I Wanna Run

The view I grew up with.  Lake Union, Seattle, looking West.

The next step is this: Moving to Philadelphia.

A two-time Olympic sculler, gracious enough to go for a row with me, also joined my family for breakfast at Portage Bay Cafe after.  Jennifer Devine is a truly great rower, on and off the water, still rowing with a long, flowing and natural stroke that had us going the same speed for 20k.  We'd rowed together once before, in 2004, at the height of her speed in preparation for the 2004 Athens Games.  The USA 2004 sticker still graces the side of her Empacher hull.  In 2004 we shoved from the dock in our singles.  I took a few strokes.  Jenn started up, and efficiently disappeared over my shoulder.  I saw her twenty minutes later as we spun to go back up Lake Union.  How was she so damn... fast?  Right, I remembered.  Olympics.

Life is too short.  How many times do major opportunities present themselves to us, in real-time?  Take your morning workout.  How many morning workouts have you missed?  And how many morning workouts will you have, ever?  I'm not a calculating, numbers-based decision maker.  But how long is a human life, let's be generous and say 100 years.  In 100 years you will be alive for 25 Olympic cycles.  Of those, in a sport such as rowing, let's exclude any of the Games over the age of 50, and under 16.  Down to about 12, and of those, only 8 Olympics where you could conceivably be physiologically capable of racing there.  Personally, I'm 26, and not yet been to the Olympics.  When Rio comes I'll be 30.  Beyond that 34, then 38, then 42... etc.

How quickly the years add up.  In multiples of four, the brevity of the window of opportunity reveals clear.  Realistically, for a lightweight, I have maximum, 4 more opportunities to realize the Olympic Dream.  And there are no guarantees.  It's impossible to predict what will happen in four years, what will happen next week; this afternoon.

Then and Now.
Then: 2nd in single in Northwest Junior Regionals 2004,
Coach Jim Bargfrede
Now: 8th in LM4x at World Rowing Championships 2012,
Coaches Craig Hoffman and Ed Bell

Craig Hoffman, our coach this summer, called me one night in June while I was cooking a pasta dinner.  He invited me to stay to train with him and his athletes in Philadelphia for the coming year, and beyond.  I took the offer seriously.  I also knew how badly I wanted to go back to Seattle, my city, my home, and my favorite training grounds.  Yet the partners to row with are in Philadelphia, not Seattle.  If you want to go to the Olympics, you can't do it as a lightweight in the single.  There are four spots for the sweep team, and I'd already made the decision to scull.  Craig's offer was generous and rare, yet it was still hard to commit on the spot.  There are two seats in the lightweight men's double.  At most, two lightweight scullers from the United States get to go to the Games, every four years.

It felt good to be on the water this morning.  A perfectly calm day, Jenn and I carved the first puddles in the Montlake Cut as the sun rose at 6:47 am.  I love rowing.  I love it so much.

Last Saturday, Innis Arden, on a trail running almost straight up through the woods, tearing after my high school English teacher Mr. Doelger, a crisp Seattle Fall afternoon.  His lean tall frame ahead of me moving with impossible swiftness and economy of movement.  A lifelong runner.  Striding above the dust, letting the thorned snags lightly scratch his calves without hesitation or notice just onward, faster, the next bend, the next question tossed back to me.  Me, not a runner for a while, realizing as I tried to brush by the snags with callous indifference, ouch, they hurt... but not so bad.

Mr. Doelger and I sporting our new hats after our run.

His face lit up not just with happiness, but with an idea.  You can tell the look on someone's face when they've had a brilliant idea.  It's unmistakeable.  Without hesitation or notice Mr. Doelger spun out of the room, leaving my gift, a hat reading "USA, 2012 World Championships", in the admiring hands of his wife.  "I know what he's going to get, it's his Lakeside Crew hat" she said, and I protested No no Mr. Doelger I couldn't possibly, the very same hat I'd given him, blown off on a ferry boat ride, replaced by a kind parent, and certainly impossible to find again.  But he insisted.  An exchange was made.

Later this week I visited one of his classes, "Modernism", most Lakeside students' favorite class of their entire academic careers.  Certainly mine.  The students were smarter and smaller than I remember being my senior year in 2004.  After class I gave him a few photos from our races in Bulgaria this summer, and asked him to pick whichever he'd like.  He chose this photo, from our semifinal.  It was his favorite, he said, because it showed passion.

USA LM4x 2012.  A/B Semifinal, 150m from the line.  Photo: Barry Smith, bjsmith@barrysmithmed.com
Coaches: Craig Hoffman and Ed Bell
Stroke: Sam Cunningham
3: David O. Smith
2. Bob Duff
Bow: Shane Patrick Madden

Boston, three weeks ago, today.  Earlier in the week, at Wednesday night band practice, I had asked Will Allen - hey, you guys didn't actually learn Where The Streets Have No Name, did you?  Will responded by jumping into the glorious Edge guitar riff from U2's classic.  It remains my favorite song.  This wonderful group of people had learned a very difficult piece, at my request, in my absence, and rehearsed it over and over until it sounded tight and beautiful.

