Rowing

It's 2am, and I'm still up watching the Olympics. Specifically, rowing. I love it. You can hear people yelling and cheering them on. You can hear the swooshing of the water against their oars. I have a soft spot for water/boating sports since I've done a bit of dragonboating, ocean canoeing, kayaking and rowing.

I took rowing lessons at Elk Lake, Victoria BC, where the national team practices. It's a beauuuutiful and scenic place. Lucky us... because it's the ultimate training site, we got to watch some of the then olympians practice and meet some of the Olympic coaches. (Pro rowers are super muscular with gigantic thighs!) Our very own coach was a co-coach that worked alongside an Olympic coach. But even as hardcore as they could be, our coach knew to take it easy on us. It was a LOT ... a lot a lot ... of fun. He always told us to leave our worries, stress, and our shoes at the dock. While we're on the water, it's all about rowing. It was so refreshing.

Taken from my old blog about day one of practice : First, it was the erg machines to familiarize ourselves with the motion. Quickly thereafter, in the boat. Then, it was all about balance. Stabilization. Begin with all arms. Squaring the blades. Skim the surface. Catch. Drive. Finish. Recovery. Catch. Drive. Finish. Recovery. Then work in the legs. The back. The sequence. In TIME! CATCH! CATCH! CATCH! Next, the feathering. Feather the blade. Square the blade. Feather the blade. Square the blade. All of this done first in pairs. Then threes. FASTER! MORE POWER! CATCH!Then all four of us. Together. In a quad.

Here are some of my old photos of our last day. Our coach took my camera and took some of these photos from his coach boat.

 

Omigosh, I can feel an ounce of their adrenaline just watching it on TV...