Juniors rowing practice yesterday was actually kind of fun -- I didn't get
crotchety even once. It was fairly windy out, so they didn't actually row, but the
new coach had some good ideas for land-based practice. (I'm calling him
Entrenador, Spanish for "coach".) First, the kid who's helping us out because he's
been assigned some large number of hours of community service (I haven't asked
what he did to deserve it) showed up with a new look. Very 40s -- derby hat, baggy
pants, white T-shirt, gray pinstriped vest, loose suit jacket, tie hanging down
from his neck. All he needed was a long chain to have a zoot suit thing going.
Instead, just to show it's not really 1942, he had a studded belt hanging low
around his hips, more studs on the jacket lapels, and several patches on the
jacket -- "Punk Lives", the anarchy symbol and so on. I'm not sure he appreciated
it when I told him the whole outfit looked like the retro stuff we sometimes wore
in the 1980s.
Entrenador had the kids run 20 minutes, instead of the
6 minutes they usually do as a warm-up for rowing. Meanwhile, we dragged the three
ergs out into the sun where it was a little warmer. Zoot Suit Riot and one of the
coxes weren't running, so they started messing around on the erg. ZSR, who's only
about 5'8" or 9" and wiry, was pulling some impressively low times, but the cox
wasn't, so I challenged him to race me for 500m. I was wearing jeans, which didn't
especially help, since I couldn't get full compression, but I was fairly happy
with my time -- when I entered it on the Concept II ranking site, it turned out to
be my first time in the top 50% of lightweight women, for any distance I've
entered. Yay me. I spent the rest of practice trying not to cough up a lung
though. The cox did beat me -- he's a competitive kid, so I think the challenge
lit a fire under him. He is 5" taller than I am, though about 8 lbs lighter, a
combination which derives from being only 14. ZSR, meanwhile, had taken off his
jacket to erg and shaken out his hair from under the hat (apparently he's given up
on dreadlocks, which were last week's look). With the hat on, longish red hair
hanging out, and vest unbuttoned, he looked like the Bad Boy character from a film
set in the 1940s -- Brad Pitt in A River Runs Through It or Sean Penn in
Racing With the Moon. It's a good look for him -- now all he needs are some
15-year-old girls who are movie buffs.
After the rest of the kids got
back from running, Entrenador did something I thought worked very well. He divided
them up into three teams of five each, set the ergs to count down 2500 meters, and
had the kids do a relay race. Each one had to row 500m, run about 500 yards to
where the rest of the team was waiting, and tag the next person to row. I think
they enjoyed it (at least I did). It kept them interested and let them see where
some of their skills are weak. Only a few of the bigger and more experienced girls
beat my erg time, I was glad to note. After that, he worked with them on their
form on the erg, where it's much easier to make small corrections than when you're
yelling across 5 meters of water from a coaching launch.
For once, we
skipped the gym this morning. I think I got almost 10 hours of sleep, but my lungs
still feel a bit shredded. Maybe I'll go try to nap more. I'm still tired, and I
don't have to do anything much until noon.