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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 doneanything but row, coach, and work on boats. But while the popularityof skiing pumps money into many businesses, rowing is atiny, elite sport that supports only a trickle of commerce. Consequently,for some time Henry lived out of his VW van -- chilly inwinter, but rent-free. One of its favorite mooring spots was theCambridge Boat Club parking lot.

    Gordon Hamilton has a wife, child, and full-time coaching jobat M.I.T. Though not a complete oarhead, he is addicted to coaching,one of those enslaved persons who is compelled to adviseathletes. For example, one morning when I was sculling downstream,Gordon passed me, heading upstream in a motor launchbehind his group of scullers. Bound by the custom of mutualobservation that governs all of us who promenade the CharlesRiver, Gordon had reviewed my rowing form. Unable to help himself, he spun his launch around, followed me downstream a fewhundred yards, and told me to get my hands away from the bodyquicker at the finish of the stroke. After tracking me long enoughto see that his advice had registered, Gordon did another U-turnand rejoined his group.

    For several weeks before the Head of the Charles, Gordon istaking our group out to train twice a week. On this Tuesday, oncewe have launched our singles, he explains how the double Headwill work. We'll begin at the finish line of the racecourse and row a"reverse" Head piece downstream to the start, rowing at full pressurebut at a slow cadence of 20-22 strokes per minute. Then we'llturn around and row the second Head piece upstream, again withfull pressure but at a racing rate, which might be anywhere from 26to 32 strokes per minute, depending on the athlete. Gordon willtime the second piece with his stopwatch and give us our individualresults at the finish line.

    My time doesn't much concern me today, but survival does. Tocollapse and fail to finish the piece would mean humiliation infront of some of the best athletes in my sport. Not my idea of agood time. But my greatest anxiety is navigating the traffic.

    Understand this: to stage a race for fifty boats, you cannot lineeveryone up at the starting line and yell, "Go!" For one thing, theCharles River is much too narrow for fifty racing lanes, and in anycase the idea of setting up fifty buoyed lanes over a three-miledistance is ludicrous. To get eight hundred boats up the river onone fall day, you do something called a head race. The term comesfrom England, where college crews at Oxford and Cambridge competeeach spring in "Head of the river" races that use a staggeredstart: the crew that has earned the right to lead the racing processionholds the honorific title of "head of the river." In America, ahead race is one rowed against the clock, with a staggered start. Inthe Head of the Charles, the boats start at ten-second intervals andare timed by a computer over the course. The fastest time wins.That way, you need only one racing lane, albeit a wide one.

    It has to be wide. The staggered start still puts quite a few boatson the river at once. Naturally, everyone would like to steer theshortest possible course to the finish line, and so, in theory, allboats would prefer that one optimal pathway through the water.The trouble starts when a faster shell overtakes a slower one on thecourse. The rules require the slower boat to give way. But sometimesthe slower boat refuses to admit that it is being passed and sodoes not give way. This situation can lead to some rude exchangesbetween athletes in the two boats.

    But even when the slower shell is willing to move over, themaneuvering can still be tricky. If someone is about to pass you,you need to (1) see them coming early enough to adjust yourcourse, (2) determine their probable course and clear out of theirway in a timely manner, (3) move far enough away to avoid clashingoars, an ugly event that can slow both boats, stop both boats, oreven flip a boat over, while you (4) minimize your own divergencefrom the ideal course. To complicate matters, sometimes two ormore boats may be closing on you at once. Steering through rivertraffic of this density at racing speed can present some unnervingproblems. The worst-case scenario, a collision, is unlikely to provefatal -- except to one's chances in the race and to those of one'sunhappy antagonist. Boat crashes can launch some floating conversationsthat are notably short on pleasantries.

We begin the double Head piece. One nice thing about tacklingsuch an endeavor is that once begun, there is nothing to do butfinish it. In rowing, launching commits you. There is no divingoverboard and swimming back to shore, much as you may feel likeit at times; no matter how hard the workout is, you are going tocomplete the task. The lack of any real alternative serves up thebracing tonic of decisiveness: one's course is clear, since there is noother.

    Out on the river, my anxieties about what might happen giveway to the stronger claims of what is happening. When rowing ashell, there is so much to pay attention to, and the consequences ofnot paying attention are so immediate and so drastic, that the taskforces you into the present moment and holds you there. Realitytrumps reverie. In this respect, crew resembles auto racing, anotheractivity that requires total alertness. Racing through traffic producesintense physical and mental stress; thus, it is essential to relaxthe body as often as possible. Relaxing the mind is fatal.

