From Lab Coat to Boat: Jamie Schroeder

AT 6 FOOT 8 INCHES, JAMIE SCHROEDER looks like he'd be good at basketball. Nope. "I was terrible," he admits. Ditto for volleyball. But in his sophomore year of college, Schroeder took a seat in a boat, and for the first time, his lanky frame found its fit — just three years later he made the 2004 Olympic rowing team.

He's back in the men's four again in Beijing this year. How he balances life in and out of the water, however, is an even more impressive feat — the 26-year-old's day job was doing research at the National Institutes of Health for his Oxford doctorate.

It's the ultimate combination of brain and brawn. A typical morning started with a warm-up bike ride down the Capital Crescent Trail to Georgetown so he could hit the Potomac by 6 a.m. Two hours later, he'd zip back to Bethesda and peer into a microscope. Plus, there was an hour of afternoon rowing and strength work twice a week to power up his core.

"I was trying to have a life, but all I could do was eat and sleep," he says of the dual identities. His researcher side has been on hiatus since March, when he moved to Princeton to focus solely on training until the games. But, of course, that means he has even less of an excuse to slack off. "With the schedule here, I never take off more than 24 hours," he estimates. (But he did get the luxury of napping, which he couldn't pull off at the lab.)

Just thinking about all that exercise is enough to work up an appetite. "You have to eat so much all of the time," agrees Schroeder, who estimates he wolfs down between 8,000 and 10,000 calories a day. A typical breakfast includes English muffins, cereal, soy milk, eggs, bacon, guacamole and a tortilla. At least another four meals follow. So, there's a silver lining to retirement: "I look forward to when I can appreciate eating again."

Although he's at the top of his game (at the 2007 national championships, he placed first in single sculls and quadruple sculls), his final race may come fairly soon. Beijing isn't even the biggest event on Schroeder's calendar — when he returns, he's getting hitched in Baltimore, where he'll move after getting his Ph.D. to start at Johns Hopkins' medical school in 2009.

He suspects the switch will force him to exercise his mind more than his body. "Medical school is pretty much full time, and there are lives in the balance," he says. And while he plans to keep fit — he can skip schleps to the water and row his erg instead — staying Olympics-ready is another question.

But he doesn't regret devoting so much time to his physique. "This is only something you can do when you're young. I feel lucky with the body I was given," he says. Even if it's no good at basketball.

» NEVER TOO LATE:
Michael Phelps started swimming at age 7. Shawn Johnson, the gymnastics genius, took up tumbling at age 3. But rowers often don't give the sport a go until college. So, if you're 20 and dreaming of Olympic gold, you could hop in a boat tomorrow and represent the country in 2012.

"It's one of the few sports left that you can just walk onto the team and make it," says Judy Geer, co-founder of rowing machine company Concept2. After joining the team at Dartmouth, she went on to compete in three Olympics (1976, 1980 and 1984).

But how do you know whether you have an inner rower? The taller you are, the better for sweep rowing, Geer says. (Although extra-short folks can coxswain.) Hopefully, you've been somewhat athletic already. Geer says other total-body sports, including swimming and Nordic skiing, are particularly helpful. But if your tennis game sucks, don't worry. "Rowing doesn't require hand-eye coordination or agility." Geer assures. There's really just one requirement: "You have to have the mind-set that you can do the same thing over and over again, and that you can find that challenge rewarding. It's the endless quest for the perfect stroke."

Photos courtesy US Rowing