The Forgotten Crew, Part 1 of 2

The Virginia crew team placed fourth overall at last May’s NCAA Championships in Cherry Hill, N.J. The Varsity Eight boat’s runner-up finish ties for best all-time in program history. Photo courtesy Virginia Athletics.

What were you doing at 8 a.m. last Saturday? Drooling on your pillow? Recovering from one night’s intoxication to prepare for gameday drinking?

Not me. I was doing a circuit lift at the McCue Center. Me and about 40 girls, all of whom are stronger, more athletic and miles more determined to succeed than I.

I had heard stories of what it was like to be on Virginia’s best varsity team that no one knows about: the women’s crew team. Getting up to row on the Rivanna River at wee hours of the morning; erging until red in the face, dead in the legs and white in the hands; going through a lifting routine that laughs in the face of even the most hardcore lifters at Memorial Gym.

So, I decided to see for myself. With the permission of coach Kevin Sauer, I joined the crew girls for back-to-back practices. For two hours Friday night and four hours Saturday, I was a women’s rower.

Well, that’s not quite an accurate description. I think it would be more true to say that I looked like an idiot.

Here’s a look at my part humorous, part painful, and entirely I-will-never-do-this-again stint as a rower. As I found out, just about every story I heard was true, and then some.

Day 1: Errrrrgh!

I’ll be honest. I was stoked to practice the first day.

But then I take 20 minutes to find my car keys and get to practice 15 minutes late. I am told that team members aren’t necessarily punished for showing up to practice late, but suffice it to say, I’m not making a good first impression.

When I arrive, the girls are already warming up on the rowing machine — or, “erging,” as the exercise is popularly known. Right away, Sauer sets me up with a machine and puts two girls in charge of showing me how to use it. Poor souls.

Don’t get me wrong — they’re great. They give me all sorts of pointers on technique. They show me the catch (the initial pull) and the finish (bringing the handle to your chest). It’s two-thirds legs, one-third back and arms, they say. Keep that back straight. Put your hands out a little more on the handles. No, not that much.

But, that’s not what I get out of it as the real workout begins — six sets of 1,000 meters, as fast as you can, with one-minute breaks in between. “Wait,” I say. “Who is timing us?”

“GO!” Sauer yells.

So I go. As soon as I start, my question is answered: a little monitor on the machine shows the distance you “travel,” the time and the rate you are erging in terms of a 500-meter split (i.e., 2:00 means that you are rowing at a rate of 500 meters per two minutes).

Technique? Yeah, that’s going right out the window. All I care about is that monitor. And, as I’m sure is the case for the rowers, I develop a love-hate relationship with it. I am glad that it showed my time … But that darn thing just has no compassion. I push myself harder and harder but as I get tired, the split time refuses to go down.

2:20. All right, good. 2:24. OK, give it some more oomph now. 2:26. Come on, you wimp. 2:25. There you go, just keep pushing. 2:28. 2:33. Still not halfway done with the first of six sets. Oh sweet lord.

Finally, I finish the first set in around 4:45 — about 45 seconds longer than it takes anyone else. As soon as the machine hits 1,000 meters, the monitor ticks down from a minute for the rest period. The girls come to check on me and they say that my split will go down in subsequent sets because this time, I’ll be able to start right as the clock hits zero.

My split goes up. And up. As I finish my last set in 5:03, not only are all the other rowers done, but the team has already put the machines away. “If you need me to stop so that I’m not in your way, I’m happy to stop early,” I wheeze to Sauer as I head into the homestretch on the last set. “No, you’re fine. Finish it out,” Sauer replies. Nice try.

Finally, I finish, and it’s time to go out on the water. As the team boards boats of eight, I hop onto the back of a motor boat with Sauer — happy to observe and simply avoid any more exertion.

The rowers begin what Sauer calls a “steady-state” workout — one based more on technique than speed. It appears to me that the boats work in perfect harmony. Using a speaker though, Sauer always has something to say — mostly having to do with technique — and most of the time, I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about. His voice is firm but also warm and easy to listen to — you could imagine him giving a good toast at a wedding reception. “Think about your body position — am I staying strong?” Sauer says. “Around with that torso. … Not down between the knees with that outside shoulder.”

Sitting next to me is Joe Chaudoin — the father of Kelsie Chaudoin, a 2008 Virginia rowing alumna and now a member of the U-23 national team. When I ask Joe Chaudoin what his title is, he laughs. “Super fan,” Sauer says with a smirk from the front of the boat.

And it’s an apt term for Chaudoin’s enthusiasm for Virginia and for the sport. “Isn’t this great!” Chaudoin says, again and again. It’s a sentiment I simply can’t share.

But, on the other hand, I must admit that rowing is an aesthetically pleasing sport. The sunset over the Rivanna is a beautiful backdrop to the harmonious strokes of eight blades moving smoothly through the water, emerging, turning parallel to the water as they recover, returning to perpendicular, and reentering, all in unison. Sauer refers to this unified movement as an “impulse.” I think of it as a heart beat in slow motion.

At 6:15, I leave — a bit early, as I have a prior commitment. To say I’m looking forward to the next day’s practice as much as I was the first day’s is a stretch to say the least.

Day 2: Blade in the water
My alarm goes off at 7:30 a.m. Saturday, and I curse myself for coming up with this idea for a column.

My entire backside is sore. My gluteous muscles are stiff and my tailbone is throbbing from sitting on the rowing machine. Even as I wonder just how tough the upcoming circuit lift will be as I get in the car, I can’t help but laugh at how much more productive this morning will be than any Saturday morning I have ever had in three-plus years of college.

