Begin like you mean it

So, I've been rowing for a while, and para-rowing for about a year. In that time I've done a fair bit of training, although, thanks to the flooding that swept the Thames and much of the rest of England in winter 2013-14, a lot of that was off the water. Over the summer I did a bit of racing, all of it in wide boats. It was hard to train, however - I wasn't actually living anywhere near a river that was big enough for rowing (the brook in my village is only about a foot deep and not wide enough for two sculling blades), so water sessions were very sporadic. I did a lot of training at the gym, then overdid it, and got really tired, which took me out of training for quite a while.

 

But - dramatic drumroll - now, I'm back. I'm not fit, exactly, but I'm now in the right place, literally and metaphorically, to work on technique on the water and strength and fitness in the gym. For the first time ever, I live close to a rowing club and I have a coach who will be overseeing my training, pointing out all my weaknesses, telling me how to correct them, and helping me to set realistic but ambitious goals. Over just the last three days I've started living the dream of being able to get several water sessions a week, and having the time and space to concentrate on technique. This entry is dedicated to the work I've done so far!

 

Setting goals

I have some big goals and some smaller ones. The smaller ones are sometimes quite general ('finally sort out square blades paddling' or 'come to feel really comfortable in a fine shell') and sometimes more specific, e.g. 'enter a small head race and beat SOMEONE'. The first attempt at this latter aim will be this Saturday, in Cambridge Small Boats Head, which is run by Rob Roy Boat Club. As an adaptive rower, it has to be said that the entry process has been aided enormously by the good folk at Rob Roy (and one Stefan in particular). I felt it was only fair to point out to them that, although I wanted to enter the Novice category, I was adaptive - that way marshals and umpires are aware that I might need a bit of extra space and time. Plus, the people who draw up the start order know not to put me in front of anything potentially fast! Stefan has really risen to the occasion, and has gone out of his way to help me take part. It'd be great if other race organisers could take the same interest in making races accessible to and safe for adaptive people. Hopefully it'll all go OK on the day as well!

Bigger goals are things like 'race at the National Championships' and 'medal at BUCS indoor rowing event and the British Indoor Rowing Championships'. They are daunting goals but I want my bravery, determination and sheer stubbornness to be as big as (or preferably bigger than) the anxiety, nerves or plain fear that I will feel on the start line. The thing is that there are so few events at the moment for adaptive rowers that there isn't a level in between competing at local regattas and competing in the big events. So, I just have to man up and get on with it! In any case, it gives my training a focus and gives me a purpose every day when I'm tired and struggling physically. I want to compete and be competitive at a national level. To do that, I have to ignore or work around every part of my body that is wondering why on earth it got partnered with such a ridiculous brain.

This means that a big goal for me (like 'race at Nat Champs') is not just a case of ticking off my attendance on the day. For me and for all other adaptive rowers (and para-sports enthusiasts in general), it's a case of fighting against what might be your better judgement on a daily - or hourly - basis. A really good example of this is not only the Paralympic Games but also the Invictus Games, which ran for the first time recently. One of the things that is particularly inspiring about the Invictus athletes is that most of them started off life fit and healthy, remaining so in order to pursue their career. After injury, however, they gritted their teeth and just found a way round their new disability, with the determination that nothing would stop them from continuing to achieve near-superhuman feats.

"...'tis but a scratch."

The Invictus athletes provide all para-rowers with a lot to live up to. It's about overcoming physical difficulty through mental fortitude, so that as you row down to the start line you know that, whatever the result, you have achieved something enormous. Where plenty of healthy people sit around and do nothing, you have overcome illness and injury to fight against the disadvantage your body has declared; to put yourself through something that makes you stronger physically and mentally. This isn't something that happens overnight. It's not a decision that you make; that one day you'll suddenly start becoming this person. It's not a constant either - you can move towards achieving the goal, then suffer a setback, and arguably you can never completely achieve a goal like mastery of an unwilling body. This is why it's such a big and daunting prospect - it's ultimately an unachievable task. The more you achieve, the harder it gets to reach the next milestone.

This all sounds very miserable and not at all fun. At times, that's how it feels too. Over time, however, it's amazing to feel your body strengthen; to feel the mind grow in resilience; to achieve things you never thought possible before. Achieving these goals is pretty much something that happens by accident - you don't really realise how far you've come until something reminds you of where you used to be. It is that realisation that makes it worth doing. That's why we all keep on fighting. That's why disabled people should do sport, even if it makes some symptoms worse, or adds yet more pain to an already broken body. In the immediate sense, it's hard work: really, really hard work. Over time, however, it pays dividends. It's one of the only goals that, once achieved, affects every aspect of your life.

