For two months after Christmas vacation we limped around campus with muscles too tigh and sore to walk properly, yet we had no good idea of our goal. Without knowing what a real race was like, I couldn't judge whether it was worth all the preparation, but having put in so much time already, how could we back out? Quite a few Freshman did manage to back out. After Christmas several, when freed from faily practice, decided that they liked not feeling tired all the time. Most of them vanished without a word.

That morning each of us found a breaking point. Not only a physical barrier, but a point where determination, stamina and duty clashed and were overcome not so much by pain but by absurdity.

The ergometer simulates the physical demands of rowing, packaging the pains with none of the amenities that make it worthwhile.

Once one is beyond a certain level of commitment to the sport, life begins to seem an allegory of rowing rather than rowing an allegory of life.

Although it takes a long warm-up for an eight to swing, on an erg such subtleties don't matter. For me the sound alone raised my pulse to 120. Tying my feet into the stretchers increased it to 180. My maximum pulse was 200. I didn't need a warmup. I needed a sedative.

Being in shape was not my goal. My body was a tool to test the capabilities of my will.

Once one has attained a high level of success at any pursuit and especially an unorthodox pursuit like rowing, one develops a number of generally self-congratulatory half-truths to explain how it happened that he ascended to that particular pinnacle. Often because original motivations don't seem to have much in common with the eventual success, the real and rationalized motivations are difficult to separate.