Back when I was coaching scholastic crews at the Episcopal School of Dallas, a tradition developed of doing timed laps of the small lake where we trained. Bachman Lake is between 1600-2100m long, depending on whether the bridges on the creek that feeds into it are clear and safe to row under, and it is much wider at the south end than the north so the longest piece you can realistically row continuously is about 3700m from Love Field's landing lights, around the south end, and back again, mildly complicated by having to make a broad turn and hit a narrow channel midway through the piece, so while roughly 3k of the piece is a straight "drag race", there's a mild tactical/steering element as well. From about 1995 on, we started calling these pieces "big loops" and doing them head-race style for time became a regular feature of the program, both fall and spring. The tradition took a big step forward when we began to have access to enough boats to do them in singles, and after a few years, time standards were pretty well established: if you were male and couldn't turn a big loop in under 18:00 or female and 19:00, you were pretty much still a novice. If you could break 16:00 (boys) or 17:30 (girls) you could legitimately start calling yourself a varsity-level sculler. Any time we had four or more guys under 15:30, we felt pretty good about our prospects at the state championships and Stotesbury Cup. The girls' record was 16:24.3 and the boys somewhere just south of 15:10 - I'd have to dig around in my coaching logs to find that one. In any case, the tradition seemed to serve a number of useful purposes: it gave everyone a clear series of goals and standards to reach, it served as a focal point for the program, it gave us milestones to celebrate, and it was a lot more reliable indicator of boat-moving ability than a 2k erg time. Granted that 3700m is an arbitrary distance and admittedly a lot longer piece than most of our races, it made sense for us because it fit our home course so well.
At Craftsbury, we have the Head of the Hosmer. We call it 2800m even though it's a few strokes shy of that if you steer well. As recently as 2011, we thought 10:15 for men or 11:10 for women in flat or tailwind conditions was pretty darn fast. Now that our GRP athletes have been training here for several years, it appears that breaking 10:00 for men or something a bit south of 10:50 for women gives an athlete a reason to think that s/he is in the ballpark of world-class speed, and that until you meet that standard you're probably not quite there yet. To date, five athletes have broken 10:00 for the Head of the Hosmer and GRP's men are representing the U.S. in the quad at the 2014 World Championships, having earned a bronze medal at World Cup 3 in Lucerne. This is not a coincidence. Speed at home tends to reflect speed away from home, and if you don't know what constitutes the former, you're less likely to achieve the latter. Establish a home course benchmark. It's invaluable.
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