Small steps

On Monday I had my first official coached session and it was ace. My coach had me doing some tapping drills at various positions up the slide, some square blades paddling arms only and arms and bodies only, then got me to do some balance exercises, such as taking one blade out of a gate and waving it around above my head, or standing up in the boat. If this doesn't sound like much fun to you, then please rest assured that initially I had my doubts about my ability to perform every single aspect of the plan!

We started off with tapping. Actually, that's not true, we started off with getting the boat out. My balance is appalling and my arms (like the rest of me) are short, so I've always worried about putting the oar in the gate which is hanging over the water and not hanging over the bank. My coach helped me to learn how to do it by myself without tipping myself in (but I still don't like it!) and, with that, I was soon in the boat and pushing off. That was when the tapping started...

Tapping drills are where you simply start with the blades in the water, then lower the hands together so that the blades come out of the water, then allow the hands to rise again so the blades pop back in. That's all you do - over and over. It's quite a therapeutic motion really, or at least it is at back stops, where the balance is easier. In my sessions over the last couple of days I have made it up to about half slide reliably, but beyond that (when my hands move away from each other properly) it gets a lot harder. I'm sure this is true for most people but it is especially true for me as I have such a terrible sense of where my hands are unless I'm staring directly at them - but with only one pair of eyes it's quite hard to watch both hands! For any non-rowers out there, in a tapping drill (and in rowing in general) the key is to keep your hands at the same height as each other. However, if you have a neural feedback system that refuses to tell you what height your hands are then it all becomes more complicated. This is not an excuse! I will overcome it and be jut as good as everyone else, eventually - it'll just be harder and take longer, and I will probably have a few extra worrying wobbles along the way.

After the tapping was deemed satisfactory, I moved to square blades paddling, with the warning, 'don't get frustrated'. Well, boy, I tried hard but I did get a bit frustrated. I know I can row square blades in a wide boat, but I wanted to be able to do it in a fine shell too. I also know that when things are first attempted and then seem completely impossible it is because you've only spent 20 seconds trying. However, after about 20 minutes of trying, when I was still failing to do anything convincingly balanced for more than two consecutive strokes, I was getting a bit annoyed. Soon I was moved on to rowing 'arms and bodies' square blades. I was then left me to paddle around by myself for a bit and try and figure out how to row properly!

Success! For one stroke only...

Funnily enough, it soon became apparent that if I did what I had been told to do (keep the wrists flat, don't draw in too far, keep the hands on a level plane, etc.) it became much, much easier. I also realised that the arms and bodies paddling was easier if (as I had been told...) I remembered to do the sequencing correctly (body swings, then arms come in) instead of just panicking and doing it all in a jumble. It's amazing the effect a coach can have! These were all points that I knew perfectly well from coxing, yet trying to recreate them for myself in a fine single was a completely different matter. As soon as I actually tried, instead of just thinking, 'well this is silly and impossible', I began to achieve things.

ONE SMALL STEP!

By what was nearly the end of the session I was reasonably comfortably paddling around with square blades, without using my legs at all yet. It was by no means consistent, but as long as I remembered EVERY minute detail then it was jolly well near perfect! For two strokes, anyway...

The last thing we did in the session was some 'playing' with balance exercises. There is a picture of one of these exercises on my first blog entry here (scroll to the bottom). Unfortunately there are none of me standing in the boat, which means I might have to attempt it again in order for photos to be taken (hopefully before the big sploosh). I found the standing up quite hard, because my legs aren't really very good at supporting my weight in that way! Although I was terrified of taking my blade out of the gate, I actually preferred that exercise, since at least I got to sit down... Anyway, it did feel like a big achievement to do something that I'd never attempted before, and more importantly I felt much more confident the next day when I went for a little paddle.

Another small step!

Reinforcing small steps

On Tuesday, I hadn't really intended to go for a paddle. Tuesday was the day that I officially started my PhD (oh yeah, that thing) by having my first meetings with my two supervisors. These meetings were in London, and I wouldn't have had time to go rowing before and wasn't sure I'd have time after either. I also thought there might be a possibility that I would have been set quantities of work that could only be described as biblical, but fortunately that did not happen! So, I got back in plenty of time to go for a decent paddle.

