… swing
“Rowers have a word for this frictionless state: swing … Recall the pure joy of riding on a backyard swing: an easy cycle of motion, the momentum coming from the swing itself. The swing carries us; we do not force it. We pump our legs to drive our arc higher, but gravity does most of the work. We are not so much swinging as being swung. The boat swings you. The shell wants to move fast: speed sings in its lines and nature. Our job is simply to work with the shell, to stop holding back with our thrashing struggles to go faster. Trying too hard sabotages boat speed. Trying becomes striving and striving undoes itself. Social climbers strive to be aristocrats but their efforts prove them no such thing. Aristocrats do not strive; they have already arrived. Swing is a state of arrival.”
- Craig Lambert (Mind Over Water)
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There’s another rowing book, “The Shell Game” by Stephen Kiesling (if I’m remembering the name correctly) with a similar good description of swing, and arriving at it. One of his chapter-ending lines goes something like, “My idea of hell is sitting on a stagnant lake with seven novices in a boat with no swing.”
Comment by pjm — 3/12/2007 @ 9:21 am
It makes me think of the day I set a big recent PR in the 5K. I’d been on the track doing speed work with the kids. I went out comfortably quick and hit the first mile in a time that startled me. I checked the watch to see if the clock was wrong, it wasn’t. I figured that since I felt OK, I’d keep moving and see if the blow up I now expected was coming. At two, the clock was similarly good. As I approached 3, a guy who I’d passed a couple of hundred yards prior came by. I couldn’t go with him. I tried, but it wasn’t there. Still, I popped off a PR by a big margin. I think that’s about as close as running gets to the “swing.”
Comment by Scooter — 3/12/2007 @ 10:02 pm
I had the opportunity to run “marla-pace” too with the little wispit post college. I sicked her on my husband to be, a Div I All American when he moved to N.C. with me, and he even complained about running with her! The three of us use to try to outrun the 3-legged black dog. Marla would surge ahead so we would be left behind to contend with him.
Comment by Stephanie — 3/26/2007 @ 7:45 am