International rowing to the letter
My two-year-old niece is currently learning her alphabet (I know, she's pretty advanced. As long as she doesn't ever better my rowing achievements I won't mind). That inspired me to come up with an A-Z of international rowing to help people learn more about our lives and what we do.
A: Anxiety. Anxiety or nerves affect everyone, irrespective of the level of competition. I got as nervous when racing the college bumps at university in Cambridge as I do for the World Championships; mainly because whatever level you're at, competing means the world to you.
B: Blisters. These initially cause problems for the novice rower's hands, but later turn into calluses, which are more unsightly but also more practical. Being from a farming background, I don't mind being a horny-handed daughter of the soil; but my goodness calluses don't half rip holes in tights and pashminas.
GB rowers spend two to three hours a week on the ergometer
C: Coaches. This is the collection of middle-aged men from around the world who tell us what to do - from sarcastic Australians, to no-nonsense northerners. But of course, as a woman, we don't mind being told what to do by men, do we?
D: Dreams. This is going to soundly cheesy, but I personally think the best thing about being an international athlete is that I'm constantly working towards my dreams.
My dream is to go to the Olympics and win, and I'm doing everything in my power, as part of a squad of similarly determined and passionate women, guided by a team of coaches and sports scientists all experts in their field, to achieve that. What could be better than that?
E: Ergo. "Cogito ergo sum," said Descartes - "I think, therefore I am". "Ergo, ergo sum," reply rowers who spend two to three hours a week on "ergometer" rowing machines. Coaches love these grey machines because they can see the numbers and they know exactly how hard you're working. "Ergs don't float," we grumble in response.
F: With apologies to my Mum, sometimes in sport, no other word will do.
G: Going out. Not something that we do every often as we fight a constant battle against overwhelming tiredness (see T), and are thus tucked up in bed by 9 or 10 o'clock most evenings. Which is ironic, really, because many of us first started rowing because at university the rowers had the best social lives. Nowadays, we are the ultimate binge drinkers: we don't drink for months on end then have one almighty night out after the World Championships.
GB womens' squad sport their formal Team GB Olympic outfits in Beijing
H: Henley Royal Regatta. Ah, Hen-lah. The showpiece of British rowing. The standard of international racing very much depends on which countries choose to include it in their summer racing schedule, but for club rowers it is the pinnacle of achievement. Everyone wants to either win or get knocked out on the first day so they can don their blazer and drink Pimm's for the remaining days. Therefore, everyone's a winner at Henley.
I: Interviews. Is it possible to give a sporting interview without slipping into clichés? You try to avoid them, but suddenly you find yourself saying that at the end of the day, you're going to go out and give it your best, and it was a race of two halves, and ...
J: JDI (Just Do It). This is what sport comes down to in its simplest form. You can over-analyse your technique, you can use cutting-edge technology, you can bring in experts in all sorts of things; but sport at its essence is not complicated. Whether it's getting your boat across the finish line first, or indeed kicking a ball into a net, or repeatedly hitting a cricket ball over a boundary rope; be simple and be ruthless. JDI.
K: Kit. Rowing kit evolved from the classic PE kit of shirt and shorts, but whereas other athletes now wear clothes which can look good or be flattering (tennis dresses, rugby shirts, cricket whites), rowing has evolved the other way, becoming less and less flattering, especially for the womenfolk. Tight, shiny lycra, revealing all of one's lumps, bumps and sweat patches. Coming to a catwalk near you soon!
L: Lakes. Many hours ploughing up and down lakes around the world can be repetitive, but putting in perhaps 30 laps a week on the stunning Lake Bled in Slovenia (where the World Championships take place at the end of this month), Lake Varese in Italy (where we are on training camp for the next few weeks) or the Rotsee at Lucerne is surely far preferable to following the bottom of a swimming pool, or the black line in a velodrome. Count your blessings.
M: MTFU. Another acronym, often shortened to merely "Man Up". I'm not sure what the feminists of the 1970s and '80s would have made of this saying, which is in very common usage in the GB women's squad but we can be sure of one thing: Maggie Thatcher would approve.
N: Nutrition. Quality and quantity (3-4,000 calories a day for openweight women - up to twice the recommended daily amount) is the key here, all washed down with copious amounts of sugary electrolyte drinks. Just wait until we retire and you can bet that we're all going to pile on the pounds.
O: Olympics, predictably. See my previous blog on this subject.
P: Pain. I could write a PhD on this. There are many different kinds of pain: the my-legs-are-burning-my-lungs-are-screaming pain; the everything-is-tightening-up-and-I-can't-see-anymore pain; or the I-want-to-climb-out-out-of-my-skin-because-my-entire-body-is-killing-me pain when you've just crossed the line in a race. It is your constant companion in rowing. However, as the saying goes, pain is temporary but glory is forever!
Q: Quadruple scull. The boat in which I've won three of my four World Championship medals thus far (and one of the six different boat types used at Olympic level). A quad is a relatively small hull for a lot of power and energy, so the trick is to learn how to blend the power with finesse, precision and timing. When you get it just right, the boat flies.
R: Rib. The most common of rowing injuries is the rib stress fracture, which I've been fortunate enough to avoid. With several hundred watts going through your body every stroke, tremendous pressure is put on your torso in a repetitive manner, thousands of times a day for years and years.
S: Sweat. We've trained in some pretty warm environments over the years but nothing compares to Gifu, where we contested the World Championships in 2005, when the entire team of 50 or so athletes were erging in a hall with no ventilation, in the humidity of Japan. I think there was more sweat than floor by the end. Nice!
T: Training programme. The Excel spreadsheet emailed out to us periodically by the coaches, detailing minutes per day to be devoted to each training zone or activity (weights, trunk conditioning, etc), is the Bible to us. Rowers divide into two groups: those who study it avidly weeks in advance, can always remember the schedule for the day, and can always produce the session's required rates, split times or distances upon request; and those who believe that ignorance is bliss.
U: UT2. This is the name given to the training threshold at which we do probably 90% of our training. Heart rate roughly between 150-170, rate 18-20 strokes per minute, just get your head down and bash it out. Getting tired or bored? See 'M'.
Annabel and her mum - the least sporty woman in Cornwall
W: Weights, or "strength and conditioning" as the coaches prefer. The classic idea that people have of weight training is something along the lines of Arnie or Rocky, bashing out a montage of bench presses to the music of some power ballad from the 1980s. The reality is a bit more mundane. S&C not only increases our power and strength but can rehab injuries or niggles, correct imbalances and increase our flexibility and core strength to assist with injury prevention. But yes, we do still sometimes put on the Rocky soundtrack.
X: eXhaustion. Just as the Eskimos apparently have over a hundred words for snow, I could probably think of a hundred different ways of being tired. Training for 30 hours a week or thereabouts is essentially a constant process of getting tired and recovering, getting tired and recovering, and so on. There's walking-up-stairs tired, falling-asleep-everywhere tired, generally-a-bit-grumpy tired, counting-strokes-on-an-ergo tired, losing-your-sense-of-humour tired ...
Y: Why do we do it? See the entry for 'D' and this should give you some idea. Ultimately I think one has to refer to George Mallory, with his famous reply when asked why he wanted to climb Everest, "because it's there". Why do I want to go to the Olympics? Because it's there.
Z: Zzzzz. Sleep? Not a problem. Anywhere, anytime, any day, I can pretty much fall asleep on request. I think 'training induced narcolepsy' should be a recognized medical condition.
Feel free to write in with comments or alternative ideas. Having just completed a training camp in Germany, we're now off to Italy to make final preparations for the World Championships in Bled in September.
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