Master of his Domain

I’m SO not a morning person 

By John Tracey

I used to be a morning person when it came to rowing. I used to be able to roll out of bed and into my car and then do a full workout without having any breakfast. Then I realized that food helped my performance on the water (duh), so I started having oatmeal & coffee. But, being the creature of habit that I am, that meant I had to savor my coffee and have the usual hang-out-in-front-of-the-TV-and-wake-up time along with it. So my wake-up time became earlier. Nevertheless, I still managed it. Even when I lived in the suburbs and attempted serious winter training during 2001-2002. I was dedicated. Up at 4:15 every morning, out of the house at 5:00, on the erg at 5:30, even on the most frigid, ice-encrusted mornings.

I kept up this schedule for years during the rowing season. Most mornings anyway. But often that was because I was part of a group and didn’t want to miss out. There’s something about that group dynamic that forces your mind into conformity. You become like a robot, laying out the clothes (I have to wear a friggin suit & tie every day), putting the gym bag together, putting it all in the car, setting up your breakfast (I still do that) – all the night before. Oh yeah, and I had to eat dinner, read to the kids, etc. as well, and still try to be in bed by 9:00-9:30. It was a lot of work, but once you become automated, it gets easier.

No longer!! Time and injuries do something to the mindset. Ok, maybe just my mindset. This year, I live close to the boathouse and I have more free time during the evenings. As a result, I have gotten into the habit of working out in the evening after work. There are two huge benefits to this. First of all, I’m awake and have been moving around all day. My muscles are naturally warmed up. My brain works – at least a lot better than it does in the morning. And since I’ve slept in, I’m pretty well rested. Second, I have a new training partner this year, Greg Walker, and he and I have been doing the evening thing for the past month or so, turning it into a daily routine. Usually there’s a phone call, then we meet somewhere between Riverside and Belmont Hill and do the workout. Having someone else there makes a huge difference.

Now the one downside to all this is that most of the other scullers who I want to test myself against row in the morning (not that Greg is any slacker; that’s another benefit to this summer’s evening workouts – he’s a hell of a lot more accomplished than I am). But if I want to join the larger group, I have to somehow get my buns out of bed in the dark and totally disrupt my routine. I tried this yesterday morning with disastrous consequences. I went to bed relatively early the night before. I had done two workouts that day and was really beat. I had a huge dinner and set my alarm for 4:30. But for some reason – probably the subconscious knowledge that I couldn’t sleep in, which has become one of the greatest pleasures of my life – I had a really weird dream and woke up suddenly at 2:30 AM. Wide awake til 4:00, at which point I said screw it, sleeping has become way more important than rowing at this point (and besides, Sean’s not REALLY expecting me to show up ready for the first piece at 6:00 at BU, is he?). So I crashed on the couch, watching TV, and eventually dozed off. It was a horrendous night’s sleep. I was so tired yesterday that I bagged all workouts.

I’ve tried many times to get up. A few weeks ago, I promised the “training group” that I’d be there for sure on Saturday morning, ready to do the 2 x Head of the Charles pieces that we usually do this time of year. Yup, I emailed the group. I’m in. I’m so there. Well, Saturday came and I slept right through it with no shame whatsoever. Ok, I had shame and guilt, but not enough to get me out of bed. WTF?? Man did I hear about that one. Martin Schwartz coined a new name for me, “John ‘Big Talker Late Sleeper’ Tracey.” Ouch. Man the truth hurts.

So this morning I conceded to my new schedule. Slept in, got like 9 hours, and now I’m ready to roll against Greg tonight. I think we’ll do Heather Moon’s workout – that she did….this morning.

When I have to race in the morning, then I’ll get up. Honest I will. I promise.

The Weather 

By John Tracey

What’s more exciting than talking about the weather? A lot of things. Unless you’re a rower, in which case The Weather is always in the forefront of your mind. If you sleep in and miss a morning row (I’ve become an evening rower, so this is normal for me), you drive by the river on the way to work and see it perfectly flat, perfect temperature, with scullers plying the water with ease. You say “DAMN! Why do I have to work? Why can’t I be out there?” You know that these days are precious and few. When you do row in those conditions, and get a full, long, thorough workout, you drive by with this smug attitude, like, “HA. I was there. I experienced that. And no one can ever take it away from me.” I honestly do not think that normal athletes in normal sports have these types of feelings. But maybe it’s just me.

