row2k: For me, your book offered an adult perspective on a process that I underwent as an early adolescent. I learned to row at 13, a decidedly less contemplative age than 40. Yet your book seemed to me less about middle age than about pure learning.
Strauss: I'm glad to hear that Rowing Against the Current strikes you as a study about pure learning rather than just the experience of middle age. I had hoped the book would appeal to a wide audience, and the reactions that I am getting suggest that it does. A college freshman, for instance, wrote me to say that the book had convinced him to go out for crew. A high school rower says that the book is the best way she knows to explain to non-rowers what the sport is all about. And masters rowers seem to like the book too. Maybe the point is that learning is learning, in spite of the differences in the process at 13 and 40.
By most folks' measure, your account of your first race would be an unqualified disaster. Yet you took something more away from the race than I might have. Did it feel the same on race day as it might have thinking and writing about it later on?
No question about it, race day hurt, mentally as well as physically. It took a long time to get back on that horse. Why did I climb back up again at all? First, I had a big chip on my shoulder about sports, going back to the Little League, and I really wanted to get rid of it. Second, I genuinely love rowing. There's nothing like being on the water-but you know that. So, although I took up swimming and tennis for awhile, and although they are both great sports, I knew that I would go back to rowing as soon as I had licked my wounds and my hectic schedule permitted.
You seemed to find inspiration in the literature of the ancients; I found rowing in Joyce whil writing my own thesis on Finnegan's Wake. But can't say I was quoting Joyce in an internal monologue during a race. How do you think this inspiration shapes your experience of the sport?
My knowledge of the classics shapes my experience of the sport of rowing in some ways but not all. Sometimes I think of the ancients when I am on the water. For example, in rough conditions I keep going back to a battle in 428 B.C. when the Athenians beat the Peloponnesians because they knew how to handle their oars in a stiff breeze while the inexperienced enemy did not. Most of the time, though, when I am in a boat, especially a single scull, I don't think of anything except rowing. It's the prosaic things-like taking ten strokes for legs or working on slide control or doing pause drills-that occupy me on the water, not Homer and the wine-dark sea.
By the same token, I am currently working on a scholarly book on the navy in ancient Athens. There is a constant process of cross-fertilization between what I learn as a rower and what I reconstruct from ancient sources.
Interesting to see you cite Joyce, by the way. A doctoral thesis is crying out to be written on rowing in modern literature. Maybe someone has already written it.
You've spent more time in big boats and in singles since you wrote the book. Any new insights on sweep rowing vs. sculling, team boats vs. singles?
I've learned to rethink my stereotypes that sculling is about technique while sweep rowing is about power. While rowing in sweep boats in the Carnegie Lake Rowing Association in Princeton last year, I discovered a lot more technical complexity to the sweep-rowing stroke than I had thought there was. I also discovered that an increase in power could improve my sculling quite a bit. Still, for me, improvement in technique remains the Holy Grail.
The year before I rowed in a men's four in Ithaca, and we rowed several head races including the Charles. Much as I love a single scull, it was great to experience the camaraderie and energy of the sweep boat.
And whether you are sweeping or sculling, the one thing that all rowers need is a coach. I said that in the book and my experience since only strengthens the point. I've been fortunate to encounter some terrific coaches in recent years and what a difference they make.
How is your rowing going these days?
It's going great. I spent the academic year 1998-99 in Princeton and worked out with the Carnegie Lakers in fours and eights, as well as in their winter training program in the tanks and on the erg. This led to a big improvement in both my form and fitness. Since coming back to Ithaca and the Cascadilla Boat Club last summer I've been rowing steadily in my single. A week of coaching at Craftsbury made a big difference, as did a week in winter at the Florida Sculling Center. I went back to the scene of the crime in September-that is, Seneca Falls, N.Y.-and did a head-race in my single. No records were broken, but no close encounters with weeds either. The next day I rowed the Cayuga Challenge here in Ithaca. It was great fun, a lot more relaxed than the day before. Next season I hope to get more experience racing, perhaps sprints as well as head races. I feel immensely lucky to be on the water, and racing is a thrill.
By the way, I ended up coaching my six-year-old's soccer team this fall. This sports thing is contagious.