale, an off-day should be given at light work. Meantime, each day, attention should be paid to ‘starting,’ so that all may learn to get hold of the first stroke well together. In order to accustom the men to a quicker stroke and to getting forward faster, a few strokes may be rowed, in each start, at a pace somewhat in advance of the rate of stroke set for the day’s grind over the course. A couple such starts as this per diem benefit both crew and coach. The crew begin to feel what a faster stroke will be like, without being called upon to perform it over the whole distance before they are fit to go; the coach will be able to observe each man’s work at the faster stroke. Many a green oarsman looks promising while the stroke is slow, but becomes all abroad when called upon to row fast. It is best to have some insight to these possible failings early in training, else it may be too late to remedy them or to change the man on the eve of battle.

Towards the close of training the crew should do their level best once or twice over the course, to accustom them to being rowed out, and to give them confidence in their recuperative powers; also to enable the stroke to feel the power of his crew, and to form an opinion as to how much he can ask them to do in the race. The day before the racing begins, work should be light.

In bumping races, if a college has no immediate fear of foes from the rear, it is well not to bring men too fine to the post; else, though they may do well enough for the first day or two, they may work stale or lose power before the end of the six days of the contest. It is better that a crew should row itself into condition than out of it. In training for long-distance racing, it is customary to make about every alternate day a light one, of about the same work as for college racing. The other days are long-course days of long grinds, to get men together, and to reduce weight. When men have settled to a light boat, and have begun to row courses against time, and especially when they reach Putney water, two long courses in each week are about enough. Many crews do not do even so much as this. As a rule a crew are better for not being taken for more than ten or eleven minutes of hard, uninterrupted racing, within three days of the race. A long course wastes much tissue, and it takes a day or two to feed up what they have wasted. Nevertheless, crews have been known to do long courses within 48 hours of a Putney match, and to win withal: e.g. the Oxonians of 1883, who came racing pace from Barnes to Putney two days before the race, and ‘beat record’ over that stretch of water.

BUMPING RACE—WAITING FOR THE GUN.

Strokes and coaches do a crew much harm if they are jealous of ‘times’ prematurely in practice. Suppose an opponent does a fast time, there is no need to go to the starting point and endeavour to eclipse time. Possibly his rapid time has been accomplished by dint of a prematurely rapid stroke, while the pace of our own boat, with regard to the rate of stroke employed, discloses promise of better pace than our opponents, when racing shall arrive in real earnest. Now if we, for jealousy, take our own men at a gallop before they are ripe for it, we run great risk of injuring their style, and of throwing them back instead of improving them. After the day’s race, the body should be well washed in tepid water, and rubbed dry with rough towels. It is a good thing for an oarsman to keep a toothbrush in his dressing-room. He will find it a great relief against thirst to wash his mouth out with it when dressing, more especially so if he also uses a little tincture of myrrh.

One ‘odd man’ is of great service to training, even if he cannot spare time to row in the actual race. Many a man in a crew is the better for a day’s, or half a day’s, rest now and then. Yet his gain is loss of practice to the rest, unless a stop-gap can be found to keep the machinery going. The berth of ninth man in a University eight often leads to promotion to the full colours in a following season, as U.B.C. records can show.

With college eights there used to be a furore, some twenty years ago, for taking them over the long course in a gig eight. These martyrs, half fit, were made to row the regulation long course, from ‘first gate’ to lasher, or at least to Nuneham railway bridge, at a hard and without an easy. The idea was to ‘shake them together.’ The latter desideratum could have been attained just as well by taking them to the lasher and back again, but allowing them to be eased once in each mile or so. Many crews that adopted the process met with undoubted success, but we fancy that their success would have been greater had their long row been judiciously broken by rest every five minutes. To behold a half-trained college eight labouring past Nuneham, at the end of some fifteen minutes of toil, jealous to beat the time of some rival crew, used to be a pitiable sight. More crews were marred than made by this fanaticism.