Rowing with the ‘Morning Glories’

EVERETT — The morning is cold enough for a pea coat, stocking cap and gloves.

Yet, 10 minutes into a row on the Snohomish River, the four women are sweating so much they’re peeling off layers of clothes.

It’s a few minutes after 7 on a moody morning in May. Overcast skies. Intermittent sprinkles. Sun peaking through the clouds over the Cascades.

Perfect day for rowing.

The Morning Glories have met the day and embraced it.

An hour later, one of them — the perky B.J. Lallemand — will exalt, “Wasn’t that awesome out there?”

Nearby, the traffic on I-5 is heavy and fast. Crazy might best describe it.

Here, on the river, life is slow and sane. And untrafficky, aside from the two sleek shells moving nicely over the calm water and a motor boat muttering nearby.

“On a morning like this, with the water smooth like it is,” muses Alex Mazick, “there’s not much more you could ask for in life, especially if you’re a rower.”

Mazick, once a competitive rower on a national championship masters eight-man boat, coaches the sport now, and one of the joys of his job is working with this small group of women who call themselves the “Morning Glories.”

“It’s a fun group, a tight group,” Mazick says, “with some very strong personalities.”

One of these personalities is Kirsti Hveding, the most experienced rower in the group, with 20 years at the oars. She owns a marine equipment business, and one of her employees is her rowing instructor, Mazick. “He is the boss in the morning and he can be very bossy,” she says in a jocular Norwegian accent, “and I am the boss the rest of the day.”

Jenny Heard, a lawyer, and Louise Christianson, a gift-shop owner in Marysville, took up rowing five years ago. Christianson was inspired by her daughter, Kelly Foster, who rowed one year at Stanford and two years at the University of Washington.

Shelly Ellstrom, an artist and painter, got into rowing after watching her son compete, and Lallemand got the urge after having a son and a daughter man the oars. “When you hear the terms and don’t know what they’re talking about, you think, ‘Maybe I should try that,’” Lallemand said with a laugh.

Since it isn’t polite to ask a lady how old she is, one of the ladies volunteers that the age range of the group is “one in her 30s, mostly in their 50s, some in their 60s.” With a half-dozen women on the water this day, you can divvy that number up any way you want.

What is clear is that Jill Edgar, 34, is the junior member of the Morning Glories. Edgar revealed her youthfulness when she told Heard that she “vaguely remembered (the eruption of) Mount St. Helens.”

Something else that is very clear: these women take the sport seriously. No, they don’t come down to the river to train three days a week in the spring, summer and fall (they go inside and work out on the rowing machines the rest of the year) so they can go out and bust other teams, though they do have a regatta coming up in August.

“They’re not in it for the competition, but for the exercise and the camaraderie,” Mazick says. “It’s a unique atmosphere. They’re very committed, but if it’s raining, they might go to breakfast.”

Or, more likely, power on.

“To get out here at 6:30 and be in the rain and the cold for social activity,” the bundled-up Mazick observes, “is kind of an interesting thing.”

The rowers are not so serious that they won’t take time to stop and enjoy a postcard sunrise. Or take in the wild life along the river.

No trance-like zones for this group. There’s too much to enjoy.

On this day, Edgar, Heard, Ellstrom and Christianson make up the quad, while Hveding and Lallemand form the double. Ellstrom operates with two pulled muscles in her shoulder and a pinched nerve.

But sit this one out? Not a chance.

“This is such a good release,” Lallemand enthuses. “It sets the pace for the day.”

Then, with exquisite timing, she adds, “It hurts so good.”

Only a hard-driving athlete knows that kind of pain. And these women have felt the burn.

“I was never an athlete,” Lallemand says of her younger years. “I never worked out this hard in my life.”

Now she can feel the muscles, especially in her legs. “I think I’ve bulked up a little. They say muscle weighs more.’’

That isn’t all that weighs more. The quad hasn’t gone far when water appears in the boat.

“Is it like coming in?’’ Mazick asks.

The rowers aren’t sure. The coach thinks it could be left over from the day before.

“If it gets up to the point where it’s covering your heels, let me know,” he says in jest. “Then we’ll start swimming back.”

Overall, he seems pleased with the boats’ performances, sometimes shouting praise for individual effort — “Shelly, you’re doing a really good job of stretching out” — and other times lauding the entire team, as he does with the double on the way back to the dock.

“How about us?” shouts Heard, whose voice will be heard in court later in the day.

Once back on undry land, the women lift the boats out of the water and carry them to the shellhouse.

Ellstrom does her part, pulled muscles and all. She will leave soon on a road trip to help her daughter move from the East to the West Coast.

There are hugs all around as the Morning Glories say goodbye to her.

A fun group. A tight group.

Athletes, all.