more about... rowers raspberries

If you've landed here I am tipping you clicked-through from the home page (so, my immediate apologies about this page's content), or you've got this weird interest in finding out what a rowers raspberry is. (And if that's the case, I feel I should apologise again, only this time on your behalf).

I was intending for this content to sit on the home page, but when I started writing in my usual kind-of-free-style way, the article grew, and grew and got way too long. So, here we (you) are. Somehow, "rowers raspberries" managed to gain its own page of content. I hope it feels special.

As I began to say on the home page... 

Once upon a time, I used to row. I rowed enough and spent enough time in a boat to say I reached "OK" status with it, though freely admit that at least 99% of the credit for that came from the motivation I got rowing (and, training) with a great mate, Brent Ramsay. 

'Rams', as anyone who knew him called him, never gave anything less than 100% with the sport. Looking back, his behaviour and how he approached the sport rubbed off on me. Be it training or competing - when you were rowing with Rams, you spun along at 100%

Rams and I would spend hours (and hours), (and hours) training together.

For the club the pair of us rowed for back then - g'day PCURC! - we normally rowed in the same boat, every day. 

So I'd find myself sitting in the same seat. Every day. 

In our case, we spent so much time in 'our' boat that it was inevitable we came know everything about it. Every creak and behavioural nuance, (eventually) we got to know it. For example, you'd figure out the exact heights your hands needed to be to keep the boat balanced. (Which weren't always the heights our coach, 'Sav', was asking for). And you figured out the precise location to anchor your feet to, to make the most use of the slide. Not too far aft (sternwards) or too close to the bow. (And I am only talking about differences of a few mm, but they can make a hell of difference to the rowing performance when you're going hell for leather). 

And also, you'd figure out how the boat sounded when we finally got it humming, and everything felt like it was going perfectly (it kind of gurgled).

However, every once in a while we'd find ourselves in a different boat. And, sometimes, I'd end up sitting on a seat that, for whatever reason, didn't jell with the shape of my arse. 

While that would not usually be a drama, if the seat wasn't quite cutting the mustard, the "seat-arse disconnect" would manifest itself with an itty-bitty blister that would begin to form at the very top of my arse-crack. 

Admittedly, most times I wouldn't really know it was there. Just the hint of a slight tingle, but it wouldn't grow to anything special 'cause we were back in the sheds before there was time for the blister to grow into anything more sinister.  And we'd jump back into our usual boat, and away we'd go/row.

But on other times... 

Say we'd rowed in a boat with the 'dodgy' seat for a couple of hours every day, over four or five consecutive days. By around day five, that little tingle had morphed into a weeping, full-blown, fiery red-raw blister. And when it popped, when we were out rowing every stroke felt like someone was attacking my butt with a course-grade belt-sander.

I'd want to stop, but... could I? No way. Remember, when I was rowing with Rams it was 100% or nothing. So we'd keep on rowing. And that 'being belt-sanded' feeling (which I presume was the blister continuing to get chaffed) would keep on keeping on, forming a raw-skin wound that I guess was about 1-inch diameter. (At least, that's what it felt like. But I couldn't exactly see it, right?). 

On those extra-special raspberry days, it felt like someone was trying to brand my butt at the End. Of. Every. Single. Stroke. 

Pleasant, eh?

But I'm no martyr. I know this issue is not unique to me. Given that the name "Rowers Raspberry" had been around way, way before I first took to the water, what I have described is not something that I'm the only one to experience.

If you consider how long rowing has been around as a sport (for example, the first Oxford-Cambridge university boat race was held in 1828) and how many rowers would have taken to the water over the years, 100's of thousands of hapless soles must have suffered the same fate. 

And so perhaps it'd be fitting that I dedicate this particular page to them, the Raspberry Brigade (which sounds eerily similar to the title of a Prince song).

Wear your chafing with pride.