I am inordinately proud of my rowing calluses but lost them in Beijing due to three weeks without an oar or an ergometer to keep them healthy and tough. Three consecutive days of sculling this week, some vigorous pull-ups on the chin-up bar, some hang-power cleans with the Olympic bar, and my hands have turned into hamburger. Nothing to be done but suck it up and keep abusing them until they scab up and go hardcore again. Some Rhode Island Soapworks gardener’s healing hand salve is next (I cannot abide Bag Balm) but will turn my keyboard into a slippery mess.
It is time to get serious about the fall rowing season and mail off some regatta entries today.
Fall races I should enter
- Megunticook Mini-Marathon: Camden, Maine. Ten miles. Supposed to be beautiful course. Got to make my mind up now, the race is next weekend, the 6th and Maine is a long drive from the Cape. http://www.echorowing.com/Megunticock_Mini-Marathon.pdf
- Coastweeks, Mystic, Connecticut. Awesome course, head-style (running start, race the clock) best maritime museum in the world. Two hour drive. Happens just after I return from Bangalore and before a week in Raleigh. I dunno. Excuses, excuses.
- Green Mountain Head, Putney, Vt, Sept. 28. My favorite. Just gorgeous scenery. World class rowers. Prizes are bag of apples, block of Vermont cheddar, bottle of maple syrup. Also it’s a stake race, so there’s the fun of trying to turn a boat around a buoy which is like making a cow dance.
- Textile River Regatta, October 5. Lowell. Merrimack River. Never done it. Might be tempted. http://www.textileriverregatta.org
- Head of the Connecticut: Connecticut River, Middletown, CT – home of Wesleyan. Heard it is a good race. Dunno. This is turning out to be too long a list I think. Wife is not going to be into watching middle-age crisis man slog down autumn rivers of New England.
how do you turn your boat? do you have secret thrusters?
jim
if it helps, we’re about an hour south of Camden here in Georgetown and have an empty cottage. i won’t be around next Friday night (red eye back from SF), nor will anyone else, but can arrange it if you want to drive up and crash the night before.
Thanks Stephen. That’s very kind. I am not feeling the Megunticook inspiration right now — my hands would not handle ten miles of open lake rowing right now!
I’m curious, are you allowed to wear gloves? I know when I bicycle I wear gloves and that they have gel padding. My hands would die without them. From the looks of your fingers, you could use something to buffer your skin.
Gloves “allowed?” … well, in high school when I learned to row, some people tried to do it wearing golf gloves but gloves only seem to make the situation worse and lead to infected blisters. Most rowers suck it up for a few weeks then settle into some serious callous development. Mine are already toughening up.