| Boathouse Row |
Sculling lessons allow anyone to row the Schuylkill for a dayWhenever I traveled to Philadelphia on the Schuylkill Expressway and approached the Philadelphia Art Museum, I kept a sharp lookout for scullers skimming across the Schuylkill River nearby. I always found it a challenge to steal glances at their beauty and grace while negotiating the heavy trafcc on the expressway at the same time. I was drawn to the rowers’ precision and dance, and something inside me longed to one day be inside one of those long shells sliding gracefully down the river. Now that day has arrived. Dan Lyons,president of Team Concepts, a Philadelphia leadership development and team building company, recognizes that there are others like me who have gazed at Boathouse Row, wishing that they could be inside the houses, see the boats up close, and try theirhandat rowing. In the past, the sport has been limited to elite private clubs and teams. But now, Team Concepts offers a rowing experience for anyone coming in off the street (or, as inmy case, off the expressway). To take advantage of this unique opportunity to go inside Boathouse Row, I have brought my two teenagers, Sierra and Bryce,withme.We are about to experience on of the world’s best rowing operations on the river that is considered to be the Mecca of rowing in theUnited States. Our day begins with a tour of two boathouses on the Schuly kill--Vespers and Penn Athletic Club Rowing Association. Each clubhouse has its own trophy room, full of gleaming trophy cups, plaques, photos, and flags. We learn that rowing, one of the oldest sports in history, dates back to Ancient Greece and Egypt.Modern rowing began as a blue-collar profession in the 15th and 16th centuries when the road system in England was so inadequate that water taxis became the favored way to travel. These taximen evolved into professional rowers, and eventually races were held, and teams and clubs sprang up. By the end of the 18th century, rowing had made its way into Oxford and Cambridge universities and was no longer a sport of the working class. In the training room on the second floor of one of the clubhouses, we hop onto an ergometer, a simulated rowing machine that measures our physiology.Teams train on this equipment all winter long, often working out two times a day. On this machine, we are taught the complicated rowing procedure of sliding forward in our seats, hanging back on the oars and straightening our arms.We have to actually thinkabout eachstep, anditdoesn’t feel as second nature as Iwould have expected.Whenever I’vewatched the rowers on the river, the athletes seemtomake one fluidmovement, but nowI knowthey had to learn howto coordinate this synchronization. Outside at the river, our instructors, JasonCaldwell and Rob Fallahnejad, show us two types of rowing boats--sculling, in which each rower has two oars, one for each hand, and sweep rowing, which uses only one oar per person. The most common sculling boats are eight-person and cancost up to $40,000 a piece. For our lesson today,we will learn on a 'barge-type' sculling boat, a stable variety that is nearly impossible to tip and is worth much less. "When you come to Philadelphia to observe a race, the eight-rower shells are the most fun to watch," Jason says. "They are the bull-riding event of rowing and provide the fastest times."
A classical Olympic race is 2,000 meters, and teams rowing 13 to 14 miles per hour (12 knots) can cover this ground in cve to eightminutes.Our teamof novices won’t be approaching speeds anywhere close to that. |