The genesis

This picture captures the entry into the last 250m of the Men's Open Master B 2x Grand Finale of the USRowing Master National Championship in 2021 in TN. Craig and I are the in the white double on the left at that moment clearly still in contention for silver and perhaps even gold with a sprint for the ages. But it was not to be; we couldn't respond to the surges of Newport in the black boat, and Texas in in the other Filippi and ended up fourth, without a medal.

Even though we were happy with the performance given what could be reasonably expected for a crew with maybe 10km together we were left hungry for more. And so this has become not just a celebration of the strongest and deepest of friendships but also an exploration of the most celebrated training methodologies to try to make up the deficit; Grinko, La Mura, Buschbacher, Servadio, and Holtmeier on the conditioning side and all the wealth of knowledge Craig brings to the table from a strength perspective. And like every good student of the great ones we have come up with our own stuff; rowing specific Litvinovs, drills for technical homogeneity across long geographic distances, and more.

The 2021 championship had other gifts for us; racing the Open D+ with other Virginia scullers opened up the possibility of a club effort for 2022. Having finally found a sculling centric group willing to enter the more complex boat classes like the 4- this could be an opportunity to attack the efficiency trophy, and to do so in the most competitive and fun races.