A few words with the CRCA Club Champion. Enjoy.

@##=#<2,r>@##=#NYVC First of all, can you tell us a bit about your rowing career?

TA I started rowing in college at Columbia and graduated in 1990. I spent the next 10 years rowing for the National Team and competed at the Olympics in 2000 in Sydney and in 1996 in Atlanta. I also rowed at 6 World Championships and many National Championships. I love the Head of the Charles and have raced that one a bunch.

NYVC I hear Tiger Williams and David Wagener are big patrons of rowing. Were they the ones that brought you into cycling?

TA Tiger was an ice hockey star and close friends with many of the rowers at Yale. David was a fabled oarsman at Harvard. David still competes in rowing and raced at the Head of the Charles in Boston at the end of October. I have been threatening to put Tiger in a boat and plan to make that happen come spring. I met Tiger and David through Dick Cashin, who knew I was riding a bit and invited me to ride with his crew. Tiger, David and Dick as well as the many other members of the Breakfast Club really got me excited about riding and drew me into the sport in a more serious way. I continue to get more and more energized by Tiger, David, Mike Fisch, Ric Wolf, Ed Berner and the many other riders who are nice enough to let me ride with them in the Park.

A fellow Olympian, Mike Gostigian, who was a three-time Olympian in the modern pentathlon, introduced me to riding. He and a group of friends were getting ready for the Hawaii Ironman and were planning a century that they invited me to join. I arranged to borrow a bike that had toe clips, broke out my roller blade helmet and endured the torture these guys inflicted on me up to Bear Mountain and back. I was never so tired and never slept as well as that night. I bought a bike with Mike’s help the next weekend.

NYVC How was the transition from rowing to cycling? How do the sports compare in terms of strategy, duration of races, physical effort, etc.?

TA I think rowing really prepares you well for cycling. You use your legs a lot in rowing and you develop you cardio capacity pretty well. The upper body thickness you get from rowing isn’t great for cycling but it helps if someone tries to steal your bike.

Cycling is a more social sport and because it’s more accessible than rowing the social aspect of it is enhanced. The best thing about cycling is that you can do it for hours and chat with people while you ride.

In rowing there really isn’t much strategy. You pretty much go gangbusters out of the blocks and press it for 2000 meters which takes between 5 minutes, 30 seconds in an eight to 6 minutes, 30 seconds in a single. You have to be fully warmed up and ready to go in rowing and can’t sit in for a bit to get geared up like you can in cycling. In rowing, there is no hiding or recovering. If you start to fade, in most cases the race is over. In many ways rowing is similar to the time trial in cycling. Each is really a test of your capacity and ability to push yourself.

I really enjoy the strategy, team dynamic and relative complexity of road racing. There seem to be more opportunities to perform well in a cycling race and if you miss one, you may get another shot later in the race. That’s not generally the case in rowing.

NYVC Is it my imagination or did you do a lot more road races as opposed to time trials this year? Why the change?

TA I did the two ITTs and the two-man TT. The only one I missed was the championship ITT and only because I came down with a nasty summer flu mid week. I was looking forward to the four-man that was cancelled. The guys on Foundation asked me to join their team and I think it was being part of a team that provided the impetus to do the road races.

NYVC The club champs had a real exciting finish, with the field sprint coming in just behind the breakaway. Can you describe those last few k’s?

TA We had a nice three-man break going for the last bit of the race. Coming around the bottom of the park on the last lap we started figuring out how the end of the race would work out. It was actually a pretty funny dialogue. I’ll let Ken tell you. The pack started chewing us up at that time, but we were still by the Carousel when the pack turned the corner going north. When we saw them, we picked up again. As we went up the hill and started to sprint, I had no idea that the other riders were so close. It felt like there was a pretty good crowd that morning and they were all screaming like crazy. I think that was an indication to me that things were far from settled and the finish was going to be a tight one. I was lucky to cross the line first. I then looked left and saw Ricky Lowe right beside me.

NYVC What are your goals for next year?

TA My wife is 4 months pregnant with our first and we’re really excited. That’s the primary goal. I hope we can get the TTs back on the calendar for next year and would like to help in that process. I’m hoping to do a little better with the winter training this year and am planning on doing an Ironman in Maryland in the middle of the summer with an eye toward making it to Hawaii in the fall. I’m not much of a runner so wish me luck…..