The weather is fun conversation. It gives us something in common with complete strangers – not unlike sports. We all have to live with it, and none of us can control it. Which makes worrying about it totally pointless. I love the expression, “Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it!” One of my favorite Dilbert cartoons was on a Sunday, and Scott Adams, Dilbert’s brilliant creator and writer, was narrating. In the first box he had a narration saying, “Top 5 ways to reject a guy hitting on you” (obviously giving advice to women). In one of the squares, the narration at the top said, “Use the phrase ‘my boyfriend’ in a sentence.” The square shows Dilbert talking to some random woman, and he says, “Nice weather today…” Her response: “My boyfriend likes weather.”

When racing, the weather goes from being 9.5 on a scale of 1-10 in importance to…an 11. And the more important the race, the more neurotic you become about it. Let’s say the race is on Saturday. It’s a big one. Maybe NSR I or something. Or the Head of the Charles. You literally start looking at the weather about 10 days in advance – knowing full well (or maybe not) that the most accurate forecast is, if not the day before, then the morning of. Or as John O’Day, the brother of George (who started the sailboat company) said to me once, “You want to know the weather? Look outside.” John was an avid sailor and knew a thing or two about the weather.

But you obsess on the forecast anyway, thinking, “Oh God, it’s going to be cold, rainy, and a headwind. This always happens to me!!” And you get more nervous, more freaked, and have more butterflies. What’s the point? As my friend Molly Haskell often remarked, in her curmudgeon-esque way, “It’s an outdoor sport people! There’s going to be weather!”

In the case of the Head of the Charles, which occurs at the end of October in Boston, it’s all about probabilities. You start thinking about the weather in August, when you get your singles entry. You dwell on it, wondering, hoping… “Maybe this will be the year when we get amazingly awesome conditions.” But why waste your brain cells? The chances are it’s not going to be great. Nine years out of ten, it’s going to be windy, cold, maybe raining, and pretty miserable. (Note that I listed wind first). That time of year, we typically get cold fronts moving through on a regular basis, which means either a northwest or northeast wind. Since the course, despite weaving all around, generally runs from southeast to northwest, this translates to headwind the whole way. And it’s usually strong, which means you’ll get blasted right out of the gate, after you go through the BU Bridge and round Magazine Beach. You feel it in the arches of the Powerhouse stretch going by Riverside. And you’ll get hammered as you go through the Anderson arch. I’ve been stopped almost completely in that arch (of course I don’t weigh much and have skinny legs, which does not further my cause much). Then you get a little break through the long Anderson-CBC turn. If it’s northwest, you’ll hit “the wall” of wind as you go through the Eliot Bridge – this is the “west” part of the northwest wind. That’s always a good time, since you’re pretty exhausted at this point and still have a good 3-4 minutes left in the race (in a single). If it’s northeast, it’s kind of a gift from God, because the “east” part takes over and you get a tailwind to the finish. Very, very, VERY seldom do you get the perfect southeast wind, which is a tailwind practically from start to finish. That might happen, on occasion, in September when you’re practicing, giving you a huge false sense of security because you manage to post a better-than-expected time. But in the third week of October? Don’t count on it. Last year, miracle of miracles, we not only had a warm sunny day, we also had a strong southeast wind. Oh, and there had not been much rain, so the public servants in charge of cranking up the current at the Museum of Science Dam had mercy, and there a was lower-than-average opposing current. On a day like that, you buy a lottery ticket.

What are the chances of having a repeat of 2007 this coming October 18-19? Slim at best, but you had better believe I’m praying.

By John Tracey

So here it is smack dab in the middle of the summer, and what do I have to show for it? Well, I finally finished furnishing (note alliteration technique) my apartment, and, if I do say so myself, it ROCKS. I did a death roll in a Beetle Cat (sailboat) in a 30 mph wind, surviving with minimal damage to self and boat (death roll = sailing downwind with sail all the way out, bow goes into water, doesn’t come out, stern lifts up and entire boat dumps over to windward and is then completely upside down, or “turtled” – fun stuff). I am still gainfully employed and am perfecting my summer slackass techniques with great success. After being single for seven months, I have dipped my toe into the dating pool, and I’m still alive to talk about it (not that I really want or need to talk about it). I made it through another birthday without becoming colossally depressed. In fact, it was one of the best birthdays in a long time. Well, last year at the Phoenix, after a party hosted by a certain fellow Bastille-Day Birthday Celebrator, was pretty awesome. And, oh yeah……rowing. Sorry I got a little off-message there.