Saturday.  Aternoon sunlight streamed over the guitar strings, the plastic keyboard, the lanterns hung round the rafters by RBC's dedicated social committee volunteers.  The Blades, the Riverside Boat Club Band, made up of Will Allen, Val Brinker, Keir Evans, Mike Farry, Andrew Neils, John Tracey and myself, rehearsing for our show at the Riverside Annual Summer Cocktail Party.  Nowhere on earth I would rather be.  Will, Neils and I spent the whole weekend laughing so hard our faces hurt from smiling.  The show was brilliant - and the kinetic energy in the crowd, all those bodies just moving to the music - made me so happy.  I forgot where I was, what I was doing, just watching my hands play the notes, listening to my own voice come from someone else, floating above, soaking it all in.  Neils, John, Val, Keir, Will, Mike, they all said the same thing.  It had been one year since our first show.

The Blades make the row2k Photo of the Day

USA Blades4x 2012.  Charles River Basin.  Photo: Dave
Coaches: Rock and Guac
Stroke: Sir Davew Smithsent
3: Willei Allen-Synek
2: Miké Farrysdale
Bow: André Nrysdale

Yes, Mahé got two nods.  Because he's a #Bladesfan

We had rowed that morning.  BladesQuad.  It was, agreed, the most fun row any of us have ever had.  Maybe the most fun row anyone has ever had.  Nothing like doing some racing starts with your fellow fitness musicians.  Nothing like taking most of the oars out of the oarlocks for the heck of it.  Nothing like rowing under the BU Bridge, belting out Bohemian Rhapsody.

Many things happened this summer that I previously believed impossible, or impossibly improbable.  Suddenly they were on the imminent horizon, like it or not.  In some ways the adrenaline rush is still with me.  One of these is moving to Philadelphia.  When, in my life, will I be presented with the opportunity to row with an exceptional group of athletes under two exceptional coaches, Craig Hoffman and Ed Bell?  How many more mornings will I be able to row with Jenn in singles, especially when last time was eight years ago?  How many more Friday night sessions on the erg, severe though they may be, will I have the privilege of joining?

At the Eastern Sprints in 2007.

My mom and dad have always been my biggest fans.  An only child, I'm told some of this comes with the territory.  But they are truly special.  So many times they have supported me, in rowing, in love and loss, in school, in just cooking the flat-out best grilled salmon I've ever had.  Thank you for that Dad.  Mom, thank you for coming to so many races and events over the years, including Bulgaria.  It made the experience incalculably more powerful to have both of you there in the stands, and at the dinner table laughing along with the team and our coaches.  Now you can see how lucky I am to row with them!  Without the support of my family, none of this rowing thing would be possible for me.

Mom and I at the top of Whistler in 2012.

Two weeks ago my parents invited me on their labor-day vacation, along with Pele our pug, to Whistler BC.  We brought bikes, dog food, sunglasses and about a thousand other items we probably could have lived without.  We ate well, drank beer and wine, and soaked in the mountain air.  The dog, exhausted from all the walking, I exhausted in the steam room and on the road bike.  Even in these days, traveling peak-to-peak on the world's longest gondola from Blackcomb to Whistler, recommending Ray Lamontagne songs to our perfectly smiling Quebecois waitress, I missed being in the boat.  Even for a weekend, I knew I was missing some good water.  Some good strokes.  Leaving my parents behind, leaving Pele the pug behind, will be difficult, it always is.  We are a close family.  Leaving everyone I've been catching up with in Seattle will be hard.  I love you all.

"Settle down, Dave" - Emerson

On the launch on the Connecticut River, carving through ripples with a blaring outboard, mid-afternoon sunlight wind not too harshly pushing my sunglasses into my face.  My best friend driving us upriver, supplies in hand, slowing at a tiny swimming dock anchored offshore about a mile above the Dartmouth racecourse in Hanover, NH.  Such a summer day does not come often.  Emerson has been a more loyal friend to me than I've been to myself.  Between me, Em, and a friend of his (is a friend of mine) we were brought together on this dock in New Hampshire to discuss our lives, to relax, air our thoughts, and leave with some new knowledge.  One's wisdom illuminates the other's experience.  Each of us left with a lesson learned, a key piece of knowledge which could only have been discovered there on the river, laughing, talking, squinting in the sunset.

Nope, not settling down.

Mine was this.  The process from this Summer was sound.  We did not achieve our goal of a medal.  We did achieve our goal of becoming a team, increasing our speed every day, week to week, race to race.  The challenge will be patience - to let the process work.  Thank you Em for helping me to see this.

In less than one week I'll be in Philly.  Let's Go.