Out for a paddle
THE alarm rings at 4.23am.
This is ridiculously early for any day of the week, let alone a public holiday Monday. It’s also a faintly ridiculous time to set an alarm for; but years ago I started setting alarms for times ending with 3. No idea why, and not that it matters today, as it’s another 15 or so minutes before I can drag myself out of bed and into the shower.
Outside it’s a relatively balmy 5.5 degrees on this cloudy Canberra morning. There’s barely a breath of wind in the air, which suits me perfectly: the reason I’m up so early is because I’m off for a row.
It still feels weird writing that. Until late 2018 my memories of rowing are Olympic medals and the Oarsome Foursome doing terrible Goulburn Valley Gold ads many years before. Then while job hunting in Belgrade I applied for a role in rowing in Canberra, got the job, and first got in a boat about 12 months later. Since then I’ve been a regular at training and regattas for the ANU Boat Club, continuing on even after finishing with the rowing job in late 2020.
It’s a great sport, one that tests your physical and mental strengths. The best time for training both of these is undoubtedly a Canberra winter, where the temperature regularly drops below zero but the conditions are calm. That being the case you need to prepare for the cold: I have thermal compression tights and top, with water-repellent tracksuit pants and an exercise t-shirt over the top. As I walk outside this morning I notice a faint drizzle, so scurry back inside to grab a light runner’s jacket that should keep me dry on the water.
It’s now 5.30am, and I’m on the bike heading north. I lost my car to a hailstorm 18 months ago and never replaced it, so have to get the 10km to training on a bike. It’s a nice warm-up through parkland to Scrivener Dam, before circling Lake Burley Griffin’s western edge to Sullivan’s Creek and the boat shed. Peeking to my right I can see the water’s like glass — perfectly flat — meaning we should have a good session.
I don’t muck around at the shed. We’re out in the single sculls today, and as the slowest of the group, I like to get out early so I don’t need to rush to the first meeting point. It’s about 6.15, still glassy, and still under 6 degrees as I row out of Sullivan’s Creek. Construction cranes lit up in the distance provide reference points as I go through my warm-up. In recent times my right hand has been dropping as I come forwards, meaning I’m not getting full value out of that oar in the stroke. I’m concentrating on getting that right during the warm-up, but also enjoying the surroundings. In the middle of the Australian capital I have a whole body of water to myself, with the only sounds coming from me: the oars hitting, ploughing, and coming out of the water; the seat going up and down the slides; and the rower occasionally swearing when he gets a stroke wrong. Black Mountain Peninsula looms on my left, with the mountain and famous tower obscured by low clouds.
I get to the yellow sign at the southern edge of the peninsula and wait. A lone sculler leaves Yarralumla Bay to my right and heads towards the National Museum and Central Basin; we’ll be there soon enough. The break while I wait for everyone else is handy though. Born without the top half of every finger on my left hand, I’ve had to work out my own grips to control and feather that oar. This can lead to some bad forearm pump if everything’s not working properly, and while the compression top relieves the pain somewhat, I’ve still come out of races with a left forearm like Popeye’s and an inability to grip anything for more than a few seconds. This is flaring this morning, so the break gives me a chance to massage the forearm and relieve some of the pain.
Soon enough everyone’s here. The sun’s trying to break through in the east but still losing to the clouds, which in turn are releasing enough drizzle to be annoying. I’m surprisingly dry though and happy to have the jacket on as we get ready to head off. We’re doing 5/4/3/2/2 minutes at rates (strokes per minute) 20/22/24/26/28; I’m at the front as the slowest, then Tim, Andrew, Lucas and Angus.
It doesn’t take long before everyone’s overtaken me. Coach Dee, one of the club’s half a dozen or so former Australian reps, follows me for a while to make sure I’m heading in the right direction and not dropping my right hand, before heading past to watch the others. She comes back around before I reach the National Museum’s distinctive orange loop, then heads off again.
