Lawrence Farquarson - London Youth Rowing

S3 Ep.4  If you heard my interview with Andy Triggs Hodge last year you may remember him talking about the brilliant charity, London Youth Rowing, which does fantastic work changing young people's lives through rowing. I was keen to get one of their coaches on the podcast to talk in a bit more detail about their work. So step forward Lawrence Farquarson.
Lawrence has been a coach at LYR since 2012. In this interview we talk about:

• How Lawrence got involved in LYR
• NJIRC (National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships) and why they're so great
• What LYR does
• A day in the life
• Why avoiding rowing jargon is helpful
• Why the young people in the LYR programmes aren't expected to row on water unless they want to
• The biggest misconceptions about rowing
• The perceptions about rowing among working class kids
• Expansion of LYR into Yorkshire
• The difference that rowing makes to young people
• The importance of promoting exercise because of how it makes you feel, not how it makes you look
• Whether there's a difference of approach between male and female rowers
• How you can support London Youth Rowing
• Race the Thames 2022

You can find more about London Youth Rowing here
The email for enquiries that Lawrence mentioned is admin@londonyouthrowing.com
If you'd like to get involved in Race the Thames (and I strongly recommend it), the link is here
Find out more about NJIRC here

S3, Ep 3. As many of you know, I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018, and had a mastectomy, chemo and immunotherapy, and since then I've been on a bit of a mission to inform people about things they might need to know about the condition. Which is why I was so thrilled when Napoleon Griffin agreed to come on the show. As both a rower and a male breast cancer survivor, Napoleon and I had LOADS to talk about.

You can find Napoleon on Instagram here

We talked about:

• Coming to rowing later in life
• Background as a track and field athlete
• Discovering he had breast cancer
• The importance of getting any symptoms of male breast cancer checked
• The treatment and the mental battle
• Second run-in with cancer
• The financial implications of having cancer
• Finishing treatment - regenerating
• The resources available re male breast cancer
• The importance of self-examination for men as well as women
• Getting fit after cancer and the benefits of being fit in bouncing back (and outcomes)
• Learning to scull in Puerto Rico with sharks and manatees!
• Rowing vs running
• Making history as the first all black quad at US Masters
• Diversity in rowing
• World Masters 2022
• Plans for a breast cancer survivors' 2022
• How cancer changes your attitude to life
• Representing your country at international events
• Athletes Without Limits

Resources

Information about male breast cancer:

• NHS page re signs and symptoms
• BreastCancer.Org information
• CoppaFeel information re breast cancer in men
• CoppaFeel information re how to check your chest / breasts

Athletes Without Limits - encouraging people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to get involved in sport.

S3, Ep.2 It would have been lovely not to need to do this interview, but sadly our rivers - and the River Wye in particular - are in crisis, and as rowers and river-lovers you ought to know what's going on. So today I'm talking to Charles Watson, founder of charity and campaigning group, River Action UK, to find out what's wrong with our rivers and what we can do about it.

• How Charles went from PR boss to environmental campaigner
• What's wrong with the River Wye
• The elephant in the room dressed as a chicken
• Three solutions 
• What you can do 
• How much time we have left 

Resources
River Action UK
The Rivercide documentary
The BBC Panorama documentary , The River Pollution Scandal
River Action petition
Petition to ban discharge of raw sewage into watercourses
Find your MP here
Find your local Rivers Trust here

Where to report pollution incidents:
In England: Environment Agency https://www.gov.uk/report-an-environmental-incident

In Wales: Natural Resources Wales https://naturalresources.wales/about-us/contact-us/report-an-environmental-incident/?lang=en

Find your water company here
Find your water company's contact details here

Groups
Rowers United to Save the Planet
The Rivers Trust
Friends of the Lower Wye
Friends of the Upper Wye
Wye Valley AONB

Find them on Twitter!
DEFRA @DEFRAGovUK
Avara Foods @AvaraToods
Tesco @tesco
Sainsburys @sainsburys
Waitrose @waitrose
Marks & Spencer @MarksandSpencer
Morrisons @Morrisons
Asda @asda
Co-Op @coopuk
Aldi @AldiUK
Lidl @LidlGB
River Action UK @RiverActionUK

S3, Ep.1 A very warm welcome back to the podcast for season 3. I'm really delighted to introduce you to Kate Lindgren, my latest guest, who is a member of Peterborough Rowing Club and a passionate sculler. Having lost her sight as a young woman, she only came to rowing later in life but has taken to it with an enthusiasm that can't fail to be infectious. Kate and I talk about:

