PACE.
There comes a time in the history of every crew when, having been plodding along comfortably at thirty-four, they suddenly realize that the race is barely a week off, that if they are to have any chance of success they must raise the stroke, and that they don't know how on earth it is to be done, seeing that they have usually felt pretty well cleaned out after rowing even a half course at their present rate. However, they generally do manage tan! biers que mat to get it done, and find in the end that thirty-eight is not really much more difficult for men in good training than thirty-four.
The best plan, I think, is to devote the greater part of an afternoon's practice to short rows of half a minute and a minute at, say, thirty-seven, and to wind up with three minutes of this. On that day there will probably be at first a terrible amount of rushing and splashing. On the following day you will find that things have settled down, and you will be able to row for five minutes at the faster rate. On the third day
practise short pieces again at thirty-eight, thirty nine, forty ; and on the fourth day row your full course at as fast a rate as you can command. A coach should impress upon his crew that a fast stroke is to be secured not by rushing forward with the bodies, but by rattling away the hands quicker and by increasing the force employed in forcing the oar through the water. The pace of the bodies on the forward swing, though, of course, it does increase, should feel as if it were slower. Relatively to the rate of stroke used, it is, in fact, slower at a fast than at a slow stroke. The best stroke-oars have been men who fully realized this, and who, either in breaking from a paddle into a row, or in spurting during a hard piece of row ing, gave their crew a delightful sense of steadiness and balance, which enabled them to put their utmost energies into every stroke.