    My downstream piece at a slow cadence goes well enough. Ittires my muscles a bit but also loosens me up. We turn the boatsaround and align ourselves for the upstream piece, the "real" one.Gordon starts us in reverse order of our estimated speed: theslowest scullers at the front of the pack. (I start second.) This is areasonable scheme that keeps everyone roughly together on theriver; if the fastest people went off first, they would simply rowaway from everybody else, and the slower boats would soon berowing along in forlorn solitude.

    Yet there is a fiendish consequence to this starting order. For ourgroup of scullers, it means that by the time we reach the two-and-a-half-milemark, the very fastest boats will be overtaking the veryslowest boats: then and there, the contrast in speed will be maximal.But at this very spot, the river narrows and veers sharply leftas it passes under the Eliot Bridge. The bridge has three arches, andthe race course goes through the middle one. The confluence of anarrow stream, a sharp turn, and the squeeze through the centerarch spells trouble. On race day, many crashes have occurred at thisspot as two or even three crews tried to jockey through the centerarch side by side and proved unable to stay clear of each other. TheCambridge Boat Club membership has enjoyed an excellent viewof these thrilling mishaps since its boathouse looks out at this verypoint on the Charles.

    My upstream Head piece gets off nicely. I come up to speed wellbefore the starting line, so I can approach the start at close toracing pace. As I cross the line, in front of the Boston Universityboathouse, Gordon yells, "Row!" and I really hit it. Within a quartermile I pass the one boat ahead of me and so briefly lead thepack, but over the next mile several boats go by me. This is nosurprise; I expect these faster scullers to be speeding by, and I steerout of their way successfully. My goal is simply to row a good raceand steer a good course. So far, I have handled the traffic well.

    But then comes the treacherous Eliot Bridge. As I approach thecenter arch, three of the fastest scullers in the pack are bearingdown on me. Kurt Somerville's boat is hurtling up the river on mystarboard side. On my port side is Tom Darling, a former Olympianwhose single is coming on like a bat out of hell. And headingdirectly for me, rowing hard, is the redoubtable Henry Hamilton,piloting a dark green torpedo aimed directly at my stern.

    As I approach the bridge, there is nowhere to go -- I amhemmed in from behind and on both sides. Steer to port, and Iobstruct Tom; move to starboard, I am in Kurt's way; if I stay thecourse, Henry's shell will soon be in my lap. How to escape theseguys -- row faster? I am already rowing as fast as I can. The onlyoption seems to be levitation: find a joystick in my boat, pull back,lift off, and fly a few feet above the water as the three shells speedpast beneath me.

    But there is no joystick; the only sticks that can make this boatfly are my oars. Pressure like this rivets your attention wonderfully,and one priority now shines with burning clarity: get through thearch before they do. Whatever problems I already have with thispursuit squadron will worsen drastically if they catch me under thebridge. The arch has room for, at most, two shells abreast. The ideaof four boats trying to squeeze themselves through that opening isunthinkable.

    It is time to go savage. I take my rate up for the next fifteenstrokes and pour everything I have onto the oarblades. When Iemerge from the Eliot Bridge, unscathed and still a few feet aheadof the posse, I feel like a prisoner who has wriggled through anarrow passageway to freedom. On the other side of the bridge theriver widens, and from there on, all courses are about equal in theirdistance to the finish line. I veer my shell to starboard and see Kurtdoing the same; he goes past me on that side as Tom and Henryzoom by on port. I am out of danger, and all that remains is to rowhard for the last half mile.

    Past the finish line the scullers are spent. The boats paddle lazilyalong as their human engines relax and breathe in a slower rhythmas they blow off any carbon dioxide residue from the race. Muscleexhaust. Soaked in sweat and a pleasant fatigue, some just stop anddrink from their water bottles. It's a time to review what happenedover the course. I have been through a battle, and it was harrowing.Under pressure I had been frantic but didn't crack; I kept my witsand made choices that worked, both for me and the nearby boats. Ihad competed among the great athletes. Not against them, really,but among them. I had steered through traffic. Today, that is surelyenough.

    Gordon drives his launch over to the boats and gives each of usour time; mine is actually the fastest Head piece I have rowed. Itsinks in: I have done a double Head, the feat that once seemedsuperhuman. Not only that, but my performance was a personalbest. Fighting through race traffic probably increased my speed.

    Then the moment under the bridge flashes back, the instantwhen I thought, I am already rowing as fast as I can. Just secondslater, I had rowed faster.