• How and when she lost her sight
• Life in work and society as a blind person
• Roller disco!
• How she discovered rowing
• How her other senses come into play in rowing
• The sounds of rowing
• Single sculling and working with a coach and navigator
• Kate's favourite drill
• Kate's 20K challenge
• Racing
• Kate's own rowing language with her coach and their private rowing language
• Adaptive rowing and what it involves for clubs
• How to make rowing more attractive to people with disabilities
• The joy rowing gives to Kate
• Lockdown and ZoomErgos
• Kate's plans to row in a new place

You can find Kate on Twitter at @kathryn2503
To join my Patreon scheme, head to https://www.patreon.com/girlontheriver

S2, Ep. 6 In all the excitement of the Tokyo Olympics, it's easy to forget about the team supporting the athletes. Behind every medal and record and personal best, there's a huge network of people making sure the athlete performs at their best. Which is why I was so delighted to talk to this week's guest - Wendy Martinson, OBE - who is the lead nutritionist for the GB Rowing Team. 

Having started her career in the NHS, Wendy soon moved into sports nutrition and has worked with athletes across a number of disciplines including gymnastics, hockey and ballet. At the time of recording, Wendy is out in Tokyo with the rowing team, where she has to make sure each athlete is properly fuelled for each race.

In our interview we discuss:

• How Wendy got involved in sport nutrition
• The different demands of individual sports and rowing in particular
• The support that coxswains get to manage their weight
• What Wendy's role with the GB Rowing Team involves day to day
• Meeting the nutritional needs of rowers and lightweights
• Nutrition for injury and Wendy's work at Bisham Abbey rehab unit
• Catering arrangements at the Olympics - or "performance dining"
• Race day nutrition

Wendy also asked some questions from listeners:

• What's the first sign that something's not quite right with someone's nutrition?
• Refuelling after training
• Supplements - using them strategically
• Vegetarian and vegan diets
• Screening athletes for deficiencies
• The differences between male and female nutritional needs
• Changing nutritional needs as you grow older
• Plant based milks - what to look for on the label
• Whether there are any taboo foods
• Alcohol - OK for athletes?
• Time restricted eating (intermittent fasting) and fasted training - whether they can be beneficial
• Fuelling for long endurance events
• Wendy's signature dish and favourite food and drink

Resources
Books:
Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food
Anita Bean's cookery books and books on sports nutrition (including for vegetarians)
Performance nutrition by Kevin Currell
Food websites:
BBC Food website

S2 Episode 5 Camilla Hadland has a voice that many of you will recognise. Having started rowing as a junior at a small club, she won a place in the U23 Women’s 8 and competed at the World Junior Championships in 2010, where they won Britain's first ever women’s gold medal at that event. After university, where she was President of her university boat club, she stopped rowing regularly and moved over into coaching.

Camilla fell into commentating, but soon found herself in demand. In 2018 she won World Rowing’s first ever commentating competition and achieved a spot commentating at the World Cup in Serbia. Since then she’s regularly commentated at international events and is part of the commentary team at the Tokyo Olympics. Having done a couple of stints commentating at my club regatta, I was fascinated to hear all about her experiences and to glean some wisdom from her.

We talked about:

• How Camilla got started in rowing and her multiple capsizes
• Learning to row in a small club set up
• Being selected for the GB Team at the Junior Worlds
• The challenges of looking after your health while training at such a high level
• Body image and the ups and downs Camilla has had with it
• Not making it into the U23 8+ and moving across into coaching
• Favourite seat in the boat
• How Camilla got started in commentating
• How she learned the craft of commentating - how to cater for the whole audience and create atmosphere
• Finding your own voice
• Different types of event - the different preparations and style
• The challenges of live streaming remotely from the European Championships 
• The idea set up for commentating
• How to make an uneventful race sound exciting
• Keeping tabs on rowing teams throughout the year
• Making mistakes - and learning from them
• How to show compassion to a crew losing badly
• Essential equipment
• Advice for anyone wanting to improve their commentary skills or progress in commentating
• Plans for Tokyo and the likely challenges

Let me know if you're inspired to have a go at commentating or to take your experiences of it to a new level. You can find me at @girlontheriver on all channels or by emailing me at girlontheriverpodcast@gmail.com.

As soon as I heard about Row to Recovery I knew I wanted to talk to Robin Winkels, who founded it. Robin is a rower who, as a result of one phone call in 2014, ended up founding a charity that provides rowing for people who are undergoing or have had treatment for cancer. It's a subject close to Robin's heart after several members of her family had cancer, and she loves seeing the positive impact that rowing has on the participants. Here's what we talked about:

• How Robin got started with rowing and her love for the quad
• The River Corrib in Galway and the wildlife on it
• Robin's own experience of cancer in her family
• How Robin came to start Row to Recovery 
• The practicalities of working with women who have had breast surgery
• The importance of being participant-led
• How rowing together diminishes the feeling of powerlessness in the face of cancer
• Being inspired by the participants and what Robin has learned from them
• How rowing makes the participants feel
• Robin's plans to encourage male cancer patients to join Row to Recovery 
• Physical and mental benefits of exercising during and after cancer treatment
• How they kept each other going through lockdown
• Fundraising, recent developments and plans for the future
• The benefits of the project to Robin personally
• How to get involved, find the project or donate!

