In hot summer weather it is as well to dine about 2 P.M., to row in the
cool of the evening, towards 7 P.M., and to sup about 8.30 or 9 P.M. It
is a mistake to assume that because a regatta will come off midday,
therefore those who train for it should accustom themselves to a burning
sun for practice. With all due deference to Herodotus (who avers that
the skeleton skulls of quondam combatant Persians and Egyptians could
be known apart on the battle-field, because the turban-clad heads of
Persians produced soft skulls which crumbled to a kick, while the
sun-baked heads of Egyptians were hard as bricks), we do not believe in
this sort of acclimatisation. If men have to be trained to row a
midnight race, they would be best prepared for it by working at their
ordinary daylight hours, not by turning night into day for weeks
beforehand. On the same principle it would seem to be a mistake to
expose oarsmen in practice to excessive heat to which they have not been
accustomed, solely because they are likely eventually to row their race
under a similar sun. In really oppressive weather at Henley the writer
and his crews used to dine about 2 P.M. as aforesaid, finish supper at 9
or 9.30, and go to bed two hours later. They rose proportionately later
next day, taking a good nine hours in bed before they turned out. So far
as their records read, those crews do not seem on the whole to have
suffered in condition by this system of training.
Many men are parched with thirst at night. The heat of the stomach,
rather overladen with food, tends to this. The waste of the system has
been abnormal during the day; the appetite, i.e. instinct to replenish
the waste, has also been abnormal, and yet the capacity of the stomach
is only normal. Hence the stomach finds it hard work to keep pace with
the demands upon it. Next morning these men feel 'coppered,' as if they
had drunk too much overnight, and yet it is needless to say they have
not in any way exceeded the moderate scale of alcohol already propounded
above as being customary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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