Crew squads prepare for annual Tour de Payne

Imagine that you're having a bad day. One of those where you just barely force yourself to climb out of bed. After staggering to your 8:30 class, you find out that not only have you bombed the latest quiz, but you're going to be dead in the water come finals time unless you put in some serious study hours. You're ready to collapse on your sofa and sleep off the pain. Only you have to go to Payne Whitney Gym first, and row. For an hour. Without stopping.

JULIA TIERNAN/YH A rower gets ready for the infamous two-week 'Tour de Payne.'

Oh, yeah, and to avoid humiliation, you have to beat out about 150 other hungry student-athletes in the distance you cover.

This is the life of the Yale rower between Thanksgiving and finals. Over a two-week stretch, the women's, men's heavyweight, and men's lightweight crew teams will participate in the Tour de Payne, a grueling winter workout. Modeled after the Tour de France, the marathon cycling event, it consists of 13 workouts in 14 days. "It is a lot of testing," lightweight rower Charles Edel, CC '01, said. "You never have that any other time." "Everyone has their own unique way of preparing for the Tour," Andrew Liverman, SM '02, said. "Some will only eat certain foods. Other guys, each day after the race, will take alternating hot and cold showers—one minute hot, then one minute cold. That gets rid of the lactic acid." Since the Tour de Payne takes place towards the end of the semester, each workout is only an hour long. "It's kind of fun for the athletes," heavyweight coach David Vogel, DC '71, said. "It's short: only an hour, in and out." In fact, only during one of those days does the actual workout span the whole hour—the day of the notorious Hour of Power. That consists of every rower working an hour straight on the rowing ergometers, stationary machines that simulate rowing and monitor the distance the rower covers. "It's a test of your mental willpower and your physical endurance," lightweight John Logsdon, SM '01, said. "It's just tough to be able to know how hard you can go and be able to sustain something. If you burn out early, it's a long and painful road to the finish." Edel agrees: "It's a long 60 minutes."

But women's coach Will Porter knows the teams can handle it. "The Hour of Power is a standard workout that is done in rowing everywhere," he said. "We don't do it a lot here at Yale and so our kids are a little overwhelmed by it." But during his college years, Porter would row for an hour, or even two, up to four times a week. "It's like running for an hour. People on our cross-country team wouldn't think twice about an hour run...when we're out on the water, rowing for an hour is no big deal." It might not be any one of the workouts so much as the marathon run of 13 in 14 days that gets to the rowers. As Logsdon said, "By the end, you're pretty beat up."

As much of a fitness sport as crew is, coaches and players still agree that the most important part of the Tour de Payne is mental and not physical. Every rower is scored on his or her performance, and the scores are posted for the whole team. "The one goal is for all of Yale crews to be preparing to be winners...to launch ourselves into this winter training that was going to lead all of the teams into success," Vogel said. "They can benefit from each other's energy." One special part of the Tour is a complicated handicapping system, "like a handicap in golf," as Vogel puts it, which allows women, lightweight men, and heavyweight men to be on the same scoresheet. "Having all three teams together does add a lot," Porter said. "Everyone's doing the same workouts. Misery loves company."

This attitude is supported by the paucity of complaints about the Tour de Payne's intensity. "Oarsmen have a [loose] definition of unreasonable," Vogel said. "The amount of time we're asking is not very much. What makes it hard is individuals pushing themselves. If they didn't want to make it hard, it wouldn't be hard. The kind of people that will push themselves to do really well aren't going to complain about the severity of it." Porter agreed. "Yale students are pretty motivated...They're all competitive kids or they wouldn't be involved in Division I athletics. If you say it's a race, they're all going to want to do well." And Edel says bluntly, "There isn't a lot of grumbling on the team."

Of course, the freshmen haven't experienced the Tour de Payne yet. Although they seem to be anxious, they know it will build team camaraderie, and they're proud that their sport is so demanding. But as heavyweight Alex Bribriesco, SM '04, said, "I'm anticipating becoming reacquainted with all of the food I ate over Thanksgiving." Fellow heavyweight Sam McCarthy, SM '04, put it more simply: "I'm scared." After all, they don't call it the Tour de Payne for nothing.

Two weeks in the life of the Tour de Payne... "In the Tour de France, one out of every couple of days is hard. In the Tour de Payne, every day you have to go your hardest." —Andrew Liverman, SM ¹02 Day 1: 1 rep of 20 minutes Day 2: 10 reps of 90 seconds Day 3: 3 reps of 10 minutes Day 4: 6 reps of 2 minutes, rest, 6 reps of 2 minutes Day 5: Hour of Power (1 rep at 60 minutes) Day 6: 5 reps of 5 minutes Day 7: REST Day 8: 1 rep of 20 minutes Day 9: 10 reps of 90 seconds Day 10: 3 reps of 10 minutes Day 11: 6 reps of 2 minutes, rest, 6 reps of 2 minutes Day 12: Hour of Power (1 rep at 60 minutes) Day 13: 5 reps of 5 minutes (Rowers row for a set amount of time. The winner is he or she that covers the most meters.)

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