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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.

Barry S. Strauss

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
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
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
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.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Art Fire Hard Work
The oars game me power but also taught me humility.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Games Humility Taught
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.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Attention Mind Sound
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 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.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Eight Individual Moving Sports Workout
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
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
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
You feel like you and the boats are one, you feel that no obstacle will put up any more resistance than the water does to your oars, you feel that hard work and grit and mental toughness will always win it for you in the end.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Boat Feel Grit Mental Obstacle Toughness
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
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.
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Hard Night Stroke Winning Work
There is a place where cerebral an corporeal meet: they call it rowing
BARRY S. STRAUSS

Call Cerebral Place Rowing
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 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 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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