As they age, more women find their strength on water
Rowing growing in popularity with older athletes
As they launched their rowing shell onto Boston's Charles River one sunny October morning, four Alexandria, Va., women prepared to live a rower's dream: competing in the three-mile Head of the Charles Regatta that is to rowers what the Boston Marathon is to runners.
They'd trained together for months, even hired a coach to push them harder, and here they were, fit and ready.
Average age in the boat: 63.
That was two years ago. Harriett Pallas, 67, Brenda Waltz, 67, Pamela Zitron, 69, and Eleanor Richards, 61, are still rowing and still competing, along with a growing contingent of older women who discover that rowing can be a good way to get and stay fit. Many later find themselves racing on rivers from the Potomac to the Thames and beyond.
The four came to rowing by different paths. Waltz and Zitron found the sport through younger family members who rowed, and Richards claims that learning to row "was my midlife crisis." Pallas, already a cyclist, skier and tap dancer, tried it and was hooked.
"I don't know what I'd be without rowing!" she said.
Most aerobic sports bathe the brain with feel-good endorphins after a workout, and rowing is no exception. Studies show that rowing offers cardiovascular and respiratory advantages for those who train even semi-seriously. And sports physiologist Fritz Hagerman, who taught at Ohio University and died in 2013, found that the lungs of rowers who train seriously use oxygen far more efficiently than those of most other athletes. After all, rowing uses all the body's oxygenhungry major muscle groups in the legs, torso and arms.
Weight control can be an added benefit. In the past year, Waltz has lost 60 pounds.
"I realized if I was going to row the way I wanted to, I'd have to lose the weight," she said.
Some women even swear that it staves off the postmenopausal thinning of bones that can lead to fractures.
Most older women who row admit that after they decided to give the sport a try, they got pulled in by the rhythm, the water and the way it looks easy but can be maddeningly challenging.