Rowing Again
:date: 2025-06-09 21:05 :tags:
When I was a teenager, for some weird reason our high school had a rowing team. If you ask me what my second favorite memory from high school is, well, I'm drawing a blank — I'm pretty sure I don't have one. My only fond memory from my high school experience is rowing.
It was rowing that introduced me to serious athletic goals. When I moved on to university I went to the freshman orientation and found the rowing team and told them that I was somewhat competent. I put my name and contact info on their sign up sheet and never heard from them again. I moved on to triathlon and TT cycling and I never rowed again. Until this Saturday.
After 38 years of not being able to row, I finally returned to it. A couple of days ago, I was just testing my rowing shell to see if it actually floated and worked and getting the rigging setup. The shell is a very strange boat - a Scullcraft rowing shell. It was made by a Michigan canoe company and has much in common with canoes. It's 18'-6" long with a 27" beam. It's 62lbs which is pretty light considering that it was probably made between 1984 and 1986. I paid $220 for it — an incredible bargain! It even came with two obsolete carbon fiber Concept2 Oars. Today serious people use the new style of offset "hatchet" oars. But no complaints from me — these old style oars are exactly the ones I used in high school in the late 1980s!
This evening I went for my first substantial outing in a rowing shell since I was a teenager.
I did 3km, across the lake and back, in 17m 24s at a pace of 10.4kph. Interestingly that's about the pace I could ski it in the winter. For reference, my best time on the indoor rowing machine in 2020 just hit 16kph after several months of intense training (which I covered here). But during that program I started out at about 13kph. So this boat is not too far off of the rowing machine's calibration (which is for racing shells).
It's been a long time since I've rowed, but an even more weird fact is that until today, I have never — to my knowlege — been photographed rowing a boat. I fixed that today.
Today I even took a video. It's long and kind of boring but you might like skipping around and seeing what it looks like for me to cross our lake. It also shows the very irritating precautions taken to keep the bugs off me at the shore. No bugs out on the lake thankfully!
Ya, watching that, my form looks terrible. I'm pulling high at the catch for some reason. But hey, remember, it's been 38 years, I've never rowed a boat like this, and I've never seen myself row before! Also, sorry about that super annoying squeaking — of course it waited to start right when I get too far from our dock to do anything about it. Also the 40 year old foot stretchers broke in the middle of the lake on my way back. There are definitely some details that still need a little work, but overall, I'm quite happy with this boat!
Mya and A* were also out on the water tonight to rescue me if my boat sank or had some serious operator error.
Due to a lack of opportunity, I've been kept away from rowing for a long time but I'm glad to be back!
Here's some information about this boat.