I don’t mind this. Rowing a single by yourself is a proper test of mental strength, that ability to ignore the little voice inside your head that says you’ve done very well so far and wouldn’t a break be great and who’s going to know because you’re miles behind, so may as well… I ignore the voice until I row under the Commonwealth Avenue Bridge, when the need for another forearm massage gets the better of me. It’s then back rowing east through Lake Burley Griffin’s Central Basin, which is possibly one of the more scenic places to row in the country. The Australians of the Year Walk on my left gives way to the flagpoles of Commonwealth Place. Peeking to my left I can see Old Parliament House; to my right the Australian War Memorial sits atop Anzac Parade.
It’s around here I catch up to the squad; I keep rowing as I’m told to turn around at the Kings Avenue Bridge then head back to Commonwealth Avenue. I continue on with a solid rhythm as everyone again passes me, before turning as instructed.
You’ve probably worked out by now that I’m not the quickest rower around. And that’s fine. About the only sport I’ve ever found a niche in was netball playing wing defence, where short and speedy are a help not hindrance. Rowing’s unique for me though, as it’s one of the very few sports where I’m reminded of my disability. Each session I tape four fingers and thumb on my left hand to stop blistering on fingers without fingerprints; there’s also the aforementioned forearm pump that invariably flares during races. Given I ride over 100km each week it’s frustrating that the issue isn’t the engine, it’s the chassis.
And yet I’m rowing west through Central Basin ahead of the squad, six months since I stopped working in the sport. Why would anyone do this in the middle of a cold Canberra winter?
It’s a few things. For one, it’s goal-setting. My first goal was to race a single scull about five months after first getting into any rowing boat. The idea was to get para races going in Canberra, and in February 2020 I did exactly that, racing a bloke called Cameron who’d been rowing for five years but never raced. Having multiple people — including a national champion — giving me encouragement before the race was amazing; hearing Cameron laughing his head off as we inched down the course even better. This season the goals were 1000m in under 5 minutes and 1800m (the Canberra course length) in under 10. I ticked the latter off quite early but couldn’t quite get the 1000m goal. Then, racing for the ACT at the Australian Masters Rowing Championships in Adelaide, I smashed my personal best by 20 seconds with a 4:50.
There’s also the baby wins. Sometimes everything comes together in training and I can hold off some decent rowers for a long time. Today it’s Tim who takes a while to get past me which is pleasing. We row pretty well together, picking up a couple of silvers in the double scull at regattas here and in Sydney. I find crew boat rowing a very different challenge to the single: where in the single I’m battling myself, in crewed boats there’s a determination not to let my crewmates down. Tim, Bolwen & I have done a lot of rowing together over the last year and have now developed into reasonable combinations.
There’s the chance to go places. While I was excited about beating my PB in that Adelaide race, most others were excited that I’d won bronze in an interstate race. Granted, there were only three in the race after another Melbourne Covid lockdown, but I still got a medal rowing for the ACT and that is pretty cool. I’ve also discovered a gift for rowing commentary, joining the national commentary team after that Adelaide regatta and hopefully calling the action at Nationals in Sydney in 2022. Of course, it helps to have that authority in your voice that says yes, I know about this sport, for I too have fallen into a freezing body of water in winter.
As we head back to Sullivan’s Creek everything really starts to click. The sun’s starting to peer through the clouds, the drizzle’s disappeared, and my rhythm’s good at a higher rate. I’m first back to the pontoon but third onto the slings, before we head off to the nearest open cafe. It’s here that I’m reminded of the biggest reason I get up at stupid o’clock during winter: the people. Four of us chew the fat for an hour as people drift to and from our table. As someone who’d hit rock bottom 18 months earlier, being part of the rowing community has helped dragged me out of the pit and back to a version of myself I thought was long gone.
But for now it’s back home for lunch and a nap. No training tomorrow, but there’s another 4.23am wake-up waiting Wednesday.
Even if it is a ridiculous time to wake up.