There are few things that Alison Collins-Mrakas enjoys more than watching the sun rise over Lake Ontario from the vantage point of a skull cutting through the still water.
The Aurora resident is a master rower who goes to great lengths for that extended moment of early morning solitude. She’s out the door before 5 a.m. catching a lift with another rower, toting her fold-up bike or taking the train to Union Station.
On train days, she unfolds her bike at the station and cycles 10 kilometres to Toronto’s Hanlan Boat Club. The three times a week she’s able to catch a lift with another rower, she uses her fold-up bike to ride the 10 kms to the station after practice to commute back home or to work.
Both scenarios allow her to start warming up on site at 5:45 a.m. and she’s in the water 15 minutes later in a boat fitted with marine lights.
The rowers wear high-visibility vests and shirts so they can easily be spotted by others on the water. And the group is accompanied by a coach boat.
And not long after — the timing of course depends upon the season — she’s watching the sun rise, often taking a moment to capture it on her phone.
“It is one of the selling points in rowing, to see the sun rise… we’re quite famous for the Hanlon sunrises,” she says, recalling a recent September morning when she tried to capture the harvest moon before it faded just as the sun was rising. “I tried and almost flipped my boat over and I thought I’d better stop.
“There’s nothing like being on the water and seeing the Toronto skyline from a racing boat… it is just so awesome.”
After an hour and a half of training, sometimes more if she’s rowing with a partner, she reverses the commute and then begins her day as head of research ethics and integrity at York University.
“I want to row and that’s where the club is…. I’m fully warmed up by the time I get there, that’s for sure,” she confirms. But that dedication to the daily routine for up to six months of the year is developed from passion, she adds.
She often rows on her own in a skull but mixes it up by going in a double with her longtime partner. There are quads as well as boats containing eight people, each with one oar.
The general course she follows is about five kilometres around Cherry Beach and Centre Island. Options, when the water isn’t rough, include Gibraltar Point Beach and Toronto Harbour.
But Collins-Mrakas points out that the rowers avoid conditions where they see whitecaps and rollers and opt, on those days, to do dryland training instead. That, she figures, happens every couple of weeks or so.
Collins-Mrakas was recently involved in the world masters’ championships in Brandenburg, Germany, placing third in a double with Kelly Brigley from Toronto.
“We’re pretty proud of the third,” she says, adding that the water conditions were so bad that all the races were cancelled by the fourth day.
Collins-Mrakas was part of a quad team at the same regatta 14 years earlier and won their event.
As the season wanes, the cold-water rules kick in. That’s dictated by the temperature of the water and ambient air of about 14C. Boats then row side-by-side, so that there is a safety boat. Everyone signs in and all rowers have drybags in which they have their cellphone, along with a whistle and they all have lifejackets, of course. An app also allows others to see their location.
At the end of the season, the boats are stored away and the docks are removed. And while she can only be on the water for half the year at best, training is year-round. She uses a rowing machine in her house, as well as weights. And there are still regular trips to the club during the winter months to train as a group, something she prefers.
Collins-Mrakas developed her passion for rowing while in university, a few decades back. In 2010 she switched to masters rowing.
“I absolutely love rowing. I love the connecting to water and nature. I feel very privileged to get to do it, I’m still healthy,” says Collins-Mrakas who believes in lifelong fitness.
“And sometimes we wake up the birds.”
