Head of the River

by Pip Harry

  As I hold the handle and breathe up, the bad thoughts come.

  You’re tired, Leni. Your back is sore. It’s hot, you don’t feel good now; imagine how you’ll feel at the 1000-metre mark?

  Another voice chimes in. This one is my good fairy.

  You’re fine, Len. Relax, it’s only a few minutes. Breathe. Suck it up. You can do this.

  I want to feel unbeatable but I’m sapped of energy. I’m so tired I let out a huge yawn. I could crawl away and sleep for hours. I don’t want to be here. I’d even rather be on the check-out. On Boxing Day.

  Rachel is on the machine next to me. She lets out a sharp breath, looks at the ceiling and closes her eyes.

  ‘You ready?’ I say, a little more aggressively than I expect.

  She’s lost her tummy over the summer and looks fit. Is she a dark horse?

  ‘Too bad if I’m not,’ she says, managing a smile. ‘Good luck.’

  ‘You too.’

  We sit forward on the machines and enjoy our final pain-free seconds.

  ‘Attention! Row!’ shouts Laura.

  I plan to follow Laura’s advice and work my way into the trial, but then I hear Dad’s voice behind my ergo after my first twenty strokes. He’s speaking in Romanian. No one else can understand what he’s saying, but I can.

  ‘Go, Leni. Don’t be timid. You’re cruising. Bring up the rating. Go now. Harder.’

  I change my race plan and push my legs down with force, spinning the handle quicker round the back turn. Rachel seems to be sticking to Laura’s advice, her strokes are smooth and controlled.

  Smooth and controlled won’t get me back the stroke seat, I think, going for an effort for ten. Smooth and controlled won’t get me a scholarship to the AIS. Each stroke feels heavy and doubt creeps back in.

  You’re exhausted now. How are you ever going to make 2 ks, Leni? You’ve got so far to go. You’ve stuffed it. You should’ve listened to Laura. It’s too late now.

  My breathing is raggedy and out of control. A stitch gathers in my shoulder and stabs between my right collarbone. I focus on the readout in front of me, willing for the numbers not to creep up.

  Vooum, vooum, vooum go the machines as we pull on the chains. The 750-metre mark slips by. Still so far to go.

  You can’t keep this up. Take a light stroke, just one, then get back into it.

  Usually I can block out the negative and push through the pain, but today I’m hanging on by my finger tips. I sneak a look at Rachel’s readout and panic. She’s a few seconds under my time and in control. When I turn my head back, I’ve taken a couple of light strokes without realising. I speed up to make up ground. My stroke rate pops up to thirty-two. I’m taking one and a half strokes for Rachel’s one. She looks amazing. So strong.

  Focus on your own bloody erg! I berate myself.

  Laura comes up next to me. ‘Breathe up. Over halfway now. You’re doing great.’

  Laura means to be inspiring, but her words sink my hopes. If I feel this terrible now, I’m in for a world of hurt in the second act. I make an involuntary grunting sound. My lungs are stretched so thin they feel like burning paper. My legs are screaming with lactate and saliva pools in my mouth. It tastes metallic. I swallow it and close my eyes, counting out another five strokes.

  When I look up, the room is spinning. It’s so hot in here, the only air circulated by the wheels of the machines. My leg muscles shake and I’m desperate to stop. Even for a few seconds. My heart pounds in my forearms, neck and throat. The beat jumps around like a loose frog.

  I look at the screen. It says 1250 metres. I have another 750 to go.

  You’re not going to make it, the voice says coldly. It hurts too much. Stop. No one will mind. You can say you felt sick. Take the erg another time.

  ‘Water!’ I croak.

  I want to drop my handle and quit. It’s all I can think about. That, and not vomiting. My lunch repeats in my mouth. Don’t vomit. Don’t vomit. Don’t vomit I pray with each stroke. The resistance on the end of my handle is like pulling an anchor through wet sand.

  Dad picks up my water bottle and dumps cool liquid on my neck and head.