The rowing thing has had its ups and downs this summer. A series of mishaps, one might say. The season began on a pretty good track. I got out almost every day, was lifting once or twice a week, doing yoga once a week, and it all felt good. I liked the borrowed Van Dusen Advantage (wing rigger) that I was using and was moving the boat pretty well. I was even allowed to practice with the young hot-shot lightweights, which was a hell of a lot of fun, even if they dusted me about half way through each piece. But hey, I stayed with them for the first half!

Anyway, things were just cruising right along. The relatively disciplined practice schedule led to a fun RBC Sprints regatta, in which my masters buddy Rudi Vanderschoot and I won our doubles race, though I got 2nd to Andy O’Brien in the single. But hey, he pulled a 6:12 erg this year!! How do 48 year olds get so strong?
But then it happened. The beginning of The Curse. I flipped the single doing a standing shove. Now, I’ve been doing standing shoves for years – longer than many of you have been rowing. The esteemed Jim Hanley at Riverside taught me how to do it, and emphasized the coolness factor. I learned and now I do it every time. One day I was so confident that, seeing Igor up on the porch with his camera, I stuck my shoving leg way up in the air after I pushed off and he got a cool picture of it. Almost looks like yoga or ballet in a boat. Almost. Anyway, I arrived on the dock one hot afternoon, and my buddies Igor & Tom are sitting there, looking kind of bored. A large motor boat goes by and leaves a substantial wake (after I had put my boat in). I said, “Ok, watch THIS – I’m going to do a standing shove INTO THAT WAKE!” Igor carefully, but very quickly, got his camera into position, thinking, “This could be good.” So into the wake I shoved, was able to sit down, but when I was trying to push off of the dock with my starboard oar, the power of the wave rolled my boat and I had nothing supporting me on the starboard side. KER-PLUNK! In I went. But hey, no big deal – I was shirtless, the water was warm, and I got right out. It was fun and made for a great photo (or series of photos, I was soon to find out).

As I came out of the water, I realized I had lost my prized prescription Oakleys, along with my Sore-No-More seat pad, without which I cannot live, or at least row. So, devastated at losing yet another pair of Oakley scripts in the Charles, I became quite despondent. Worse, the chutzpah of tempting the River Gods did not leave me. A week later, I was carrying the Van Dusen and I tripped on some oars, landing hard on my right knee and scraping the @#$* out of it. The boat landed gently on my back, and even though I had some sharp back pains for a few days, it was ok. Then my borrowed boat started having issues – the seat wheels, which had never been replaced, were grinding and I could barely move the seat. I started having dreams that I was rowing in sludge while everyone — novices, kayakers, my friends — all went flying passed me. I literally had at least two such dreams. Finally I realized I had to get that boat into the shop – it was a borrowed boat, after all, and the owner, my buddy Lee Gresham, deserved a boat in pristine condition. And besides, something karmactically (don’t look that up because I just made it up) bad was happening to me, and I needed to make some changes.

I began addressing my issues one by one. I got my old King back from Graeme’s shop, and it’s in perfect condition. It is heavier out of the water than the Van Dusen, but it feels lighter in the water! Graeme King, a naval architect by training, is an absolute genius at hull design. Second, I bought a new Sore-No-More pad. And finally, I got a new pair of Nike sunglasses. I’m saving for Oakleys, but at least I have something. And, I can rationalize the whole thing because I needed new ones anyway! My prescription needed upgrading (I now row with Coke-bottle-thick glasses). So all I really lost was the frames, which are only 25% of the total cost anyway.

I’m now ready to resume lifting, resume yoga, resume rowing every day, and submit my entry for the Charles, confident that I’ll have suitable training. Oh yeah, and the best thing that happened to reverse the curse was that Sean finally took the time-lapse video sequence of me flipping off of this site’s front page!
Happy rowing to all.

p.s. I flipped the Van Dusen on Friday the 13th, and this blog, in which I wrote about the incident, is my 13th. Coincidence?