The Sting of Failure

The Head of the Charles Regatta is America’s fall rowing festival, with over 10,000 rowers from across the world vying to prove themselves in one of the ultimate rowing races on the planet. They spar on the famous 3-mile stretch of the Charles River from Boston University’s DeWolfe boathouse to a half-mile past the Cambridge Boat Club. The regatta is a celebration of the sport — that time once a year when first-timers and not-so-first-timers alike revel in the camaraderie of the community — yet it is also one of rowing’s fiercest battlefields. With 7 bridges, a winding course, and often incredibly windy conditions to navigate, the regatta is host to some of the most exciting racing of the year. True, not everyone is here to win — for some, just the experience of rowing here is special.

But in 2015, I was there to win.

As a club athlete with no aspirations (or sufficient genetics) to reach national or Olympic levels of competition, the Head of the Charles is the premier race of my rowing season. Unlike the boorish six-side-by-side melee of a 1000–2000 meter sprint, the head race is a chess game against an invisible grandmaster, requiring a perfect blend of strategy and tactics to outspeed and outmaneuver one’s competitors. At the Charles there are over 50 separate events with as many as 60 crews per event. Crews are started every 15 seconds from the Charles River Basin and follow each other like ants, and the only result that matters is the crew’s time from start to finish. By its very nature, head racing pits you against the invisible opponent — any motivation or extra burst of adrenaline one would normally receive when racing side-by-side is gone. It is a psychological nightmare where mental fortitude is as important as physical strength. While crews who competed in the event last year have the privilege of starting the race in last year’s finish order (e.g. the 2nd place crew from 2014 will be the 2nd boat to start in 2015, assuming the 1st place crew from 2014 also returns), new crews are distributed seemingly randomly throughout the starting order, leading to potential mayhem when a fast boat must pass several others to cut precious seconds off its time. The river is not wide enough for everyone, of course.

In rowing, the larger the boat, the more the crew’s responsibilities are distributed. Boats with a coxswain enjoy the benefit of a brain 100% dedicated to steering the best line — understanding the impact of recent rain fall on river currents, observing the water and surrounding trees to factor in wind conditions, avoiding crashes when attempting to pass, and instinctively knowing when to call for the crews to surge or paddle. The rower in stroke seat (closest to the stern) works with the coxswain to set the rhythm, and the rest of the crew falls in line.

Not so in the sculling races. The extra weight of a coxswain isn’t worth the safety benefit of seeing where you are going. Instead of a brain dedicated 100% to rowing hard, the rower sitting farthest to bow of the boat must balance her efforts among rowing, matching her boatmates, steering, and pushing the crew even when her own legs are burning. In the single scull, all communication is internal and does not require any wasted breath. If you fumble the rhythm, there is no one else to be accountable to — no one else to match. In the doubles (2 rowers) and quads (4 rowers), where crews must row as a unit just to survive the course, one errant movement could cost you the race. Look back one half-second too soon or too late to check your course and you could falter your rhythm and lose an oar, if not to the water then to a bridge. Race over.

2014 saw me compete in the mixed double event, where my partner and I completed the course faster than any other boat. As this event was age-handicapped we saw 1st slip to 2nd and then to 3rd after the penalty we incurred for missing a course buoy factored in to the final times. For a race of 41 boats where we expected anything better than 20th to be a good result, 3rd was phenomenal. We medaled! Having the fastest time also meant that should we choose to return in 2015, we would start the race first. This was an amazing opportunity given the chaos we had to endure to maneuver past several boats in our event.

Fast forward to 2015. Harder, more effective preparation to make us faster. Starting first with no one in our way. Even more familiarity with the tortuous course up the river. And the result?

7th.

After age handicaps knocked us from 2nd.

The sting of reality in the face of unmet expectations is toxic to the unarmed mind, because a spirit that believes it did everything possible to meet a goal will agonize for days, weeks, or even months over this gut-wrenching feeling of failure. Yet our time is precious, and we have a choice to make: we can carry this Sisyphean burden of despair, or we can consciously make an effort to confront it.

Ah, but what to do? If only the answer were the same for everyone.

Every error is a blessing because it opens us up to new experiences — it reveals how our mental model of the world diverges from reality, but we must be open to receive its message. It is natural to focus inward and wait for that feeling of disappointment to languish and wither away over weeks, but it may not ever fully dissipate on its own. Instead, we must attack the impossible challenge of “What can I do better next time?” with the utmost integrity and intellect.

This, then, is the human experience, repeated millions of times over a lifetime. We must fall to learn to pick ourselves up. And if we never fall, we have never really lived.

The struggle with our 7th place was driven by the serious belief that we had done everything within our means to prepare — the immense training load, the obsessive study of the best line down the course, the almost perfect training taper: we had thought them all necessary components to win. For at least a week we had no answers to what we could have done better. Yet after some reflection and help from our friends, my partner and I discovered several other factors that we overlooked as part of our preparation, and as we uncovered more, this feeling of disappointment began to shrivel.

What can we learn from a boat race about failure? So much when you ask the right questions.

How clear did you make your goals to yourself? To the rest of the team? How clear were your teammates’ goals to you?

