THE SPORT OF ROWING Stan and Ted respected each other a great deal.”3650 Lyon: “Larry Hough, Champion in the straight-pair,3651 recently said to me, ‘In the pair, you know right away if it’s going to be fast.’ “It was like that in this four. The first day we knew it could be fast, though it would take some time. We had only a month until the Trials, so we stayed together, and we kept looking for other boats to race, gaining consistency and speed and fitness. “Stan told us we still weren’t keeping the squeeze on at the finish.3652 Phil asked Stan what he should be working on, and Stan said something we had never heard before. He said, ‘I really can’t see anything, Phil. Just keep doing what you’re doing.’ “Nash was the spirit and leader of the boat, but Phil provided our smoothness. Training Lyon: “Ted would have us do racing starts after he had announced the lanes as if we were lining up at the Olympic final: ‘Allemagne prêt? États Unis prêt? Italie prêt? Êtes-vous pres? Partez!’ “At the end of one time trial, I remember Stan said, ‘Okay, now twenty more strokes,’ making the finish sprint last well beyond the finish line . . . and we did it, proving to ourselves that we still had something left in the gas tank.3653 “We stretched out our starts to the entire first 500 meters above 40. We did bursts at 46 to improve timing and quickness, looking 3650 Durbrow, op. cit. 3651 1967 and 1969. See Chapter 110. 3652 See Chapter 84. 3653 Nash would later use this same trick with his Penn freshman crews. See Chapter 94. for flat water in the estuaries and under the freeway by the Arboretum. European “One day we had one of those ‘Way enough! Hold all hard!!!’ experiences, after which our bow rode up on top of a little fishing pram between the two occupants whose eyes were huge with disbelief. “By my estimate, each of us had rowed over 3,000 miles that season in preparation for the Trials, plus the weights, the stairs, sit-ups, chins, running. “Ted Mittet used to remark that ‘Pain is a flower.’”3654 Mittet: “As our training regimen increased and other parts of our lives faded, we became dedicated to one another, to our Olympic goal – nothing else existed. “On long endurance workouts the endorphins kicked in, and we achieved what seemed to be an effortless Zen state.”3655 Nash: “I don’t know much about a Zen state, but I remember being way north up at Lake Forest Park3656 in a double with Bill Flint and having a steel-head salmon jump across our stern deck as if he wanted to join in. I also loved having the Husky Varsity Eight alongside our four with two miles to go coming back from a Mercer Island trip.”3657 Mittet: “I shall never forget one early morning workout on the mirror-flat surface of Lake Washington. We had been rowing nonstop for over an hour, and the only sound was the perfect rhythm of our stroke cycle – our soft, nearly silent catch and hard, bluewater finish. The trail of our whirlpools sliced through the sunlit reflection of Mt. Rainier’s summit directly off our stern.”3658 3654 Lyon, op. cit. 3655 Mittet, op. cit. 3656 the far north end of Lake Washington, about 10 mi. 16k from the shellhouse. 3657 Nash, personal correspondence, 2009 3658 Mittet, op. cit. 1002
