INTERNATIONAL ROWING TURNS PROFESSIONAL “Later we incorporated ideas from Karl Adam3613 which we picked up at his clinics and during visits to Ratzeburg. . “We lifted at Lakeside School. We lifted at the university. We lifted downtown at the Washington Athletic Club. “We ran, and we did stairs until everyone could catch Chuck Holtz, who was the fastest guy on the planet on stairs. “And the other thing we did, which was probably a first, was we weighted our singles, rowing in wherries or singles six- across before the four was selected, and we put a twenty-kilo weight on a peg in each boat, and we rowed to Juanita Beach3614 and back, and if we didn’t sink, the winner got points, so Joe Burk wasn’t the only inventor of the point system.3615 The first I ever heard of it was at Lake Washington Rowing Club, and the man who told us to do this was George Pocock, who was our sculling coach. “Joe used to use a deck of cards, and George and Stan used tongue depressors.”3616 Dick Lyon: “Stan and George thought rowers should be built more like race horses than weight lifters. Earlier in the season at one of our weigh-ins, I remember Stan discouraged at my 191 pounds [87kg], in disbelief that I could be that heavy and still look like ‘skin and bones.’ A few months later I weighed 185 [84kg], even though we probably ate over 4,000 calories a day.”3617 Training Load Nash: “The other thing that we obsessed about was mileage. We learned that if we rowed more miles than anybody else our 3613 See Chapter 92. 3614 “‘Sonova Beach’ in the Husky oarsman’s lexicon.” S. Pocock, p. 165 3615 See Chapter 91. 3616 Nash, op. cit. 3617 Lyon, op. cit. endurance was better. Now that’s about as unsophisticated an approach as you can get! “I’d land my plane at Sand Point Naval Air Station,3618 where they permitted me to tie down my Army aircraft on a little Navy Reserve strip, run [3 mi. 5 km] down the Burke-Gilman Trail3619 to my houseboat, jump in my single, row to the LWRC dock, throw it in the slings, jump in the four – they were waiting for me, pissed off usually – go out and row, come back, row my single back, run back up the trail, get in my plane, go back, teach lessons all day, and do it all over for the afternoon row. “How did I do that . . . ? “In 1960, the other guys were doing the same kinds of things. Rusty was going to Renton3620 for engineering. Dan was teaching, and he was in the Navy, off half the time on ships and training like crazy on deck. Sayre was like a lunatic. He trained and did everything! “What we called paddle is now called steady state. We did our distance rows at 90%. Everything else was full pressure all the time.”3621 Lyon: “In 1964, in one of his more impressive feats in the middle of a workout, Nash showed us how to peel an orange with his pocket knife. It was at the half-way point around Mercer Island, a single spiral peel without a break that could be put back into the shape of an orange after its lovely contents had been consumed. I wowed my kids with that technique years later. “After an orange and water, we then literally raced one of the other fours the twelve miles or so back to the boathouse – not a part of the original workout plan – but no one wanted to finish second. 3618 across from Juanita Beach on the map on the previous page. 3619 Interestingly, the Burk-Gilman Trail didn’t exist until the 1970s. It was a railroad right-of- way during the ‘60s, per Bob Koch, 2010. 3620 at the south end of Lake Washington. 3621 Nash, op. cit. 995
