Rowing is The Best Medicine

By Richard Porter

The Lake Stevens Rowing Club

Whatdoes dedication look like? For some folks, it’s waking before sunrise on a drizzly Saturday. It’s showing up at 6:30 a.m. on a 39-degree morning to hop in a rowing shell and traverse the largest natural lake in Snohomish County.

These are the members of the Lake Stevens Rowing Club. They are a spartan bunch -- volunteer athletes of a median age of fifty or so. Most of them sport frames of lean muscle packed into moisture-wicking Lycra. Their neon garb stands out in sharp relief on a February morning of smeared gray skies.

There’s a palpable camaraderie as the rowers carry their shells to the North Cove boat launch. They snack on homemade tahini chocolate chip bars. One enthusiastic rower, Kathleen Desmarais, tells me that rowing is the best medicine. “If you let the weather hold you back in the Pacific Northwest, you’ll never get out!” she quips. True enough I think, shivering inside my puffy coat and beanie.

Today I’m shadowing the Lake Stevens Rowing Club members as they engage in a two-hour practice. I’m riding out with

Barb Cummins, a founder of this crew. She started the organization back in 1997 with seven other members. Our vessel is a custom-built launch forged out of a Hobie Cat hull, painted butter yellow. It’s basically a platform floating on an aluminum frame and pontoons. The whole thing is designed to leave a minimal wake.

Perched on a seat behind the helm, Barb wears electric green waterproof gear. She carries a large black megaphone with the LSRC logo etched on the side. Barb commands attention as she calls out to the rowers, “let’s all get your point,” she orders. She waves a red flag, and the shells take off, the rowers facing us, rowing backwards and away.

We set out into the North Cove of the lake for warm-up laps. Three shells slice through the water as the rowers inside work to start synchronizing their blade strokes. Barb is puttering along in a guide boat, closely scrutinizing the athletes’ form. She’s a tough love character, alternating between exacting critiques, frank assessments of performance, and non-flattering praise when it’s due. It’s clear that she’s been practicing this sport for decades; her assessment is spot on, the rowers take heed to her advice and adjust accordingly.

Giant mansions on the lake are reflected in the water. I spot cormorants, ducks, and a lone eagle overhead. It’s a beautiful, but chilly, place to practice sport. The warmup laps are both heavy on cardio and a chance to practice technical skills. Once the rowers have completed a lap or two (depending on their skill level) Barb rounds them up.

On the next leg of their practice, she tells them, they’ll skirt the 9.17-squaremile lake at approximately a ten mile- per-hour pace: from North Cove to Lundeen Park to Liberty Point to Purple Pennant.

The water is uncharacteristically choppy this morning. Some of the rowers are struggling to match the rhythm of their bladework with that of their teammates.

Sculling is a balance, a blend between technique and fitness. As Barb explains, some rowers are highly technical but don’t have propulsive power. Likewise, some muscle-bound rowers lack the paddle work, so their strokes are an inefficient use of energy. Rowing is sixty percent legs, twenty percent lats, and twenty percent arms. Dedicated rowers show up to the boathouse several times a week to practice building power on bubble gum pink rowing machines.

Barb’s job as coach is to put together well-balanced teams, especially for the purpose of competing in regattas. As we cruise along, she weighs out for me the factors at work in selecting the ideal rowing crew: power, size, experience, interpersonal chemistry, and a willingness to learn and improve. Some rowers have demanding professional lives or personal obligations so they can’t be relied on to make it out to race day.

After a cold two hours we’re back at the North Cove dock. The rowers pull the shells out of the water and walk them back into the boathouse. The 7:00 a.m. crew mingles with the 9:00 a.m. beginners. They’re all in good humor and cheer on this freezing day.

Kathleen Desmarais, the enthusiastic rower, checks in with me. “See? This is a great environment to learn!” she enthuses. “There’s always something more to practice. There are intricacies, you need finesse, but it’s doable!”

She’s the living embodiment of the LSRC ethos; a 66-year-old acolyte celebrating the joys of the water. That’s dedication.

The North Cascades Rowing Club

Dedication, take two. Thursday afternoon, mid-March.

The two dozen kids of the North Cascades Rowing Club junior rowing team show up to North Cove ready

Both The Lake Stevens Rowing Club and The North Cascades Rowing Club have programs for youth and adults of all skill levels.

Learn more and find your class: www.lakestevensrowing.org or www.northcascadescrew.com to sweat. They start their practice by jogging before diving into dynamic stretches, squats, and lunges. It’s a series of peer-led exercises. The group works together.

They are just kids, too -- ages 13 to 18. They’re here after high school to practice for two hours of rowing, four to five days a week. During a day’s practice they can expect to burn well over 2,000 calories before heading home for dinner and homework. Quite the extracurricular regimen.

Passively presiding over these teenage rowers is Coach Kat Runyon. A retired pediatrician, she watches with an eye to physicality. “Form is essential to protect your back,” she muses. “In rowing, everything comes from the hip. It’s a very technical activity. These kids are motivated and serious -- this is much harder than other sports.” She would know. As an adult she has won five medals at nationals.

Kat also keeps an eye to the sky, monitoring the weather. “The wind must be less than 12 miles per hour. Whitecaps can swamp the boat.

And the air temperature and water temperature combined must be above 90 degrees.” She smiles. “When in doubt, don’t go out.”

The kids carefully carry their shells to the dock and place them in the water. Kat and I hop into a motorized launch and watch the rowers bobbing dockside.

Three boats depart swiftly from the cove. From the water, the rowers are backed by the cobalt blue and snow-dusted peaks of Pilchuck and Three Fingers. I wouldn’t venture to guess the wind chill on the lake, but it’s soon evident that my thick parka and wool hat aren’t cutting the early March chill.

Coach Kat watches a novice boat with a maternal warmth that is a counterpoint to her exacting physician’s eye. “We’re not grooming them to compete. We’re grooming them, hopefully, to be nice people.”

Then she shifts abruptly back into coach mode as we pull up on a novice boat. She stops them to break down proper rowing form. Arms out. Body over. Come up for the catch. Body slide backwards.

“You can hear a good stroke in the water,” Dr. Kat tells me. I listen closely. Sure enough.

I’m not a rower myself, but I can relate to the immersive experience of athleticism. The way that one must be present both in body and mind to cultivate muscle memory. The action becomes secondhand through mindfulness.

The place between body and soul is, after all, where the soul resides. These kids have soul. Their militaristic teamwork offers a template for future cooperation in society at large.

In a world where kids are increasingly sucked into screen time, here are teens giving themselves over to a sport where the team is elevated over the individual.

And that, too, is good medicine.