Rowing Remembrances from NavyLights Yore
(♫ in the key of crazy eights ♫)
Remember the cemetery runs…?
…Remember them cemetery runs when we jogged from Hubbard and then paired-off at the intersection of Ramsey Drive and McCandless Road where we sprinted to and up Sigsbee Way, a narrow, uphill, asphalt vehicle track in the Naval Academy Cemetery? [We’d have to look the next time in the Yard, but I believe that part of the track was a 40% – 60% grade over about 30 yards.] We’d sprint up that hill – with knees up to just over mid torso on the front strides! – and at the top of the hill bear right at a jog on to Cushing Road and then right again on to McCandless Road and back to our starting point where we’d “turn around and do ‘er agin!” I don’t recall how many circuits we’d make – but after enough time had passed for Coach to get tired or bored, we then did two final circuits running as fast as we could backwards up the hill before jogging over to the foot of the wide walkway of steps that led from Hospital Point uphill to the Naval Hospital, where we commenced circuits of sprinting up the steps on one side and jogging down the other. This was probably a 40 – 50 yard sprint up a 75% – 100% grade. After Coach decided he’d had enough of that, we then jogged back to Mother Hubbard to finish the practice with quality time in the tank and on weights. I recall on one occasion of those cemetery runs that Gary Harrell’s (’76) roommate, who was one of Navy’s football players, along with several of his football teammates, were jogging the Yard perimeter and seeing us sprinting up the cemetery hill jogged over to find-out what was going on. When we invited them to join us, however, they politely declined and departed faster ‘en an anchor drops from its hawsepipe.
We was hard, we was, in them days…!