The Blade Journal

This term I am training in a Senior IV with the Beanpole, Ziggy and a new ex-schoolboy rower who hails from an ultra-conservative hamlet near Henley.

I have taken to motivational speech CDs, and have been listening to ‘Freedom’s Finest Hour’ which narrates the genesis of American liberty, and is read by Ronald Reagan. I also have his and Margaret’s collected speeches on CD, as well as a Churchill compilation. I am very pleased to be reminded of how scornful he is of the Southern Irish during his period.

There is a Mexican food van which stops right outside my house, and I am able to eat chicken and avocado burritos, and cheese and salsa quesadillas, in the manner of The Horizon Court buffet, on the Caribbean Princess.

This term’s training has been up and down. The back of my feet have started lactating blood because of a number of 30 minute ergos I have done with incorrect footwear. As such, I walk around town with my Caribbean sandals on, looking left-wing, unfortunately. Yet this has at least given us stamina. On the downside, the Beanpole has been drunk and disorderly on two occasions, making us miss outings and do ergos instead. The ultra-conservative Henley-man did not turn up to a 6am early the other day, but his reason was so unintentionally funny that I must let him off. This is the remorseful message he sent our crew and coach, to explain how he became inebriated:

‘I was at corporate communion last night and I got a bit carried away.’

My Anglo-Catholic colleagues do indeed confirm that this was the case: Drunk on the blood of Christ. This is why he had a Reformation.

All of which reminds me of a quotation I remember, from something I have been reading, written at the turn of the 20th century:

‘In a college like Cambridge rowing does for those who practise it nearly everything that the rules of the authorities propose to do. It makes them lead a regular and simple life; it gets them out of bed early in the morning and send them to bed again at ten at night; it disciplines them, it keeps them healthy, for it makes temperance necessary…If I could only add that it forces a man to his books and necessarily made him a brilliant subject for examiners, I should have compiled a fairly complete list of academic virtues.’
R.C. LEHMAN, The Complete Oarsman, 1909

I have nine kids I am supervising this term, so I need the discipline.

So, today I went for a hearty brunch at Tatties with The Blonde. I had a cup of coffee (having read in Runners’ World that moderate caffeine is good for sport). I also had some Ribena, a chocolate croissant, and scrambled egg on toast. After picking up my copy of MTV’s Carmen: A Hip Hopera from The College of St. John The Evangelist, I cycled to the boathouse. Marshalling took hours, as today’s timed head piece race had many, many entries. We had an ok row down to the marshalling point, but our little novice cox (who has an amusingly laconic Derbyshire accent) did not give us a practise ‘rolling start’ As such, when we eventually began the race, our first minute or two was terrible, with my rowing at a much higher rating than the other three, who followed stroke at what I deemed to be too low a rate. As such, I called a push from my bow seat, and things began to heat up. It was windy, so we were wearing clams on our oars to give some more leverage above the wavy water. The crew who started a minute after us were nowhere to be seen, and soon, after several more pushes and a slightly increased rating (Baruch Hashem), we began to close in on the crew who had started a minute before us. This was encouraging, and seemed to show that perhaps those 30 minute ergos were worth something. Our rowing technique was still pretty horrid in places, but I am sick of being a pretty but slow boat, and so will take that with a slightly positive spin. We did some more pushes on the reach, and by the end, we got to near overlap on the boat, as we glided gasping under the bunting that marked the finish line.

We got back to the boathouse, had a debrief, and I went on my way into town, rejoicing.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 11th, 2006 at 5:36 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.