I didn't want to do anything too tiring, since Wednesday was going to be a reasonably heavy day in the boat. I mainly had fun trying out the square blades paddling that I'd done on Monday, getting myself a bit more confident and trying to make those technical points come a bit more naturally. I do think this is the secret to good rowing - get the technique engrained to the extent that you don't really need to think any more! I was gratified to find that I hadn't deteriorated overnight quite as much as I had feared, and that although my paddling was by no means perfect at the end of the session it was certainly still a lot better than my early attempts on Monday had been.

A mental small step - technique did not move backwards!

Putting it into practice...Part One of Many.

Today was my first attempt at the entire head race course on the River Cam in a single. I've done it in larger boats (where I didn't have to worry about steering, and when I had 7 other rowers helping me out), I've done it many times in training but only at lower rates, and I've done it ad nauseam as a cox, so I know the tricky bits, the timing points, and the fact that in my little single it would take approximately forever.

My paddle down started with (yes, you've guessed it!) square blades paddling, which was almost looking passable. Once warmed up and feeling comfortable, I moved up to full slide and focussed on getting a good flow going, with plenty of leg length and a nice squeeze on through the middle of the drive - it felt good to use the legs again! Paddling down towards the start of the head race course I met a few college crews out rowing - it's the beginning of the college training weeks, but at 3pm there were very few crews out, and I didn't see any other boats at all for the last 2k or so.

Emptiness = sheer bliss (and easier steering...)

Having reached the lock where I would spin, I decided to give myself time to do some more tapping and square blade drills, since most head races start with a fair bit of faff and it's good to do something to keep moving. That's one reason; another is that I wanted to delay the inevitable - the sooner I paddled my way up to near the start line (which isn't far from the lock), the sooner I'd have to start taking the rate up and rowing with full pressure. However, I accidentally got in the way of a chap who was doing some fishing, so having apologised and removed myself from the scene I felt that the only course of action open to me was to get on with it.

If you like Monty Python you'll like this blog entry.

Now, I'm not going to tell you how long it took me to row 2.6km up the River Cam. There was a head wind on the reach, I had to stop at Ditton corner (where I nearly rowed into the bank), and had a bit of a handbrake turn around some crews at the bottom of the reach...but otherwise, it was OK. I mean, it was unbelievably exhausting and LONG but I survived it and actually did it in a time that was marginally better than I had anticipated.
Once I'd got over the urge to vomit into the river at the finish, I did a quick assessment of my main physical niggles. Firstly, my hands had survived remarkably well - my left arm has been very weak of late, with several hair-raising oar-dropping moments, but the grip had held reasonably well throughout and, most importantly, I hadn't capsized *sigh of relief*. However, a hitherto unexperienced pain had appeared in my left leg, which was now shaking with an interesting and dramatic muscle tremor. As my upper body was still preoccupied with gasping in lungfuls of air, the shaking of the left leg was very unhelpful and causing the boat to jiggle about quite a bit more than I felt comfortable with when core muscles for support were not an option.

After some strange looking stretching and massaging, the leg calmed down, and by this point my breathing had slowed a bit too. I decided it might be time to try and move on from where I had parked (basically right outside someone's house; I could see them in the living room a few feet from me, being very British and politely averting their eyes). However, by this point my hands had decided to get in on the game and refused to curl around the oar handles. I took the opportunity to do a 'loose hands' exercise (rowing with palms/fingers resting on the blade, but really the thumbs being the only thing with any pressure going anywhere) which, perhaps unsurprisingly, was spectacularly messy but did at least remove me from my position outside someone's house and a bit closer to a position outside someone's pub - so it wasn't all bad.

Anyway, eventually I managed to start the rowing equivalent of limping home. Fortunately, after about 1k of being unable to feel my hands or feet, some feeling started to return. Unfortunately, it was painful feeling, but then you can't have it all. I decided to do some more square blades practice, and was so employed when my coach cycled past with another of her victims athletes. This other rower gives me a lot to aspire to - a junior, she is fearless, fast and always looks fantastically flawless on the river, whilst the rest of us are reduced to sweaty heaps.

Pulling in at the boathouse after some more playing around with square blades paddling, I felt that I'd achieved a good outing. I hadn't been fast, but I had tried hard, and, when I'd wanted to give up (which happened several times) I'd dug my heels in and kept going. I'd also set a time to beat for the race on Saturday, and proved to myself that I could and would finish the course.

Tomorrow I'm going to have a day off from rowing and go riding instead. We're working on a quadrille - but more of that tomorrow!