Pelham rowers seek speed at elite sculling camp
BY DON RICKERS Special to the VOICE
I’m old enough to remember a Palmolive advertisement on television from the late 1960s, featuring a manicurist named Madge who surprises clients that her finger and nail softening agent was dish soap (“You’re soaking in it”).
Madge would fall off her stool if she saw the hands of some of the ladies attending the recent sculling clinic at the Welland International Flatwater Centre. Their callused, chapped fingers and palms were bathed not in Palmolive, but the frigid, early May waters of the old Welland Canal. Nails trimmed short. No hand models here.
It’s a price these women gladly pay to engage in their hobby, which at times borders on obsession.
The filled-to-capacity clinic, co-hosted on May 5 and 6 by Brock University Rowing and the South Niagara Rowing Club, was geared to experienced adult male and female “scullers” (rowers with two oars, one in each hand).
All had competed in numerous regattas across Canada and the USA. Most had a drawer full of medals. They sought technical gains in their rowing, which would translate into greater boat speed. The 25 attendees were drawn from Niagara, Toronto, and locales as far afield as Muskoka.
Lead coaches for the clinic included Peter Cookson, a former high- performance director with Rowing Canada Aviron, and Mike Purcer, a Brock Rowing technical advisor and coach, with a focus on rigging (adjustments to the boat’s hardware and blades so as to maximized efficiency) and on-water video analysis.
Also involved were Paul Beedling, who was an Ontario talent identification and development coach with the national Row To Podium program, and Brock Rowing’s Ron “Swede” Burak, a former Olympian. Cookson, Purcer, Beedling, and Burak all have Niagara roots.
Masters rowers are classified by age in five-year increments, from (AA) 21-26 years old, to (J) 80 years and older. It’s an eclectic mix. Many of the top performers were star athletes in collegiate rowing, went on to international competition, and never put down the oars. Others became curious about the sport when their children started racing in high school, and they ultimately became passionate advocates and practitioners themselves.
Sandra Frayne of Ridgeville, a recently retired psychologist with the Hamilton-Wentworth Public School Board, fits into the latter group. Her kids rowed at E. L. Crossley, and on a whim she joined a group of moms who had decided to give it a try.
Frayne commenced serious competition as a “lightweight” (under 130 pounds for women, under 160 pounds for men) a decade ago at age 50, and has gotten progressively leaner (dropping 15 pounds) and faster over the years. Her efforts have culminated in medals at the Royal Canadian Henley, Canadian Championships, and other regattas.
“I love not just the training and technical aspects of rowing, but also the networking side of the sport,” she said.
“The rowing community is terrific. I now often arrange my winter vacations based on the proximity of rowing courses and clubs. Tampa? Phoenix? Been to both, connected with their people, and enjoyed some great rowing and socializing.”
Frayne’s next challenge? The Masters World Championships in September in Sarasota, Florida.
Frayne’s crewmate, Catherine Timms, is another mom who was influenced by her children’s involvement in high school rowing at Crossley. She and her husband, Kevin Fuller, both participated in recreational rowing for a few years, then mutually decided to take it to the next level. They currently row up to six days a week April through October, with weight training and ergometer sessions in the winter.
Timms raises Alpacas on their rural property outside Fonthill, and has a fair degree of flexibility in her training times. Fuller’s schedule is more complicated as a professional engineer, and early morning rows prior to heading off to work are often the norm.
The excellent coaching at the clinic was a primary reason Timms signed up, eager to tap into the expertise.
“It’s all about boat speed, but boat speed is so much more than just power and endurance,” she said. “Finesse also pays a tremendous part….the subtle movements with your fingers to feather your blades on the recovery…the split second changes in body movement to immerse the blade at just the right moment to maximize drive at the catch. Acquiring the finesse is the most difficult part of rowing.”
Sue Battersby-Campbell, a nurse practitioner from Fenwick, rowed as a teenager in high school, but embraced masters rowing about seven years ago.
“I see myself as a lifetime learner in my profession, and that same mentality carries over to the rowing course. It has become something of an addiction, frankly, and I find myself constantly chasing that perfect stroke,” said Battersby-Campbell.
Unlike Frayne and Timms, her kids did not compete in the sport in high school.
Rowing, like lacrosse and rugby, doesn’t enjoy broad national popularity and saturation as do sports like soccer and basketball. Rather, it has pockets of fanatical support across the country and around the globe. And Niagara would definitely be considered a hotbed. Masters rowing is a thriving subculture of the sport, with men and women well past their prime putting in hundreds of hours of training for 1000 metre races that can take four minutes to complete.
It may appear to the uninitiated that rowing is all about pulling on the oars with the arms to propel the craft forward. But more accurately, it is about pushing — driving with the more powerful leg, hip, gluteal, and back muscles to move the shell through the water.
The arms simply connect the blade to the core. Balance and fluidity are critical.
Maneuvering a single shell can be a precarious business. The boat is about 26 feet long and less than a foot wide. Stability is achieved primarily by manipulation of the oars, which measure about nine feet in length. Wind and rough water can jeopardize the craft’s balance, putting a sculler at risk of capsizing.
But once mastered, the esthetic beauty of sculling —the symmetry, the repetitive and rhythmic rush of water against the hull, the communing with nature, the marriage of power and grace —can create a transformational, almost Zen-like experience, a kind of spiritual enlightenment.
The clinic’s daily routine included pre-row warm-ups, on-water sessions with timed pieces and personalized coaching, video review, and technical discussion. For the first on-water session, Cookson instructed the scullers to perform at 22 strokes per-minute and at “race pressure,” which essentially is at the rowers’ aerobic threshold. Pain increased as the pace quickened, and lactic acid levels rose in the athletes’ muscles. Faces grimaced as the scullers gulped in greater amounts of air to feed their lungs, now burning with exertion.
By the end of the afternoon, it was a labour for the participants to rack their shells and stow their gear. But the exhaustion had been earned. It was a good feeling.
In rowing, heaven and hell are on a bisecting continuum.
Timms summed up the attitude which prevailed amongst these rowers: “I think the personal satisfaction and sense of accomplishment are the greatest rewards, not necessarily the achievment of winning races. Sure, I love to win, everyone does, but it’s working really hard, day in and day out in all kinds of weather, mastering technical challenges, and pushing through painful training pieces that is exhilarating. You end up extending yourself past your limits, what you perceived before as barriers.”