  ‘Nearly there, Leni,’ he says, and I hate him for being able to stand there feeling no pain, just observing mine. ‘Crank it up now. All legs, all heart. What you got left?’

  The water helps and I can see The End. Taste the sweet Gatorade swishing in my pasty mouth, feel my heart rate thudding back to a slow, steady beat as I lie spreadeagled on a mat. Hear the conversation I’ll have post ergo. ‘Seven-twenty. Thanks I’m pleased. What did you get?’ Everyone will want to know my score and I’ll act modest, like it was no big deal.

  Fifty more strokes. I start to count them.

  One. Two. Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Four. Or was that five? Oh my God. This hurts so bad. I can’t do this. Seven. Ouch!

  Dad starts yelling behind me. His voice irritates me so much I want to turn around in my seat and scream SHUT UP! GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!

  ‘Go! Go! You break 7.30, Leni. Five hundred to go! Lift!’

  Next to me Rachel is lifting too, and Laura is pushing her to the end. She’ll beat me, I know it. My mind goes blank and black.

  ‘I can’t! I can’t!’ I shout. There’s no more rev in me. My time starts to drop away. I’m fading.

  ‘You can do this, Leni!’ says Laura, seeing me fall apart. ‘Bring back the power.’

  I don’t know why I stop rowing. One minute I’m about to break my PB and the next I’ve got my head between my knees, my time slipping away. Rachel forging ahead with her slow, hard strokes.

  ‘Come on, Leni!’ Dad yells. ‘Keep going! You nearly at end!’

  Maybe if I pick up my handle I could scrape a respectable time. In the top four to five in the firsts. But not the best. Not 7.20. Everything is ruined. I’ve failed.

  I tumble off the machine.

  ‘This is your fault! Can’t you just be my dad? I already have a coach!’

  He couldn’t look more shocked if I’d slapped him across the face. I burst into tears and Laura comes towards me, like she’s going to try to hug me.

  ‘No! Leave me alone.’

  I use my last remaining modicum of energy to get the hell away from them and their sympathetic faces.

  Cristian

  It’s thirty-five degrees in the shade and I’m wearing stupid red socks. As if having them on my feet makes me any better than the guys in the seconds. I roll them off my sweaty feet and dump them in the bottom of the boat. Sitting in the firsts again isn’t nearly as satisfying as I’d thought it would. I’ve risked everything to get here. Put my body through hell and it feels like any other row.

  ‘Where’s Sam?’ asks Damo behind me. ‘Anyone heard from him?’

  I shrug and there’s a silence down the boat. Sam has disappeared into thin air. Nobody has seen or heard from him for weeks.

  ‘Our captain’s done a runner,’ says Damo. ‘That’s bloody fantastic.’

  ‘Just focus, guys,’ says Charley into his headset.

  That’s the problem. There’s nothing to distract us out here in the sticks. Flat brown water, overhanging trees and endless paddocks. The girls are off doing their ergs, so there’s not even the hint of a bare leg or a pair of tits to help break the boredom. I chug back on some water, pull down my hat and anticipate a long, tedious outing.

  ‘Forget about what Sam is doing. We’ve got our meat seat Cristian back,’ says Charley. ‘Although he has much less, er, meat these days.’

  Westie zooms up on his tinny, ready to break us.

  ‘Stop dicking about and row,’ he shouts into his megaphone. I can’t stop thinking about Westie having daughters and a grandkid. Which means someone actually loved him enough to have kids with him. Was it possible he did have a human heart and not a lump of stone?

  We sit f
orward and it’s like I never left. All the same bodies. All the same issues. When we break out of warm-up into full crew work, it’s creaky and slow. Westie is back in my face, shouting out picky technique calls and generally making a pain of himself, when what we need is a bit of quiet to feel the stillness of this place. To find our rhythm again.

  ‘Come on!’ he shouts. ‘This isn’t the Portsea front beach! Sloppy technique! Let’s go through those balance drills again.’

  Just as I’m losing hope that I can survive the rest of the season, even if I am in the top boat, I feel a hand on my back.