We are out here in the darkness to reveal ourselves, to discover whowe are. With the oars, we attempt things that we cannot do, weconfront that which is beyond our capacities. Mind over water. Theshells transport us into the unknown.

    Edges form outlines. If our boundaries determine our identities,then we learn who we are by finding our limits. Rowing is a vehiclefor finding them: it takes us into that nebulous zone where whatI can do shades into that which I cannot do, where our abilitiesconfront our aspirations. Which are more real?

    Like any worthwhile adventure, this quest can be daunting.Reaching the end of our capacities inevitably means pain andreminds us that despite yearnings, we are not yet infinite. Anyconfrontation with one's limits reminds us of another, less negotiablelimit. Yet our only alternative is standstill. Growth is uncomfortable;it results only from that which challenges us. Why doesexpanding our capacities matter so much? Perhaps we are rowingtoward something other than the horizon, an unknown shoreline.Each stroke pulls us farther along an inner journey. The real voyage,whatever the boat, is into the soul.

    For those of us who power these slender shells, a paramountgoal is the full exploration of our talents. Otherwise only the dementedwould be afloat on the Charles River in the dim lightbefore dawn. Something pulls us out of a warm bed into the colddarkness: call it a will to excel, or at least to accelerate, which on thewater may come to the same thing. Speed afloat is a worthy motive.Still, it doesn't seem to rule out the "demented" explanation. Whatis so important about speed?

    Our love for speed is not just a cultural trait, even if postmodernsociety is an urban racetrack where attention spans are short andeveryone seems to be hurrying toward nowhere in particular. Theancient Greeks also loved speed and awarded laurel wreaths to thefastest runners in their Olympic Games.

    Speed appeals to humanity for several reasons. First, being ableto get somewhere faster than someone else confers a Darwinianadvantage in competing for resources; speed helps one outrunpredators, whether prehistoric beasts or downtown muggers, andto commandeer food and other useful goods. In case of violence orwarfare, speed helps, both in avoiding conflicts and winning them.

    Speed feels good. It is exhilarating to move fast. There is thesensual pleasure of the wind on the skin and the sound of waterrushing beneath the hull, the pleasing bodily sensation of momentum.Speed also excites us because it is dangerous. The higher thespeed, the less time to react in event of a mishap -- and so thegreater the danger and thrill. Rowing fast, one's bow driving up outof the water, feels like hydroplaning, even flying, and so woos uswith the dream of flight. Freedom from gravity, from physical, laws,beckons from the prow of speed, with the promise of ascent intohigher realms.

    Speed is also beautiful. To go fast demands efficiency, andefficiency jettisons all but the essential. Speed streamlines, sculpts asimplicity of line, designs elegance. True, many runners and rowersdo go fast without any particular grace. They are exceptions, butwe must credit them with discovering their own route into swiftness;on the medal stand, speed is a science, not an art. There isno single way to go fast any more than there is one formula forbeauty. What ultimately matters is using your own talents fully,developing your own body and mind in a way that extracts theiroptimal velocity.

Rowing is a vehicle for exploring the outer limits of human performance.It occurs within a simplified context that permits a clearview of what is effective and what is not. In crew there is nodefense, only offense: winning boat races simply means movingfaster than everybody else. You cannot slow down your opponents.Since your sole weapon is speed, the goal is straightforward: maximizeforward velocity. As it turns out, lessons learned afloat carryover onto dry land, where we also want maximal forward motionin our lives.

    This does not mean charging pell-mell through life, chasingill-considered goals, never pausing to enjoy the moment. Quite theopposite. Life at "full speed ahead" means realizing your ambitionsin the shortest possible time. To do this requires us to know clearlywhat we want and to inhabit the present moment fully. We need toestablish specific rituals that force us to become more fully alive.We learn to remove impediments, to gather momentum, to minimizefriction. Reach your goals faster and you can realize more ofyour dreams in a lifetime -- and so more rapidly fulfill your personaldestiny. Life at high velocity speeds your own evolution.

    Reaching the highest levels of performance usually requires usto compete with others. How can we improve our chances ofwinning? We race as single scullers as well as in crews of two, four,or eight rowers. Victories by rowing crews, like other crews, generallyresult from teamwork. A fast boat of eight rowers and a coxattains a power that transcends its nine separate individuals. Maximizingspeed via concerted effort, we create outcomes where everyoneprofits. Such results build strong relationships with partners,teammates, and coaches -- or, in different settings, with customers,voters, or investors.

