Rowing Debrief - Training session 1

Team Overdue

THOUGHT OF THE DAY:

“What am I getting myself into??”

Terminology:
Back chock – the body posture is relaxed and upright, shoulders and chest open, seated as if you were on a dining room chair, hands level with your solar plexus, legs straight.
Front chock – full slide – lifting your knees to their fullest extend. Maintain an upward body posture; head up, looking ahead at the horizon. Raise your knees and simultaneously stretch your arms forward, with the oars in hand – the sliding seat will move forward automatically.
Sculling – ‘rowing’
Finish – the finish of the stroke
Catch – refers to the split second when your hands are raised to insert the spoon as you accelerate the oar to drive forwards.

Other words were shared with team mates but it is decided these things remain on the water.

Lessons for the day:
- Drop an oar and the boat will tip (lucky we only had to be told this once and it stuck).
- Rid is essential
- The boat ramp is very slippery – we saw one guy fall on his backside. Lesson learnt.
- Oars all need to face the same way: we had a bit of a ‘debacle’ where our 4th rower’s oars were the wrong way and had to be changed in the water.
- Charmaine is a wonderful Cox – with such a relaxing voice and more knowledge than the rest of us on rowing, she managed to calm us down as we were alone out on the water.

New Nicknames
“Powerhouse” – (Erin) because of her height she needs to row in the middle and this is where all the power is supposed to come from.


As it happened…
An early morning start is such a wonderful thing, particularly when you are trying something new. While some of us slept like babies others had a sleepless night but nonetheless we all turned up to give it our all or should I say ‘oar’.

We met out coach Bronwen from the JCU Library and learnt some basic terminology. Bronwen has about 10 years experience under her belt which was reassuring to the team of first timers.

Getting the boat out is long and awkward but hopefully we will get used to it. Once we got it to the water and waited our turn to get in, the sun was already well up and the midges were biting (I have the welts to prove it). Charmaine offered to Cox for this training session and we soon found out just how good she was at it.

We all hopped in Charmaine at the stern, then Kristy, Carli, Erin and Tanya at the bow. We pushed out from the slippery wharf as our coach tried to get the tinnie started.

This is when we discovered that Tanya’s oars were in the wrong way (to her credit - she did not put them in) and they then needed to be changed out on the water. As Tanya did this, the remaining ladies tried their best to keep balance and were successful as we drifted out a little bit – our poor coach still trying to get the tinnie started.

Along came Mr Fisherman wanting to put his boat in and after he did and took off we felt the waves he left behind. ‘Pheww’ we survived, then along came two more boats… by this time we had had enough the wharf was getting to busy and it was getting too late and there was still no sign of our coach in the tinnie. I should mention we were only about 10 metres away from the wharf…

As I was saying it was getting late and children had to be taken to school and libraries had to be opened and this all had to be done after a nice warm shower and caffeine injection. We called out to our coach from the water, we wanted to come back in, by this time she was going to come out in a single skull as one had become available, but we had had enough for the day.

Charmaine calmly and successfully steered and coached us back to the wharf where we jumped out and I kissed the slimy, slippery wharf and vowed never to leave it again. But training will continue Thursday and we will all be there, and leave the wharf at 5.45am on the dot and enjoy the experience!

It may have been a bit stressful for a couple of minutes but there was something about the water and the morning sunlight that was relaxing and the feeling I got when I drove home felt like accomplishment.

Although it wasn’t a milestone I still am proud of myself and team mates because although we may not have rowed like pros we got out there gave it a shot and no one got hurt!!! I am really looking forward to this experience and believe I will learn a bit about myself and co-workers.

Libraries Rock!!!

Look out for my write up on Thursday. Pictures on the way (unfortunately)
Erin