  ‘Nice to have you back man,’ Julian says from the four seat. ‘Wasn’t the same without you.’

  There’s a click of realisation. I didn’t miss the boat or the racing or the endless drills. I missed the guys.

  Dad stops me as I go into erg trials later in the day. ‘Your sister blew up her erg.’

  ‘Leni blew up? What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Dad looks worried, a frown creases his brow.

  ‘No words of wisdom for me?’ I say, expecting a full wind up. Dad’s always full-on before trials.

  ‘Row your own erg. I meddle too much already.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Do your best.’

  Adam and I suck down a foul-tasting protein shake. The pact we made months ago is about to come to fruition. It occurs to me that maybe we should do well on our trials, but not too well. But it’s too late for that conversation now.

  ‘Boys. Time to jump on the machines,’ says Westie.

  As I pull my zootie over my leaner body I hear a hard, determined voice inside myself say, bring it. It’s a voice I haven’t heard in a long time.

  I’m waiting for my turn, listening to eight machines whoosh, and the grunts and moans of the Year Eleven guys before us in complete, utter agony. As they finish up they stagger from the machines and roll on the floor, groaning, heaving for air and writhing in pain. One of them vomits into his hands, the rest crawl towards the showers and water.

  Adam wipes down a machine dripping in the last guy’s sweat, blood and tears. He means business today. There’s a score to settle. I sit down next to him.

  ‘The firsts,’ I say to him and we bump fists.

  He sits forward on the slide and grasps the handle, readying his body for the impact.

  ‘Attention! Row!’ shouts Westie.

  Adam comes out of the blocks like a greyhound snapping for a rabbit. I steady myself, using relaxed powerful strokes to cruise along beside him. The other guys drop away from us in the second 500. We’re so far ahead, I consider backing off, but my body doesn’t want to. I’m so pumped, so primed, that I can’t do anything but smash it. How far can I take it?

  Westie stands behind us and it makes me find even more strength in my legs. I feel like I’m pushing down a block of flats.

  ‘Easy you two. Leave something in the tank,’ he warns.

  Little does he know what’s powering our tanks. We’d be thrown out of the team in a second if he could see what was in our bloodstreams.

  The 2 ks fly by. I don’t count strokes. Don’t feel the searing pain of years past. I just eat up metre after metre until I’m staring at the finish line.

  ‘Let’s go!’ shouts Westie. ‘Final push lads!’

  Everyone stands around for the finale and I can tell it’s going to be a massive time for Adam and me. A PB by miles.

  As we wind down the last twenty strokes, I’m pulling so hard I think I might pop a vein and Adam is super focused, closing his eyes and muttering to himself. My chest burns and sweat pours down my face, but I feel good. I’m breathing up big and I know I’ve got heaps left. This erg is mine.

  The room counts us down and I reach the end of the 2000 first, dropping my handle dramatically, sucking up oxygen. Making everyone think this is a feat of muscle, bone and heart. I roll up and down on the slide, keeping my body moving so I don’t cramp up.

  Adam gets there next, thirty seconds behind me. He tips back his head and gasps for air. I thrust water at him, but he shakes his head. He dry heaves with his whole body, but nothing comes out. The other guys finish up – far enough away that it’s a fait accompli. We are both back in the first boat. For the first time, I think that this idea of Adam’s was the best he’s ever had.

  I grab Adam and lift him off the machine and even though his legs are jelly, I get him to walk around the room a few times with me and take a few sips from his water bottle. He looks awful. He isn’t recovering as well as I am. We sit on the balcony for a while, looking out to the river and the girls getting ready to go out rowing.

  ‘Feel better now?’

  Adam nods, but he’s still pale. ‘Took it right to the edge.’

  Westie comes over with his iPad.

  ‘The rumours are true, then,’ he says.

  Guilt and shame force their way up to my cheeks and make them burn.

  ‘What rumours?’ I say defensively.

  ‘That you two have been doing extra weights sessions. Training on the sly. I don’t encourage it, but your results are dramatically improved.’

