Finding Her Stroke

I've often heard sculling coaches tell people there's almost no chance they will flip, but I beg to differ. Not only was I maimed when I flipped out of an eight, but I had tried briefly to learn sculling in the early 1990s in Boston, and can still remember drivers stopping along busy Memorial Drive parallel to the Charles River to see if the woman holding onto the overturned scull was all right. I'm fine, I waved calmly, trying to make it appear that I was involved in some planned safety drill. I soon took a job in waterless Phoenix and abandoned that brief flirtation with sculling.

Now, once my little scull was somewhat set, I started the classic drills many rowers begin a workout with, breaking the stroke into sections and practicing each part separately. Rowing is about moving the boat, so all your work is aimed at getting the blade plunked into the water at the correct angle and depth so you can pull hard. I often think of a rower as looping his or her hands around a track, like a bike chain. When this is done correctly, it's like being in a perfect stride while running, or taking a seamless shot at the golf course; it is blissful. The rower will feel like one with the water and the boat, power channeled perfectly into grace.

That was not what it felt like that day.

The lightness of the scull compared with an eight is like the difference between painting a Faberge egg and drawing in a coloring book with crayons. I tried to relax, but my strokes were wobbly. When my blade was in the water (called "the drive") I felt great, but the half of the stroke when my hands were moving away from my body and the blade was out of the water (called "the recovery") was rocky, because that's when the boat can get easily unset. When you're rowing well, the boat is perfectly balanced -- the blades aren't dragging along the water's surface during the recovery, the oar handles aren't bonking along the sides of the boat. The only sounds are the oar handles turning in the oarlock, and they can sound like windshield wipers going methodically back and forth.

My blades were dragging a bit along the water's surface, making a thump-thump-splash sound, and I was still afraid of flipping. But I was getting some good strokes in and losing myself in some familiar sensations: the sweet smell of gas fumes from the teacher's boat, the smooth oar handles in my hands, the stretch in my back. Even after 12 years, there was something primal kicking in.

Looking out at the water before me, endless memories returned of how rowing defined so much of my young life. Feeling over the moon when my high school coach waded into the water to hug us after winning the New England Championship. Coming to a Big Ten school and finding myself competing with nearly 100 women for a handful of top spots, and getting one. Then watching it slip over the next few years. I remembered my father, a college rower, driving and flying all over the country to watch me race, and my unathletic mother noting that she could spot me at a distance in the boat because I was often the only brunette in a sea of Nordic blondes. I relished the idiosyncratic lifestyle of a rower, the daily trip to my body's outer limits and the closeness of a team moving in one fine unit. I loved that age because everything seemed possible, in sports, in love, in life.

But as I stroked my way across that glassy little Vermont lake, it was screamingly obvious that I am a different rower, a different person. I am now a thirtysomething with a car loan and nice soft hands. I was at the rowing camp with my boyfriend, who was brand-new to the sport, not my father. I'd wanted to learn to scull with my dad, but he told me his knees were bothering him. He said it was getting too hard to lower himself into the boat. It washed over me that trying to re-create something from your past is pointless.

Since that two-hour lesson, I've begun sculling on the Potomac and slowly forging a new relationship with the sport as an adult, and I've found it mostly exhilarating. I am still learning to balance the boat, and one day I got a dirty look from two college-age women in a two-person boat when I didn't navigate into the dock correctly and caused a minor traffic jam. It's a trade-off. I no longer possess chiseled back muscles, but I do have an adult's appreciation of the meditative aspect of rowing, not just its power. I no longer obsess about winning and erg stats. Instead I observe my body and the stroke unfolding in the same way one meanders through a poem. And, occasionally, I get into a stretch where all I can hear is the sound of windshield wiper blades.

Michelle Boorstein is a reporter for The Post's Metro section.