As Greg Benning rowed up to the starting line for the 1994 Master Singles, he looked across the Charles River as longtime starter John Romain began calling starters to the line.
"I'm sitting on the starting line and they say, 'Dr. Biglow, Dr. Bouscaren, Dr. Hindery, Mr. Benning,'" Benning said.
Back then, Benning had finished second in the Masters race the previous year, but was otherwise relatively unknown, lacking the pedigree of the rowers coming off national and Olympic teams.
"It's a pretty intense group to wade into and I basically started I started off racing against, you know, national team alums," Benning said.
At the end of that 1994 singles race, however, the rowing resume that came before did not matter. His 18:30.4 time and first-place finish carried much more weight.
Fast forward 29 years, and Benning is one of the most respected masters rowers in the world, after dominating performances through the Masters, Senior Masters, Grand Master and Veteran Singles divisions at the Head of the Charles.
He's won 23 times, picked up 32 medals overall, and set course records four times. From 2012 to 2019, when he was age 50-58, Benning won every Grand Master Singles race, setting the course record in 2014 with a time of 18:15.165.
He seemed destined to sweep his decade in the Grand Masters division, a feat never before accomplished. But Covid interrupted his string when the Regatta was cancelled in 2020, and in 2021 the 59-year-old decided he wouldn't enter the Grand Masters race, but would instead row against the 40-year-olds, and he won there, beating opponents almost 20 years his junior.
"There was one particular person in their 40s that I wanted to race," Benning said. "So I made that decision back in March [of 2021] that I was doing the 40-plus."
He picked up his latest singles win in the Veteran Singles at last year's Head. And he will again be looking to prove himself against the younger rowers. Starting at Bow #1 in the combined 50-plus, 60-plus field, he will look to hold off rowers a decade his junior as they chase him up the course.
The formula for Benning's success consists of a data-driven training plan, a great feel for his home course, and a body that was built for rowing.
"I had the physiology, and it was a question of figuring out how to make the boat go," Benning said. "It's been the same thing every year; identify a handful of things that you can get a little bit better at, and just work on them and try to measure things."
(Greg talks about his training, preparation, and tricks of the trade in this podcast with Sean Wolf.)
His aptitude for the sport was recognized early in his college life. He originally planned to run cross country at the University of Pennsylvania, but once the rowing team saw him on an erg, there was no question about what sport Benning would follow.
"They were just looking for bodies, so I was a novice, freshman year, and we put together a four that raced in the fall," Benning said. "We won by a lot down in Philly, and then in the spring, three of the walk-ons made it into the first frosh and we set a course record at the [Eastern] Sprints in Worcester."
Benning first raced at the Head in 1983 in a Penn club four. "There was a lot of stuff that was like, 'Oh yeah we're just asking you for a two-week commitment' [fall of freshmen year] that wound up being 40 years," Benning said.
His studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in policy analysis, were not focused on data analytics, but his absorption of knowledge of physics and computer science provided a foundation for the data-science-driven training that has become a big part of his workout regimen.
"I spent a lot of time hanging around European national teams. Particularly the Dutch are very into sports science," Benning said.
"There are points in the year where I'll be really data intensive. And it'll be everything from boat speed to stroke rate to heart rate to biomechanics to power generation," Benning explained. "But then you start stripping all that stuff off, and you start queuing for feel, and you start saying, 'Okay, these were good numbers, what did it feel like?'"
After experimenting with different oar types and getting as technical as possible with data, Benning says it ultimately comes down to feel.
"I spent a lot of time in rooms where most of the people in the room have PhDs, and I'm the one that kind of has to say okay, how do I use this? What can I go get done with this?" Benning said.
The combination of data and feel has served him well. The 61-year-old Weston, MA, resident will be looking for his 11th-straight singles win this weekend. And when John Romain calls him to the start line these days, there are no questions about whether the 23-time medalist can stack up to former Olympians.
"This is one where it just feels like the rhythm is back," Benning said. "The buzz for the Regatta this year is pretty good and I'm looking forward to it."
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10/19/2023 7:51:01 AM
10/19/2023 9:50:54 AM