I arrive at the McCue Center and I am pleased to see that I’m not the only one who is yawning and not particularly excited about lifting at 8 a.m. on Saturday. If you’ll pardon the pun, it is comforting to know that we’re all in the same boat. That fact, rowers tell me, is largely what keeps them coming back six days a week.

As we enter McCue, we begin to sluggishly walk down a hallway toward the gym to warm up — but we’re not walking for long. All of the sudden, a booming female’s voice echoes from the back of the hall. “On a run, let’s go!” it says. At once, everyone starts running. I feel a bit silly jogging down the hallway when I’m not even on the team but I also am a bit scared that the bark of that voice might have some bite. So I start jogging, too.

As it turned out, that voice belonged to assistant strength and conditioning coach Alissa Goldman. During the warmup, Goldman gives words of encouragement, telling the rowers to push themselves and each other. Goldman is clearly a good-hearted person but she has that edge, that crazed obsession with work ethic — the kind, I suppose, that you look for in a strength and conditioning coach.

We head back to the weight room, and it’s time to start the circuit lift. The workout is done in pairs, so I once again am assigned a tutor who can walk me through what’s going on.

A circuit lift is a sprint. High intensity, little rest; low weight, but lots of repetitions. We lift a ton of legs, some back and arms and a little chest. There are three circuits — dumbbell, free weight and medicine ball — and everyone starts at once. Because my partner has to teach me as we go, we are the last pair to finish the circuit. Again, the entire team gets to play witness as I struggle my way through to the end. As I start my last set, Goldman gives me the signal to cut it short because it’s time to move on; the girls chuckle, as they should.

As we move to the freeweight circuit, Goldman approaches my partner and whispers something in her ear. The first set of the next circuit is supposed to have 10 reps, but as I begin, my partner says, “OK, let’s just do five.” Now I understand — I won’t be holding up the rowers any longer. No time for stragglers.

I finished the other two circuits doing roughly half of the assigned reps of for each exercise; even that, though, was no picnic. As I write this column, the combination of my tender tailbone and my leg soreness make sitting down quite a show.

The lift, though, was just the beginning. At 9:10 a.m., we carpool our way to the boathouse for some more rowing. I need to negotiate my feet a few extra steps to climb into my car ­— my legs are not permitting lateral movement.

Once we get to the boathouse and after the girls load the boats into the water, I again climb into Sauer’s motorboat to observe. This time, there is nothing “steady-state” about the rowers’ workout. After a brief warm-up, three boats of eight rowers and three boats of four participate in a 5,000-meter head race. These are the races that dominate the fall season, in which boats do not compete against each other directly, but rather are timed individually as one boat starts after another. The team will be participating in its first such race this weekend, at the Head of the Charles race in Boston, Mass. — the oldest and biggest head race in the world.

As he drives his motorboat behind the race, Sauer becomes more intense in his instructions through the speaker and spends a bit less time on critiquing technique and a bit more time keeping his rowers motivated. “Composure, smooth and attack! You can do all of it!” he cries.

It starts to rain. With a notebook and pencil in hand, I am the only one who seems to notice.

After several such races, they finish, and it’s time to row back to the dock. I am satisfied with what I have seen — these girls offer plenty of writing material. Plus, I got a tough workout to boot.

“All right, Paul. Starboard or port?” Sauer says.

I pause for a moment, then realize what he means. Oh God. I have never rowed before.

“If I knew which was which, then maybe I’d be able to tell you,” I say. Sauer laughs; I didn’t mean to be funny.

Sauer pulls his motorboat up to one of the boats of eight. “Take off your shoes,” a voice says. Climbing into my seat turns out to be a meticulous task. As I plant my feet inside the boat, the rowers yell, “No! Stand on the side!” I freeze for a moment, before finally I recognize that if I don’t stand on the sides of the boat, it might tip over.

The girl in front of me straps my feet in, and I grasp the handle of my oar. The coxswain instructs me to just follow the girl in front of me. Yeah, right.

We begin to move. I struggle to keep the paddle even stable, never mind move it in unison with the others. At one point, I am moving back and forward at exactly the opposite moment that the rowers are. At another, Sauer says to me through the speaker, “OK, put that blade in the water,” and I realize that I am just rowing air.

Eventually, though, I sort of get the hang of it. I even manage to “feather” — the movement whereby you turn the blade parallel to the water as you prepare for another stroke. The girls tell me afterward that I did pretty well for a first-timer, though I’m not too sure that they weren’t just humoring me.

Finally, as the clock approaches noon, we arrive back at the dock. I help the rowers carry the boat into the boathouse — yet another seemingly easy task that in fact requires a disciplined team effort and a vocal leader.

All in all, though I no doubt managed to make a fool of myself, I stayed catastrophe-free. There was one close call, when I nearly knocked a girl into the water as I tried to dodge a boat being carried out to the dock, and then was almost whacked in the head by said boat. But, in general, I think the girls respected the fact that I gave everything a shot. And, though my body would disagree, I admittedly enjoyed myself.

Sunday, I slept in and got some studying done. After two consecutive tough workouts, a day of rest and studying — which I normally dread — was simply marvelous.

What did the women’s rowing team do? Another lift at McCue and another rowing session on the Rivanna. Women’s rowers, several people said to me, are the hardest workers in the athletics program.

Imagining what it would take to do what I did this past weekend six days a week for four years, I don’t doubt that for a second.

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part series. Part two will be published in next Thursday’s edition of The Cavalier Daily.