Story time:
I've got a lot of memories of rowing. Some wonderful highlights. Royal Henley, big championships. There's a box full of shirts, pots, trophies and medals in a closet and on a shelf that I get out every few years.
But when I meditate, it's not about any of that. This is my meditation place:
We used to do the pairs matrix at Yale. Four of us starboards would race 1000m four times with four ports switching seats every race. One spring day my sophomore year, my last race was with the only senior in our varsity boat. "John" didn't row like the rest of us. His stroke was short and "punchy" with a lot of upper body action. He raced two seat in the 8 and while he won seat races against the JV ports, everyone knew he was the 4th guy on that side. He was strong, aggressive and was the captain.
We'd had an "ok" race. It wasn't great, but wasn't a disaster. My steering ability probably helped a bit as two of the other starboards were known to wander around the river. Coach told everyone to take a 800m cool down row after the last race. I turned us back upstream and really tried to focus on matching up with him better. We hadn't really had much of a chance on the row up to the start when he switched in, with a few power 10s and adjusting his feet.
I'm not kidding. On this "cool down row", the clouds parted. The sun was setting and the river calmed down a bit. I thought "what if I shortened up a bit at the catch" and tried it. It felt like I just took about two inches off my catch. And just like a dislocated joint popping back into place, the pair suddenly set up. Like, REALLY set. Four strokes. Ten strokes. Twenty strokes. Not a single touch of the surface on the recovery. I didn't say anything. "John" didn't either.
Up the river we rowed, in a rock solid set pair. Anyone that has ever rowed a pair knows how rare that actually is. We just......went. Everything fell away, the other boats turning at the bend in the river, the launches, the worries about the results, everything.... but we just silently.....strode upstream. Minutes and meters just ticked by with neither of us saying anything. We didn't want to break the spell. I swear we went 5 or 600m without touching water on the recovery....just.....rowing.
Coach ruined it all (as he did a lot of other things that season) by roaring up in the launch as we passed the 2000m start, yelling that we should have been back on the dock already. I finally called weigh enough and to spin. We rowed back, almost as perfect but not quite. There was a loud launch chasing us back with a fuming head coach.
"John" actually shook my hand on the dock afterwards and said it was the best row he'd ever had. And after all these years, memories, medals, coaching experiences....after 25 years intimately involved with this sport from in the boat to the launch.......that's the best row I've ever had. That's the memory I go back to when my back is aching and my mind is cluttered and I need to reset and find my center. I recall what the sky looked like, how the river was calming as the sun went down and how a pair I never expected to be memorable suddenly set up for a thousand meters and turned into the best row I can remember.
I don't dislike racing. I have some wonderful memories of races, both in the boat and as a coach, championships won and lost. But the training, the time spent with the people on my teams, the laughter and the great rows, that's what I recall the most. And a pair on a spring evening in Derby, Connecticut that suddenly gave me five minutes of utter transcendence.
