One of those moments...

There are people in your life that you know in their role and then when all of a sudden you see them slightly outside of it, and you realize how even more incredible they are than you even thought before.

We adore Perry's coach (she coached Linnea this summer, and Linnea has the cutest little girl crush on her!). She's one of those positive coaches who can get the most out of any kid willing to work, and she's allowed us to see some extraordinary sights of Perry, glimpses perhaps of the adult I hope he become.

So Perry is going to Head of the Charles. His regular training has now been stepped up, this is going to be high intensity intense. His coach has him using the erg (rowing machine) we have at home, and requests his times and splits, so he can't slack off! And yesterday, he was helping out with a private lesson for some adults (one of the adults worked with him a bit last summer when she was learning to row and wanted to again, she really likes Perry.) After that water workout, the coach had Perry erg a 5k, about the distance of the Head of the Charles race.

And she walked him through it. She's been a coxswain (on winning boats) there more than a few times, and knows the course. The 18 minutes of that 5k on the erg were incredible. She was right there, shouting, as if coxing, encouraging, pushing, telling him to get his stroke rate up, and she did all of it telling him approximately where he would be with respect to the race course, and what he would be seeing at about that time in the area, and where to point. It was a coaching session like I have never seen before.

I'd loved to video the whole thing, but I hadn't asked permission before, so didn't want to (she has very little e-presence), but man, that was amazing.

He beat his best 5k time by quite a bit.

I'm not surprised now that she was a winning university level and beyond coxswain!