Ergometer is Greek for ‘work meter’
BARRY S. STRAUSSIn 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.
More Barry S. Strauss Quotes
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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.
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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.
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There’s a word for what that takes and the word is not magic, the word is guts.
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Eakins rejected gentlemen athletics as his theme. Instead, he took a subject that had been the stuff of illustrated weeklies and the penny press and turned it into fine art. Eakins celebrates not fire from heaven but honest sweat, not genius but hard work.
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When you are rowing well and hard, the rhythm of the stroke takes over. It drives your days and restores your nights. It imparts cadence and direction.
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When you are on the erg your mind is too busy to pay attention to the sounds of the machine; you notice only that they are indeed loud.
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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.
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As if you legs were two cannons and your arms were two oars and the great lateral muscles of your back were pterodactyl wings and the brim of your baseball cap was a harpoon.
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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.
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The feel of a good row stays with you hours afterward. Your muscles glow, your mind wanders from the papers on you desk and goes back, again and again, to that terrific power piece at the end of the workout when it felt as if you and the boat were flying.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The Greek in me wanted to know what it felt like to pull an oar. The intellectual wondered about how to get eight individuals to move to the same beat. The athlete wanted to check what has been described as the ultimate workout.
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The rower need to know technique and has to be in shape. He won’t wrong by using strategy.
BARRY S. STRAUSS