HOCR Confessions

Full disclosure: my favorite part of living in Boston isn’t the fact that I go to an amazing school, or that the weather is occasionally crazy, or that I get to meet ridiculously wonderful people every day. My favorite part of living in Boston actually only happens once a year. You might be thinking, “Alycia... is it really worth living in Boston, 3000+ miles away from your family, for something that happens once a year?” And I’d probably reply to that by saying “Yeah... that’s probably true. But there’s a really awesome stuff that happens year-round; I just really, really love this one thing”. And now that I’ve totally talked around any point that I was trying to make, I’ll come out and say it: I LOVE the Head of the Charles.

This year was especially awesome because I got the chance to volunteer at the Head of the Charles. I was a back-up timer both days this weekend. This meant that I was helping run the manual timing that was meant to serve as a check for the computer timing (which sounded like a very complicated process, involving two cameras, some timers, and a whole lot of scanning images). On the first day of the regatta, I was timing boats at the start line, which was a relatively calm process. The way the Head of the Charles works is that boats are started at roughly 15 second intervals to each other, and then they try to chase down the boats in front of them over the three mile race course. As a result, timing at the start line was a calm, collected process- basically all we had to do was mark down the time that each boat started.

A picture of me volunteering at the finish line. The girl behind me is Grace, another volunteer from MIT.

In contrast, timing at the finish line, which I did on the second day of the regatta, was something of a madhouse. By the time they get to the finish line, the boats are no longer in the correct order, and they’re not spaced out in regular 15 second intervals. The system at the finish line involves a boat spotter telling a line of waiting volunteers what the next boat coming down the course is, a volunteer running over to the finish line, and waiting until the bow (the front of the boat) crosses it, and then coming back to the person with the computer to tell them the time. When you’ve got boats coming in in quick succession to one another, this can get a little bit hectic.

Despite the craziness, timing the racers made for one of the best weekends I’ve had in a while. It was incredibly awesome to be able to see my high school team finish the race (one of the boats even came in first!), to see my friends on the crew team here finish, and to watch Olympians, both past and future, rowing on the river that’s part of the city that’s become my home away from home. I only geeked out a little bit at the Olympians... but they were only about 50 feet away from me! And their boat moved so smoothly through the water! The poor lady who was timing with me didn’t row... so I don’t think she understood what I was so excited about. But it’s not everyday that you’re so close to world-class athletes racing in one of the biggest regattas in the world, so I think my excitement was justified.

Giving up rowing last year was a bit rough for me. Honestly, giving up anything that’s been a central part of your life for over five years is going to be difficult. The great thing about rowing though, is that it’s not necessary to be actively rowing to be a part of the community. There’s a language that you learn when you’re a rower- about erging, and 2k tests, the difference between a fartlek workout and steady state pieces, and so much more. And that doesn’t just disappear once you’re no longer on the water everyday. There’s still people that I share that language with, which allows me to still be a part of the community of rowers.

That being said, I have every intention of becoming an actual rower in that community again some day. I’ve never been a particularly athletically inclined person, but rowing offered me a way to stay in shape that I loved, and I felt more like ‘me’ while I was on the water. As crazy as it sounds, I really miss the feeling that you’re about to pass out after a 2k, knowing that you’ve given your all, and no matter how you did, there’s nothing more you could have done to improve it. I miss the long head races (anything longer than a 2 kilometer race is generally considered a head race). I miss knowing that my legs couldn’t possibly do any more, but also knowing that they were going to have to do more, because there’s still 250 meters to go. I miss having a coxswain yelling at me, telling the boat that there’s something more we have to give to beat whomever we’re competing against. I miss getting up at zero dark thirty to drive to the regatta site, so we can rig our boats in almost complete darkness. There’s a lot of things that I miss about rowing, and while I know that I made the right decision about taking a break from it right now, wild horses couldn’t keep me from going back to it someday.

With that said, I’d like to issue a standing invitation to anyone who cares to accept- Someday I’m going to race on the Charles again. It might be in 10, or 20, or even more years. But I got a taste for what racing in the Head of the Charles is like when I was in high school. And I watched some really good friends get a medal last weekend. I want to go back and compete on the Charles again. Whether it’s in a club 8 when I’m a master, in a single (if I ever figure out how to race in a single and not be terrified of hitting bridges), or in one of the Directors’ Challenge events that people view as less prestigious, since you pay your way in rather than qualifying, I’m going back to the Charles. And you’re welcome to join me.