Eliot Bridge, the Charles River, Boston. Friday 20 October 2023.
Greg Benning goes under the Eliot Bridge in a single, well clear.
He started first. There is no boat ahead of him to chase, and the ones behind are racing a clock he cannot see. It is the Head of the Charles, the Grand Master and Veteran Singles. He is sixty-one, in University of Pennsylvania colours, and he has won the singles here ten years running.
The finish is coming.
He is not thinking about the finish. He is counting strokes.
He was a runner until he found rowing. At Penn, in the autumn of his first year, somebody asked him for a two-week commitment. He puts what it turned into at forty years.
He won the singles at the Charles for the first time in 1994, at thirty-two, and has carried titles through every masters division the regatta runs since. There are Silver Skiff titles in Turin as well. He is the man who has argued for racing all the masters together, in one general classification, so the result says who was fastest rather than who was fastest for their age.
His VO2 max was around 65 fifteen years ago. It is in the mid-fifties now.
The watts he holds at 2 mmol and 4 mmol of lactate have not moved in five years. Same power at the same threshold, on a smaller engine.
“Physiologically that’s more of a challenge as the years go by,” he said. “But in terms of biomechanics, power application, efficiency — there are dozens, if not a hundred things you can focus on.”
He has had his lactate tested at his club by the same national team coach for fifteen years, with numbers back to 2006. He does not begin a season with a training plan. He begins with the last one.
“You reflect back and then you look forward, and you try to think about what makes it fun.”
Greg’s races are in October and November. Everything is built backwards from that.
The shape of the year
He used to run three peaks a year. Coming down to a peak was when he kept getting injured. So he stopped, and the year now has one direction.
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