    At other times we operate in the zero-sum mode and seek tovanquish our opponents: we win, they lose: we beat them.Althoughit may seem old-fashioned, in regattas, proxy fights, andOlympic finals, this is still the preferred result, and in war it has norival. A boat race is a civilized form of war. The big win grows froma series of smaller ones. Conquering the other crews -- the externalopponents -- means at every moment winning smaller battleswithin yourself.

In the boats, we explore the concepts that underlie creation. LikeEinstein, we wish to know God's thoughts. We shall attempt to prythem loose with an oar. The raw elements of the sport are ourteachers: the wind and the water, the boat and its oars, our ownbodies and minds.

    In the shell we occupy a liminal area between sky and water,between carp and cormorant. The rower is both fish and bird -- aflying fish, or else an aquatic condor with a staggering wingspan,skimming across the water's surface. Suspended between liquidand air, we inhabit a transitional zone that opens a window onmysteries hidden from those with solid ground beneath their feet.Sliding between dark and shadow, between sunlight and the obscure,is the region of discovery. Here the inchoate seeks form.Every area of creation has such a penumbra: venture capital, avant-gardearts, courtship. In such crucibles, imagination creates thefuture.

    The penumbral zone offers optimal unpredictability. Consideravant-garde music. The radical compositions of John Cage, usingrandomness, ambient sound, and noise, are too unpredictablefor most audiences. The listener cannot relate the sounds to anyknown pattern (since they are patternless by design) and so hastrouble making sense of the music. The result is boredom anddisinterest. At the other extreme, a children's song like "Twinkle,Twinkle, Little Star" is too predictable. Listeners know the melodyby heart, again producing disengagement.

    Partial unpredictability, semi-understandability, engage ourattention. This is the region of learning. Take blues music, whichuses a twelve-bar pattern of chord changes known as the "bluestwelve" Within that pattern a musician can improvise, creatingnew melodic lines, rhythms, and harmonies. For many audiences,blues improvisation strikes that optimal balance between theknown and unknown; it is just unpredictable enough. But beautyis in the ear of the listener. A sophisticated audience may find astandard blues too predictable and require more progressive musicthat strains against familiar forms.

Rowing, too, has its traditional forms: we row within a communityand a history. It would be foolish for me to act as if I were the firstperson ever to try to perfect my sculling, to wrestle with the challengesposed by a tippy boat and rough water. Others have workedover these problems long before I was born. We have mentors.Through the decades, rowing champions and great coaches havediscovered and refined certain principles that produce extraordinarylevels of performance. They have learned how to create theresults they envisioned, turning an idea into a physical reality. Thisis a near-godlike faculty, and in fact, rowers do refer to such outstandingperformers as gods. Luckily, since these deities still walkthe earth, they can offer us divine guidance.

Rowing is such a beautifully small, obscure sport; in the rowingcommunity, as in a village, everyone knows everyone else. Consequently,a journeyman like myself can train alongside the bestplayers alive -- past and present Olympians, genuine world-classathletes. Very few sports are like this. Imagine being a playgroundbasketball player who, every day, gets to shoot hoops with MichaelJordan; or a club tennis player warming up each morning next toPete Sampras and Steffi Graf, getting tips from Steffi on your slicebackhand. At Cambridge Boat Club, that is what I do five or sixmornings a week, seven or eight months a year. My rowing friends,coaches, and acquaintances have been to the Henley Royal Regatta,the World Championships, the Olympic Games. Some are headingtoward the next Olympics. They have won gold, silver, andbronze medals at all levels of the sport and on lakes and rivers allover the world.

    My own medal collection is limited. It's limited to fantasies sinceI haven't won any. True, as an oarsman on an eight-oared crew, Ihave won some races. And I was once Cambridge Boat Club's novicesculling champion. That blistering competition had only oneother entrant; it was a race in which you finished either first or last.I finished first. Regrettably, there was no medal ceremony, so I hadto content myself with the ensuing fame and glory. Most of thathad dissipated by the time I reached the dock.

    But if I have not been a champion, I have surely lived amongthem, and there has been much to learn in their midst. The greatestrowers have pushed not only their personal limits but the limits ofhuman capacities. They have probed the high end of performance,have taken the human vehicle to a kind of zenith. Their rituals canshow us a path to doing likewise.

Tonight I steer the boat upstream into the twilight, on this Novemberevening in 1965. Along its serpentine course, the Charles Riverwidens and narrows, and its riparian sounds swell to crescendos inplaces or relax to the low purr of a river at peace. Downstream,where the current winds through Boston, hard skyscraper surfacesblast the roar of the city's traffic out onto the river. Travel upstreamthrough the academic burg of Cambridge and the din abates as theriver narrows, like the roads along its banks. Farther west, anotherdiminuendo ensues in suburban Watertown, where herons wadethe shallows. Tonight it is quiet indeed. This particular evening willsoon get even quieter, perhaps quieter tonight than it will be forthe rest of the twentieth century.

