Doctor Rowing: One Tough Kid
We often hear about the value of cross-training. “Don’t only erg; get out and do some running” is a common refrain in the boathouse.
But what about telling a runner, “Don’t only run; get on an erg and crank away”? I’d hazard a guess that there are few, if any, running coaches who dispense this advice.
Jack Lionette was my advisee for four years at Groton, where I teach. I had met him before he came to boarding school. He was a small boy who ran like a gazelle. His motion was economical and smooth. When I watched him win his age group in our town’s 5K road race at age eight, I was impressed. It is a tough course with some big hills, but he flew up them.
As the years passed, he kept getting faster. By the time he entered Groton in ninth grade, he owned the 0 to 8, 8 to 11, and the 11 to 15 age-group course records, winning every year.
He began running with his mother and before long he was famous around town. You’d see him on the trails and on roads constantly. One year he ran so hard in the Chilmark Road Race that at the finish line he passed out and was taken to the hospital. This was one tough kid.
He found new challenges when he began to run for our varsity cross-country team. For four years, he was an all-New England runner, winning most of the races in which he competed. He went to the University of Wisconsin, where he hoped that he could walk on to the team. But Wisco is a national power in cross-country, with domestic and international recruits, and the coaches never replied to his queries about trying out. So he did what every frustrated aerobic athlete should do—he tried out for crew.
In his tenth-grade year, he had asked me, “Do you think I would make a good coxswain?” He had not hit his growth streak, and I’d guess he weighed about 100 pounds.
“Jack, you’d make a great coxswain because you are very competitive, light, and a leader. But aren’t you also a varsity tennis player? Do you want to give that up?”
No, he didn’t want to, so he played varsity tennis for three years and was part of a championship team and again an all-New England athlete.
“Whenever a match was on the line, I was hoping Jack was the last one playing,” his tennis coach told me. “One could see in Jack’s face his utter confidence. He knew he would win.”
At Wisconsin, Jack saw on Instagram that there was a meeting for lightweight rowing. He had always had friends who rowed at Groton and he was intrigued. He had shot up in height to 5-feet-10, but he weighed in the 130s. He went to the first meeting for freshmen only to discover that the Badgers did not have lightweight men’s rowing, only women’s. He was steered to the men’s meeting, where several people asked if he was there to cox.
“No, I want to row.”
“Two hundred and fifty guys showed up at the introductory meeting,“ Jack recalled, “and it is literally true that coaches were picking guys out of registration lines and asking them to try rowing. I also heard that they had sent a letter to everyone over six-three in the freshman database urging them to try out. Close to 300 guys ended up trying out.”
The six-week tryout was mostly erging. After three weeks, they had a four-mile run and three erg workouts: a 2,500-meter test, a workout of 4’3’2’1’ (minutes), and another of 5×2’.
“I was waiting for my medical clearance to come through that allowed me to do the tests, so when it finally came, I had to do all three of those workouts on the same day,’ Jack said. “I was in the top 50, so I got to keep trying out. Finally, we had a 5×5’ workout, and cuts were made based on that.”
Jack was one of 12 novices to make it onto the team. Four recruits and four experienced rowers also made it. He was tenth of the 20 new members of the team.
They moved into boats and rowed twice a day for the rest of the fall. Where do you put a 135-pounder amid a bunch of guys over six feet tall and 50 pounds heavier? The bow, obviously, and that’s where he stayed. For a guy his size, he was spinning impressive ergs. At Wisconsin, he did only one 2K and pulled a 6:26. That put him about 20th of the 40 guys on the team.
Although he rowed in the 3V for much of the season and the varsity coxed four at the IRA, Jack knew that his future in rowing didn’t lie with trying to keep up with the much bigger guys at Wisco.
“I loved the experience of rowing at Wisconsin and going to the IRA,” said Jack. But he wanted to row lightweights, so he decided to transfer, and was accepted by Georgetown.
I asked him why he’s gotten off to such a good start in rowing.
“It’s all those years of running—not just the physical exercise, but the mental side,” he said. “To learn to push hard trains the body and the mind.”
Jack is having a blast rowing this fall. His new team did a 6K test and now, having bulked up to 139, he rowed 20:14 (1:41.1 splits). He made the lightweight varsity eight for the Head of the Charles, where they finished sixth, and he was rowing in the engine room at four seat. He still has not done a second 2K.
When I saw him last summer at the Road Race, he ran a personal best and finished second overall.
“And you know what?“ he said, “I didn’t run a single time all summer, never even put on my running shoes. It was all erging for me; I wanted to do well at Georgetown.”
A runner switches to erg training but still has a personal best? There must be something to this erg stuff.
Doctor Rowing, a.k.a. Andy Anderson, has been coxing, coaching, and sculling for 55 years. When not writing, coaching, or thinking about rowing, he teaches at Groton School and considers the fact that all three of his children rowed and coxed—and none played lacrosse—his greatest success.
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