Set your sights high and don’t compromise. When the stakes are high, we can hedge on setting explicit goals because we don’t want to be disappointed if we don’t attain them. The fact is we end up disappointed anyway.

Our goal to win the 2015 race was quite clear from the outside, but we hardly talked about it with each other for fear of disappointment, and frankly, we lost the potential to motivate each other over a shared goal. Because it was implicit for both of us, no matter how hard we wanted to suppress it, failing to reach it was just more salt in the wound.

If you don’t believe you can reach your goal, then you shouldn’t try. There are so many naysayers out there that to let them infect you with their negative rhetoric is a death sentence for any ambition. If you do not believe in yourself and your team 100%, then you shouldn’t hold them back.

Why do you want to achieve those goals? Why do your teammates want to achieve their particular goals? For the individual, true clarity of purpose breeds a fiery spirit that no one can discourage or diminish. For the team, shared clarity of purpose creates a mentally unstoppable force, worth many times what individuals on their own could achieve. Being mentally aligned with the team is just as important as being physically in sync on the water.

A blazing spirit is vital because the road to achievement is long, ripe with temptation to wander off its path. When that 5am alarm wakes you up for the 5th time this week, do you sleep in? Or do you get up and put full effort into your craft? When your brain warns you of over-exertion mid-race, do you back off the intensity? Or do you quiet it and not take “No” for an answer? For rowers, we are already on the water and can’t leave practice at will; why settle for any less than 100% effort? Anything less is a waste of time.

What did you fail to prepare for?

Which elements of your performance or your performance environment surprised you the most? For the traveling athlete, too often we make the mistake of preparing themselves so well in our home environment that we overlook the impact of shifting routines before a competition. In Boston, there were several factors to catch out-of-towners off-guard.

One was the wind. The few days leading up to the competition featured incredibly turbulent headwinds with base speeds up to 15mph and gusts up to 20mph on race day. In Seattle, rowing on lakes restricts us to row only up to about 9–10mph before the water becomes too violent for our boats to handle. The Charles River, on the other hand, is largely protected by high banks, buildings, and trees. Instead of facing choppy water, rowers are left to deal with tremendous forces on the oars as the wind swoops in underneath the blades and lifts them high above the water’s surface. This engages the shoulders in a way most rowers are not used to and causes some otherwise level-headed athletes to falter. History shows that strong headwinds are not uncommon in this race.

Another was the fiasco of a warm-up area. The Charles sees all kinds of weather in mid-October, from sunny, calm days to snow. And in all but one case over the past 50 years, the race goes on. In most rowing races, crews warm up optionally on land and then complete their warm-up on the way from the launch site to the start line. Not so in Boston. At any one time there are dozens of boats meandering their way to the start line in a narrow chute that barely allows one boat across in places. The resulting quagmire of boats and inattentive rowers leads to a collective focus on not killing each other or ramming the bridges, not on warming up for the race. To be fair, there is a large warm-up area before the start line in the Charles River Basin, but in heavy winds, forget about using it; the conditions are too rough for an effective warm-up. Athletes who don’t plan ahead start the race cold.

Misplanning is one problem, but there is a more critical one…

How well did you adapt to changing conditions?

We must be able to adapt to any complication, both known and unknown.

In Boston as in any head race, the “known” is the barrage of boats that can impede your course on the 3-mile stretch of river. The Head of the Charles offers some unique challenges for passing due to the layout of bridges across its shores — as an example, sneaking around these two boats after the John Weeks bridge remains one of my favorite moments in racing.

The more difficult challenge is adapting for the unknown.

Having led the pack from start to finish in this year’s race, we had no idea of our time relative to other competitors. The technology to supply that information mid-race does not yet exist, so the role of the strategist in the boat is much more difficult. It is the coxswain’s responsibility to know which segments of river are best to harness the full potential of their crew. The difficulty here is that we never really know what’s around the next corner, so we must recognize when the conditions favor us and take full advantage of them. The coxswain must also be practiced enough not to burn out their crews, but even that is preferred to the shame of finishing a race with energy left to expend.

Did you invest enough time and effort to have a realistic chance to meet your goals?

Rowing is an uncanny sport in which participants train for about 100–200 minutes for every minute of actual racing, because races are so sparse and because it takes such a large effort to optimize the body’s energy systems for the distance of each race. Rowers who do not invest the hours in their fitness will find themselves at the mercy of their competitors. (Surprise! They have none.) We all have limited time to dedicate to training, so we must remain vigilant to take full advantage of it.

Never stop learning. One of the joys of the human condition is the intrinsic motivation to learn more about the world around us, from the universe to the subatomic particle to everything in between. Our coaches and mentors are human and can take us only so far — if you feel you have plateaued in your discipline, consider reaching out to experts in the field. There is always someone smarter who can help us do more with less. Rowing is no different, and there are several dimensions in which to improve: training plans, technical instruction, nutrition, race preparation, and so on. And with today’s technology, the obstacle of reaching someone new for help is easier than ever before.

Get out of your comfort zone and your immediate network, because that is when we learn the most.