Everett, Wash.
Published: Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Rowers head indoors for winter workouts

In the winter, area rowers head indoors to work out on machines with names like 'the erg' to prepare themselves for the grueling sessions on the water in the spring and summer

 EVERETT -- A few weeks from now, when the weather begins to warm and the days are brighter, the athletes of the Everett Rowing Association will climb into actual boats on actual water.

But until then, there's still work to do.

Good rowers are made, not born, and much of that development occurs indoors, in the winter, in grueling workouts, hour after tedious hour. If there's a price to be paid for springtime success, this is it.

Fun? Hardly.

Beneficial? You betcha.

"If you want to succeed at rowing, you have to come down here and do your best every day," said 18-year-old Connor Murphy, a senior at Snohomish High School and a four-year member of the ERA. "(Winter training) is probably when you get the most work done."

"And I guess you could say this is fun, in kind of a sick way," he added wryly.

Paula Welly, a 17-year-old senior at Everett High School and a fifth-year crew member, admits her friends think rowers "are crazy. They don't understand why I put so much time into this."

But winter workouts "are for the committed people who want to go fast in the spring. And that's why they're down here," she said.

Rowing, like many sports for young people, has become an almost year-round activity. Even when rain and cold make it difficult to practice outside, rowers can do rigorous cardiovascular and technique training indoors.

And that kind of commitment is necessary, said ERA director Matt Lacey, to keep pace with other top rowing programs around the country.

"The competitive environment is getting tougher and tougher," Lacey explained. "Kids in California start up their spring season in January. They're already on the water going full speed ahead. So if our varsity kids want to be competitive on the national stage, they need to start getting fit in January.

"This is an opportunity for some of these kids to get where they want to go. Because if their goal is to be one of the best in the country, this is one of the tools they can use to get there," he said.

If there is a centerpiece to offseason training in rowing, it is the ergometer. A simulated rowing apparatus, an ergometer is low to the floor with a sliding seat and a bar with an attached cable that can be pulled with two hands, much like an oar. An ergometer -- or erg, as it is commonly known -- also has a monitor, which indicates both how often and how hard an athlete pulls.

Try it for five minutes and your heart is thumping. Try it for 15 minutes and you've worked up a good sweat. But try it for an hour and your body will have gone from discomfort to flat-out pain.

"Your muscles usually burn when you're doing it," said Caitlin Knox, a 15-year-old sophomore at Snohomish High School and a second-year rower. "And by the end (of the workout) you're dead.

"We do really hard erg pieces, and there are moments when I'll be like, 'Why am I doing this? It's so hard and I'm putting myself through so much pain.' But it really does pay off."

"If you're on there for an hour," Lacey said, "your hands are hurting and your rear end is in a world of hurt. But I also think it really can be one of those moments that cross country runners enjoy. Because if you're on there long enough, you just enter into a rhythm where all other distractions fall away. And that's when you really can enjoy one of best experiences rowing can deliver.

"You can find that Zen spot," he said, "and that can be the best place. And the will that you can also develop on the erg is something you'll need on the race course."

On the strength of its offseason workouts, plus a bunch of highly dedicated athletes, the ERA has become one of the top rowing clubs in the country. A year ago, Everett took five boats and 47 rowers to the national championships near Cincinnati, making it 12 straight years the club has been represented at nationals.

The ERA has a boathouse at Langus Park along the Snohomish River near the I-5 overpass. When weather permits, the rowers are on the placid waters there, rowing one way and then back again, with coaches in nearby launches calling out instructions. And in the winter they are inside, usually four days a week, sometimes 50 or more at a time, training with diligence for the coming outdoor season.

"Kids have a huge level of enthusiasm, and one of the other reasons we put together a winter program is to find a way to focus that enthusiasm," Lacey said. "Because even when we didn't have a program, they wanted to come down anyway.

"We have kids who are pushing to be some of the best kids in the country," he said. "They know where the bar is and they can use these workouts to get there."
© 2009The Daily Herald Co., Everett, WA