Tom James' Blog by Tom_James

• Crazy brain time........

  Like on realbuzz.com

  1

  0

  ScrapbookShare

  Feb2120125:27 p.m.

  Hello again. It's 3 weeks to the big selection day of the Olympiad - Final Trials in pairs. Ironically this isn’t the ‘final’ set of trials we’ll be doing. There’ll be plenty more tinkering from the coaches, before we hear which boat we’ll be rowing in for the Olympics. So the next 21 days are going to be entirely in the same boat with the same partner. I’m in a boat with Ric Egington, a fellow World Champion with whom I rowed in the Four last year. A very big northerner with an even bigger back that completely obscures my view so I can barely see to steer the boat down the course. Usually he sits behind me in the Four, but in the pair it makes a lot more sense to put your stronger guy at the front of the boat - unless you want to go round in circles.

  However, it is a pretty good set-up for me. The big unit is in the stroke seat (at the front setting the rhythm) with the little weak more technical guy (me) in the bows and just there to set the boat up. The plan is that the big horse of a man can get all of his power on to the end of the handle and hopefully pull me down the course. Starting out in a pair can be quite odd sometimes. Jurgen Grobler our chief coach decides who rows with whom. So when he has the meeting to announce the combinations there’s a sort of anticipation and fear rather like a blind date night. You hope you get lucky and get a partner who you want to row with, or someone who has a similar style to you, who compliments you and that you get on well with.

  

  It can also be quite fickle. As soon as you’re announced with the new partner then your instinctual ‘team player’ mode kicks in and you start acting like you always wanted to row with the guy, even if that wasn’t the case. It also doesn’t matter who you might have been rowing with previously. They’re rowing with someone else now and will only be another competitor and will be getting in the way. You’ve got a new best friend now who you’ve got to work with to make the project succeed. These slight changes of allegiance seem to happen all the time.

  They happen when you jump in a scratch boat (new random crew) with strangers, or you do a training piece against some other crew. The guys in the boat with you are your best friends, the ones in the other boat are suddenly evil people who are the scum of the earth. A Canadian friend of mine calls it ‘crazy brain’. As soon as you’re off the water then everyone’s best buddies again. It reminds you how humans can be very territorial and a tad over aggressive sometimes.

  764 post views

  Comments (0)

  Be the first to comment on this

  Please login to comment
  
  

Previous Posts