Resources
Find out more about Row to Recovery here.
Click here for their Facebook page. Go to @rowtorecoverygalway to find them on Instagram.
Check out these links to find out more about the benefits of exercise following a diagnosis of cancer, at all stages of treatment and afterwards:
Exercise guidelines for cancer survivors: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31626055/
Impact of exercise on mortality, recurrence and side effects of treatment: https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/39/1/71/3760392#114725911
Guardian article about the benefits of exercise for cancer patients: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/07/cancer-if-exercise-was-a-pill-it-would-be-prescribed-to-every-patient

• Baz's career as a rower and her unusually late start in rowing
• How healthy her life was as an athlete
• The challenges talking about women's health in sport and the workplace and the particular challenges for male coaches
• How parents and coaches can get the conversation started about women's health
• Body literacy and how little we understand about our bodies
• The importance of not judging people for their lack of knowledge
• The benefits to performance of understanding our menstrual cycle
• Effects of contraceptive pill on sporting performance
• Exercising during pregnancy and after childbirth - what is safe?
• Benefits of consulting a women's health physio in second trimester
• Training through perimenopause and menopause
• Importance of strength training and what that actually means
• What to prioritise if only have 10 minutes for yourself a day
• Avoiding overwhelm
• Misconceptions about core stability (and what is included in the core)
• Importance of pelvic floor exercises
• How to get advice and reminders for pelvic floor exercises
• The Well HQ  - its mission to improve the health of female athletes and to help male coaches to address women's health issues without being inappropriate or creepy

This episode is one that was especially thrilling to make, as it was the first one I actually recorded face to face – out in the open, hence the background sound of the river rushing by and the birds singing. Which is really appropriate as my guest, Angela Jones, spends almost as much time in the river as on dry land. Angela is a wild swimming specialist, a fitness instructor, a traveller, an adventurer and now an author. She has swum without a wetsuit amongst icebergs in Iceland, kayaked, swum and run the length of the river Wye and from coast to coast in Scotland. She’s also won international triathlon events, though she tells me she’s never been motivated by competition, and feels at her happiest in and around the river – and in particular the beautiful river Wye. “The river Wye flows through my veins and is my office and my playground,” she says.

In this episode Angela and I chat about her love of the river and wild swimming. She tells me about the worrying deterioration in the health of the river that she has noticed and logged over the years, and we talk about what we can do to make a difference and save our rivers. We discuss her appearance on a Panorama documentary about discharges of raw sewage into the river and finally she tells me about her wonderful new book, Wild Swimming the River Wye.

Resources
You can find out  more about Angela here.
To buy her fabulous book, Wild Swimming the River Wye click here.
Sign the petition Angela refers to here.
Watch the Panorama documentary on the river pollution scandal here.
Find more resources for saving our rivers on my website, here.
And watch us swimming together in the river here (and why not subscribe to my YouTube channel while you're there?!)

S2 Ep.1 Welcome back to Girl on the River for Season 2 – it’s so good to be back!

I’m absolutely thrilled to bring you the first episode in my new season – an interview with Adrian Ellison, who coxed the 4+ to a gold medal at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles (the first of five gold medals for crew member Steve Redgrave). 

Adrian is a brilliant fount of knowledge, and what he doesn’t know about coxing isn’t worth knowing. We had a tremendous chat (the uncut version of which is available to Girl on the River patrons – you can sign up for the Girl Squad at www.patreon.com/girlontheriver).

Here’s what we talked about:

• Adrian’s route into coxing and how he ended up in GB Rowing Team
• What a coxed pair is like
• The best crew Adrian ever coxed (it might not be the one you’d expect)
• Coxing a bowloader
• Being coached as a cox
• The 1984 Olympics 4+ - how it was put together and what the dynamics were
• Getting the most out of a crew during a race
• The decision to retire from the GB Rowing Team
• Weight loss and the effects on Adrian’s health
• Why the coxswain’s weight makes little difference to boat speed except at the very highest level
• What makes a good cox
• Adrian’s style of coxing
• Has Adrian’s coxing improved since being on the GB Rowing Team?
• Whether international teams should consider using older coxes
• How to get better at coxing
• Mistakes Adrian has made
• What to do when a crew gets carried away in a race
• How to handle a sassy crew
• Lessons from Zoom Ergos and the quest for the perfect stroke

If you fancy joining one of Adrian’s Zoom Ergos sessions you can sign up at www.zoomergos.com.