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The oars game me power but also taught me humility.

Barry S. Strauss

If rowing is a trial then the ergometer is the courtroom, the meter is the jury. And an honest jury at that, because the numbers do not lie.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Lying Numbers Trials
There’s a word for what that takes and the word is not magic, the word is guts.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Guts Magic Take Word
In college, I was an editor on the student daily… To the extent that I noticed the existence of crew at all, I saw only what appeared to be big-boned acolytes who rose at dawn.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Appear College Editors Rose
The greatest poet who ever wrote about rowing is Virgil, the greatest historian is Thucydides, but the greatest imagination ever to turn its attention to the sport is that of painter, Thomas Eakins.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Attention Imagination Sports
Rowing was not simple for me. I nodded whenever the instructor made a point, as if I understood, but I could as easily have assembled the space shuttle as have repeated the moves she was explaining.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Moving Simple Space
Think of aerobics plus weight lifting minus the music or camaraderie. Combine unalloyed endurance with straightforward strength and demand poise, timing, and practiced form as well. Think of pure pain: that’s the ergometer.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Lifting Pain Thinking Weight
A boat is the hardest think I know of to put into perspective. It is so much like a human figure, there is something alive about it.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Alive Figure Hardest Perspective Thinking
The romantic craved seeing if the quirkiness of the sport – there is after all, little practical value to oarsmanship in the postindustrial age – stirred his blood.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Blood Little Postindustrial Practical Rowing Simple
Yet what it takes to win races is the ability to reach inside and pull out something to keep you going – no, to go faster – when you have nothing left to give.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Ability Faster Inside Nothing Take
So to the lyre of Orpheus they struck with their oars, The furious water of the sea, and the surge broke into waves.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Dark Men Sea
The single sculler, alone on the river at dawn, or spotlighted in his lane during a race, is th emost romantic, the most quixotic figure in all rowing.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Dawn Race Rivers
Here and there the dark brine gushed with foam, Roaring terribly through the strength of the mighty men.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Brine Dark Foam Gushed Men Mighty Terribly
There is a place where cerebral an corporeal meet: they call it rowing
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Call Cerebral Place Rowing
Rowing it was pointed out, was a sport that risked few injuries. So it was, I ould discover, but only if you did it right.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Injury Rowing Sports
It’s the quintessential Greek sport: harmonious, competitive, agonizing, nautical, and above all, intelligent. It combines Odysseus’s brains and brawn and love of the sea with the tactical precision of the Spartan pikeman.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Intelligent Sea Sports
Ergometer is Greek for ‘work meter’
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Greek Meter Rowing

The oars game me power but also taught me humility.

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The oars game me power but also taught me humility.

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