He lingered on that thought, and laughed, proud to consider himself among the game’s certified lunatic fringe. He has known for a very long time, dating to the end of his college days 60 years ago when his spent body had to be carried from a boat on the Thames, that his sport is not for those weak of body, mind, or spirit. A bit nuts, yes. But weak? Ridiculous.
“And it’s a sport with a low jerk ratio,’’ he said. “That’s a big part of why I’ve stuck with it. Good people.
“There’s a certain respect among rowers. They all know the work that has to be done to be successful. You get out of it what you put into it. No pain, no gain.
“It’s not an in-your-face game. It just doesn’t lend itself to jerks.’’
Kendall rows almost every day, as he has for the last 20 years, led back to the water when a creaky back no longer tolerated long-distance running. In his late 30s, he backed off the boats considerably, realizing that it was too difficult to be a father, a commercial real estate professional, and a rower.
So he hit the streets when he could, competed in marathons, including a bunch of Bostons (only one that took him longer than three hours), only to have his deteriorating spinal column filch the sneakers out from under him.
“Two neurosurgeons looked at me and said they wouldn’t fix me,’’ mused the feisty Kendall. “One of them, in Pittsburgh, was a surgeon with some new process. I figured he could help. But he said he wouldn’t touch me, and sent me off to a physiotherapist.
“I told him I’d just go back to rowing. And he said to me, ‘Oh, no, you can’t row,’ and told me something about there being too much extension or some crazy thing.
“And I just looked at him and said, ‘Doc, you don’t know [expletive] about rowing.’ ’’