    We have rowed well into Watertown, having launched downstreamfrom Newell Boathouse, home of the Harvard men's crew.We are newcomers to Newell, trying out for the freshman crew.There are nine of us in this boat, and most of us don't know whatwe are doing. We are all male, all freshmen, all seventeen or eighteenyears old. Beyond that we have little in common. We comefrom all parts of the United States. Most of us attended public highschools and had never been in a racing shell until we arrived atHarvard a few weeks ago.

    Four of the eight oarsmen, however, do have rowing experience,some of them several years of it. These are young men fromwealthier families, the preppies, boys from private schools that hadboats, boathouses, and crews. Far more accomplished rowers thanthe rest of us, they radiate the exasperation of privileged teenagersthrown together with five other boys who, like me, are rank beginnersat their sport. Unfortunately, our incompetence affects themdirectly.

    The German word for coxswain is Steuermann, steersman. Ascoxswain it is my task to steer this mixed pack of purebreds andmongrels. In the twilight I sit in the sternmost seat, controlling notan oar but a rudder, a wooden flap attached to our stern. I mustnavigate our course and avoid obstacles like bridge abutments andother shells. In each hand I grip a wooden handle on a rope thatcontrols the rudder.

    I also must keep the boat from tipping to port or starboard, andI am just learning that this is crucial in rowing. The balance or levelof the boat is called its set, and when the boat is set up, itis, metaphorically, on an even keel. It is not literally on one becauseracing shells do not have keels; a keel would slow the boat downintolerably. But here, as elsewhere, speed exacts its price: with nokeel for stability, the shell lists easily.

    So rowing this boat demands a delicate balance. Just as whenwalking a tightrope, you must keep your body precisely centered;throw your weight even slightly to one side or another and severetrouble immediately ensues. Crew makes two seemingly incompatibledemands. You are doing gruntwork, heavy muscular effort,pulling on the oars -- yet, you must maintain a tenuous balancethat requires continuous fine adjustments in your physical position.So not only is it like walking a tightrope but like lifting abarbell at the same time.

    The inexperienced boys on this freshman crew don't knowmuch about setting up a shell. This evening our boat often lists toport, which makes rowing an ordeal, especially for the port sideoarsmen. The careening shell jams their oars far too deep into theriver and makes them struggle to get them out. One port oar is thecrew's stroke, a handsome, tall, blond preppie who faces me directly.From three feet away he snarls, "We're down to port!" withthe plain implication that I should do something about it. Likewhat? Through my small megaphone, I tell the crew that we aredown to port, but nothing changes. Then it does change: theyovercorrect and we are down to starboard. Next, the boat sets upfor a couple of strokes, but then we go down to port again. ThisSisyphean cycle only amplifies the stroke's frustration.

    While the unbalanced shell is the key irritant, I can also feel thestroke's displeasure at having a cox who doesn't immediately recognizethe problem and take steps to correct it. For him, tonight'srow feels like thrashing around in a washtub full of bozos, a majorstep backward from the smooth crew he rowed with last year at St.Paul's. I'm letting him down: I'm no coxswain, I don't know how toget these guys to set up a shell. For now, however, we are all in thisboat together.

    How did I get myself into this mess? Like so many messes, itstarted with following rules. Harvard imposed a physical educationrequirement on freshmen: thirty times per semester we wererequired to show up for an athletic activity of our choice. We couldsample from a wide selection of sports and activities, but a simpleway to accumulate jock credits was to go out for a freshman team,since there was practice five days a week. That incentive drew me toNewell Boathouse.

    There were also deeper reasons. In my four years of high schoolin New Jersey, I had never played a varsity sport. I had been avery active student, involved in a wide variety of activities bothin and out of school, and, like many Harvard freshmen, I had thebest academic record in my high school class. At seventeen, myconfidence in my mental abilities was strong. But I profoundlydisbelieved in myself as an athlete. In high school I was convincedthat I was not good enough to make a team: I couldn't play withthe big boys, couldn't hope to measure up to real athletes. In ouryouth, many of us form surprisingly strong, durable beliefs aboutour limits -- convictions regarding what we are not, and what wecannot do.

[CHAPTER ONE CONTINUES ...]

Continues...

Excerpted from Mind Over Waterby Craig Lambert Copyright © 1999 by Craig Lambert. Excerpted by permission.
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