Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Craig Lambert, a staff writer and editor at Harvard Magazine, has also written for Sports Illustrated and Town & Country. He trains and races in single sculls on the Charles River in Boston, and occasionally competes in major rowing events, such as the Head of the Charles Regatta.

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Mind Over Water

Mariner Books

Chapter One

In the long run men hit only what they aim at.
Therefore, though they should fail immediately,
they had better aim at something high.
--THOREAU, Walden

In the darkness, deep in silence, the lights -- green, red, afew of white -- surge ahead, in the rhythm of breathing. Theyseem, in fact, to breathe their way forward, gathering force on theinhale, then gliding forward on the outward stroke. Against thedark water and the shore, whatever propels these lights is indistinct,but their graceful flow suggests swans.

    Now one swan swims closer, and if this be waterfowl, it is ancient,prehistoric, fantastically long and narrow, a pterodactylafloat. Its beak juts out ten feet or more, and the wingspan sweepsa tremendous arc, fifteen or sixteen feet across. Two wings beattogether, a whoosh through the river water. As they emerge into airand recoil for another immense stroke, it becomes clear: these areno wings. They are oars.

    As waves of dread wash through my gut, I watch the coloredlights from the ramp that leads from the boathouse down to thedock. Soon, red and green beacons of my own, attached to the bowof my boat, will float beside these others, just inches above theriver surface. I am about to become the heart and muscle of one ofthese sleek water birds. How, I wonder, did I get myself into thispredicament?

It is 5:45 A.M. on an October morning in Boston, and both airand water are chilly. Already my hands ache with cold and I haveyet to shove off from the dock; on the river, the frigid breeze willpenetrate skin, flesh, and bone. That much is familiar: nothingmore than intense, torturous pain. As a rower I am used to that.The terrifying thing is the athletic test confronting me: a doubleHead, something I have never attempted before and am not surethat I can even do, let alone do well. Performing well mattersdeeply, but today my first concern is staying alive out there. That,and the traffic.

    The phrase double Head first caught my attention several yearsearlier, in a snatch of overheard conversation that crystallized thevast gap between my rowing practices and those of the top athletesin the sport. Two members of my boat club, Kurt Somerville andTiff Wood, had been chatting after a row. Kurt, a downtown lawyer,is a tall, lanky oarsman who rowed at Dartmouth and then madethe 1980 U.S. Olympic team, those unlucky athletes Jimmy Cartermade into spectators. Kurt's nickname is "Wedge." He explains: "awedge is the simplest tool."

    Tiff Wood is another rowing tool; in college, his nickname was"the Hammer." Actually, many oarsmen have been called hammers,crew slang for rowers who lack finesse. Like ringer, the termhammer blends censure and praise: although hammers are crudeimplements, they can, of course, come in very handy. Tiff's untamedtechnique didn't stop him from becoming one of the greatoarsmen of his era. After a spectacular career at Harvard, where hiscrews never lost a race, Tiff made the 1976, 1980, and 1984 U.S.Olympic teams and became one of the most famous names inrowing.

    As the two Olympians talked, I listened in disbelief as Kurtuttered four innocent-sounding words: "Tiff: Saturday -- doubleHead?"

    This simple phrase stunned me. Kurt was casually proposingthat, on Saturday, he and Tiff go out in their single sculls and row adouble Head piece together. To my ears, he might as well have said,"Tiff: Saturday -- climb Mount Everest?" On the Charles River, torow "a Head piece" means to row the full three-mile course of theHead of the Charles Regatta, a demanding endeavor that can takeas little as fourteen minutes in an eight-oared boat or seventeenminutes in a single scull. It can also take well over twenty minutes.That doesn't sound so terribly long, but think of it as, say, runningfour or five consecutive four-minute miles.

    Actually, it might be even tougher. Unlike running, rowing callson every major muscle group in the body -- legs, buttocks, back,abdomen, shoulders, arms -- and pits them against resistance. Activatingso much muscle tissue at once generates a tremendousdemand for oxygen that sets your lungs on fire. Listening to Kurtand Tiff, I recalled my own scorched lungs while racing in theHead of the Charles, one of the most demanding things I had everdone. Now a double Head -- a six-mile monster, two Head piecesback-to-back -- was something I'd never heard of anyone doing. Itseemed, in fact, an impossible feat. Double Head? I thought. Sureyou are.

Hence my dread. As the boat lights glide by on this cool, darkTuesday morning, I myself am about to attempt the impossible: adouble Head. The Head of the Charles Regatta has accepted a fewdozen of us from Cambridge Boat Club as competitors. The race isabout three weeks away, and fifteen of us who are either taking itmore seriously than the others, or desperately seizing all possibleadvantages, are out here preparing for the big test.

    The Head of the Charles is the world's largest regatta; this year itwill involve 16 events, 800 boats, 4,000 athletes, and perhaps morethan 250,000 spectators. Rowers all over North America are preparingfor this race, as are others in the British Isles, Europe, SouthAmerica, Australia, and New Zealand. Many are no doubt rowingon their own bodies of water at this very moment. Here at CambridgeBoat Club we have been training for the Head for monthsand in the last few weeks have cranked up our intensity. Most of usare working out at least six days a week, just as we have all yearlong, but now we are really leaning into it.

    I am in the best shape of my life, but for conditioning I amnowhere near the top of this Cambridge pack. Unfortunately, I'mnot near the top on technique, size, strength, or experience, either.In a nutshell, I am dog-slow, one of the least competitive scullers ofour training group.

    Still, it is something to be rowing in the Head of the Charles atall. Of the millions of rowers in the world, only a small fractionhave ever competed in this race, the pinnacle of the autumn rowingcalendar. I am a masters rower, officially defined as anyone overage thirty. I have comfortably cleared that hurdle. As a forty-seven-year-oldsculler, I am one of fifty entrants in the men's SeniorMasters Single event, for oarsmen from forty through forty-nine.Single refers to the type of boat, a racing shell rowed by one person.Simply put, I am competing at the lowest end of the highest end ofthe sport.

    In preparing for the Head, our Cambridge cohort is getting helpfrom Gordon Hamilton, a rowing coach retained by the club tocoach its advanced and competitive scullers. The Hamiltons are atrue rowing family; Gordon's brother Chuck has coached crew atMount Hermon School in western Massachusetts since 1970, andhis eldest brother, Henry, is a well-known oarsman who runs hisown sculling camp each summer. All three belong to CambridgeBoat Club.

    Henry is a wiry, accomplished sculler who won the Senior MastersSingle in 1988. In his time, Henry had been the rowing equivalentof a ski bum. At fifty-three, he remains an unrepentant riverrat: since serving with the Navy in Vietnam, he has never...