Rower's gotta row
By adamg - 2/26/12 - 11:42 pm
Bonnie Sashin reports this is the time of year when she starts getting itchy to get back on the Charles in her red racing shell:
Ivve had fantasies of defying the Rowing Committee’s edict that no boats go out until further notice. Do I respect their concerns about danger and liability surrounding an over-exuberant rower's death by flipping into icy cold water? Of course, because every rower, including yours truly, has had the experience of tipping out of her boat, and usually or more than one occasion.
Comments
Get a Kayak and a Drysuit -
And you can go anywhere, all year round.
Nice try, but...
....that's like telling a golfer to go bowling.
I have kayaked and sculled
I have kayaked and sculled for years. The upper levels of kayaking are more taxing than the upper levels of rowing. Try taking a scull out into the open ocean, into 25 knot winds and 6-8 foot seas. Fight those conditions all day. And all day the next day. And the day after that. And so on.
High-level rowing is going very fast for a short distance on a nice, placid river - the Charles or the Thames or whatnot. It is very taxing in the way that the 3 mile event in track and field is taxing, but it is over pretty soon, and the conditions are optimal. High-level kayaking is a circumnavigation of the UK. Or New Zealand. Or the east coast of Greenland. Or Australia. Or, as Freya Hoffmeister is attempting now, a 18 month trek around South America. She's already gotten around Cape Horn (via the Beagle Channel). High-level kayaking is like a slow jog up K2 while wearing a weighted jacket.
If one took a kayak (and a drysuit!) this weekend to journey from Rockport to the Dry Salvages and back a few times, or to fight the prevailing winds in Buzzards or Narragansett Bay, they would get a taste of the toll it can take.