  Adam manages to smile. We did it.

  ‘Adam you rowed an impressive 6.22. Breaking your PB by …’ He consults his iPad. ‘Forty seconds. Poppa, you broke the Australian thirteen to eighteen-year-old ergometer record in a time of 5.52. Congratulations boys, you are both officially back in the first eight.’

  Leni

  Rachel finds me in our room. I’m lying on my bed and turning over the erg trial in my head. The weather has turned and it’s pelting down rain. Slabs of it are dripping from the window frame, turning everything to mud. Our break will be over soon and the afternoon session will begin. I have to leave this room somehow. There’s a knock at the door and it opens slowly.

  ‘Oh Captain, My Captain,’ Rachel sing songs. I’m in no mood for her jokes.

  She walks into the room and sits on my bed. I roll away from her.

  ‘We’re ready to get out on the water. You know the rowing camp motto – monsoonal rain, hail or shine. Are you okay, after the erg test?’

  ‘Of course I’m not okay. What time did you get?’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘I do. Laura does. The school does.’

  ‘Put an erg on the water and it sinks. It’s what we do in the boat that counts the most. Anyway, you weren’t the only one to blow out. Meg hit the deck at the 1000-metre mark.’

  ‘Meg? Are you comparing me to the worst rower in our boat?’

  ‘If I was, would it matter?’ she says. ‘We’re all in the same crew. We all win or lose together. If you didn’t want to be in a team, you should’ve sculled this year.’

  ‘What’s everyone saying about my erg?’

  Rachel puts her hand on my leg, gingerly.

  ‘You know what people say about you, Leni? That you’re amazing. Maybe the best rower we’ll ever sit in a boat with. That one day, you’ll go to the Olympics, like your parents.’

  ‘You don’t have to say that to make me feel better.’

  ‘I’m not. I’ll row this last season. Maybe a couple more at uni, socially. It’s fun and it keeps me fit. But I’m not going to any Olympics. I’ll watch you on telly and tell people I beat you on an erg test once.’

  ‘But I’m the captain. I’m not supposed to die on an erg,’ I say.

  ‘There’s a reason you were voted captain and it’s nothing to do with your stupid erg score. We all look up to you. The younger girls want to be you. On the river, you’re a rock star. So get out there. Talk to the other crews. Get your head out of your own arse and ask them how they’re going. Give them someone to follow and be the best rower you can be. That’s what a real captain does. Pull it together.’

  ‘Are you always this blunt?’ I say. ‘I mean you could’ve sugar-coated it a little
.’

  ‘My mum never lets me get away with sulking. She says I’ve got it too good. I’m not going to let you either.’

  Like in the boat I follow her lead. I change into clean training gear and pull a slicker over my head. Grab my water bottle and my hat.

  ‘One more thing,’ Rachel says. ‘There’s no point us being rivals. Whether I’m in the stroke seat or you are, when we line up for the Head of the River, we’re going to need each other. Forget about erg scores and seat races. Let’s be a crew. Row well, win some races, maybe even have a couple of laughs. Okay?’

  She puts her arm around me, like she does with her besties. ‘You gotta relax, Leni, you’re far too uptight.’

  We walk down to the boats together and even though Millie and Aiko are there too, Rachel keeps her arm slung over my shoulders, right through the crew chat. And I let her.

  We row the rising, pockmarked river, Laura trailing us in a speedboat. Raindrops the size of peas roll off the peak of my hat and my hands slip on the wet handle. I shake my head, but the rain comes harder still. The rain soaks through my zootie, right through to my undies.

  Usually wet outings bring a dark cloud over my mood. But today, I see the funny side. When we stop to do roll up drills, water sloshes around our feet. The rain is attacking us sideways, above, below. I can’t stop giggling. We can barely see a few metres in front of us. I’m blinded by the water running into my eyes.

  ‘You find this weather funny, Leni?’ Laura asks into her megaphone, huddling under a slicker.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m laughing,’ I admit.

  The unstoppable rain and my soggy undies seem hysterically funny. Then it starts hailing.