Different Strokes: Going against the flow, a rowing club has found a home on the Mystic River
Author: By Jack Thomas, Globe Staff Date: 09/30/2003 Page: E1 Section: Living
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| Members of the Gentle Giant Rowing Club practice at dawn on the Mystic River, which is growing in popularity among crew teams. Photographer is Suzanne Kreiter, Globe Staff. |
While the rest of us slumber, the morning comes alive at 5:30 at
Blessing of the Bay Boathouse on Shore Drive in Somerville when nine stout-hearted men begin a curious daily ritual of jumping jacks and the stretchhh-ing of delts, quads, obliques, and other muscles the rest of us probably couldn't locate with a 3-D version of Gray's Anatomy.
Five times a week, members of the Gentle Giant Rowing Club limber up, launch their 60-foot shell, and climb aboard to row,
row, row the Mystic River and test their speed, strength, stamina, and timing in one of the most physically demanding of sports.
As rowers complete their warm-ups, on the dock are oars, knapsacks, and bottled water. Not on the dock - and in fact, nowhere in sight - is there a soft tummy, a jellied muscle, or a dimple of cellulite.
The rowing club started up last year with a $40,000 donation from Gentle Giant Moving Co., whose owner, Larry O'Toole, is an avid rower. The club leased the boathouse from the MDC and began renting equipment. One year later, it owns boats, launches, and a gym for its 190 members, who pay periodic fees of $75 to $473. The rowing club also provides subsidized classes for teenagers and offers training programs, in the mornings and evenings, for adults who range from novice ("Hey, these seats slide!") to an international team that will compete in October in the largest two-day regatta in the world, Boston's Head of the Charles.
"Our company has a sense of social responsibility, or whatever you want to call it," says O'Toole, 51, a native of Ireland who rowed at Northeastern University and founded Gentle Giant Moving in 1980.
Along with its growth in popularity among rowers, the Mystic River may be in for its 15 minutes of national notoriety with the release next month of Clint Eastwood's film adaptation of Dennis Lehane's best-selling mystery, "Mystic River," starring Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, and Kevin Bacon.
The Charles River was named for British royalty, but the Mystic is Boston's working-class river. While rowers on the Charles steer their shells past the stately architecture of Harvard and the Back Bay, more and more crews are seen on the Mystic these days, muscling their boats within sight of factories and power plants and straining to hear commands of the coxswain above the roar of an Orange Line train rattling toward Wellington Station.
What lies within the souls of rowers - otherwise normal people - that, day after day, they roll out of bed at 4:30 a.m. and into a boat to punish their bodies so?
"Well, when you hear the bubbles and feel the boat pick up speed," says Gracio Garcia, 25, codirector of the rowing club, along with Allan Gehant, also 25, "it just gives you the chills."
The oldest in the boat is Garth Brown, 44, a banker and former rugby player who rises at 4:15 every weekday to drive from Ipswich and row even in snow.
"I love the challenge, physical, mental, and even technical, in terms of body position, timing, when body parts move, keeping the boat set, determining when the blade goes in and comes out, how high out of water, where your hands are, how you feather the oar with one hand and pull with the other. And after you drive, after you take the stroke with all your power, you have to shift to nice and easy for the back-up slide.
"Think of it this way - it's the equivalent of eight guys all trying to do the perfect golf swing at the same time, all together, 400 times in a row."
At a few minutes before 6, the crew members clamber aboard the Dirigo, adjust themselves on sliding seats, and push away from the pier. Suddenly, the stillness is pierced by the roar of a 15-horsepower outboard, and the coach, Ian Coveny, 28, steers a 14-foot dory from the pier and into their wake.
Most of the men have moved recently from recreational to competitive rowing, and they are vying with 16 other members for one of eight seats in a second boat the club will sponsor in the Head of the Charles regatta.
Coveny rowed at Northeastern and for the United States national team, then retired last year after suffering injuries to which rowers are vulnerable: stress fractures in his rib and a torn rotator cuff.
When he has observed the shell for 10 minutes, Coveny signals the coxswain to stop, then pulls alongside, cuts the engine, and stands in the dinghy with a bullhorn.
"Looks like some guys have rowed for a while and some have picked it up recently," he says in the darkness. "One thing I notice across the board is a lot of tension in the upper body.
"How many guys ski? I used to teach skiing, and one thing they tell you is that your upper body is along for the ride, because all the action comes from your lower body, from your legs. Same thing here.
"I use the easy chair analogy. Like, you're sitting in your easy chair and you want your beer from a table, right? So, you lean forward. I don't think you get your beer like this," he says, lunging. "You just lean forward, relaxed, OK?"
Garcia, the codirector, who is originally from Brazil, learned how to row at Brookline High School and received a scholarship at Northeastern, where the rowing team is consistently ranked among the top 10 nationally. At Northeastern, Garcia and Gehant started a rowing program that in two years grew to 350 members.
After graduation, they wanted to start a rowing club, so they collaborated with O'Toole.
But where to locate the club?
Not the Charles River. A study by Gehant showed the Charles being used by 2,600 rowers a day, which made it, in Garcia's words, like a slalom course for rowers. They considered Jamaica Pond and the Neponset River before choosing the Mystic River.
As they wrote in an analysis for O'Toole, "The three rowable miles offered by the boomerang-shaped combination of the Malden and Mystic Rivers is hardly the rowing real estate of the nine-mile Charles River Lower Basin, but many a fast crew has trained in tighter spots."
Downriver, meanwhile, Coveny once again pulls alongside the Dirigo, shuts off the engine, and as rowers lift their oars from the water, he addresses them through the bullhorn.
"So, guys, I know these drills are boring. I used to hate them. It was like, God, I'm sitting here and rowing and the guy in front of me - he's got a big zit on his back that's really annoying. But I used to row for the national team, and we'd do these drills 15 miles at a time, because they're crucial.
"Right now, guys, it's important to get the fundamentals. A lot of the best rowers are guys who didn't have the biggest upper bodies and were not the best technically, but guys, they knew how to apply their power. In rowing, you start with your big muscles, your legs, and then you go with your back and almost as an afterthought, your arms.
"And guys, I see a lot of tension creeping back in, so let's relax, OK? Six seat," he says to James Mahoney, "you had the most serious look of any guy I've ever seen rowing.
"Four seat," he says, addressing Brown, "square your back more. I want to see you swing your back. That's better. That's the position you want at the finish."
Out of their shell, the rowers lead conventional lives. Garcia is a financial representative for the Bulfinch Group. Coveny works for the pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and Co. Gehant teaches at Cambridge Rindge & Latin.
"We're trying to build a competitive team as fast as we can, getting recreational rowers to the more competitive level," says Garcia. "The morning program is made up of more competitive racers committed to rowing five days a week. The evening is for people who see rowing as more recreational."
Among them is Lynn Ann Hajducky of Carlisle, a teacher who took up the sport at age 51. After four months of rowing in the evening, twice a week, she says she feels stronger.
"I've made new friends of all ages from all walks of life," she says, "and it's really beautiful to be on the water in the evening."
By 7:20 in the morning, the sun is risen but hidden by heavy clouds.
"Hey, guys," says Coveny in the final pep talk, "I don't expect you to be winning Head of the Charles tomorrow, because these changes don't come overnight. But, guys, it's good, a lot better than when you started, a lot more uniform, and so we'll work on the same stuff tomorrow. You guys are beginning to look like rowers, so let's call it a day, and nice job."
He lowers the bullhorn and turns to the coxswain.
"Take it in."
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