Those of us who stayed were younger, more tractable. Less sure of ourselves socially and intellectually, we gave ourselves to the sport with little idea of what we could give or receive.

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.

I climbed on the rowing ergometer, and started to pull - losing myself in the rhythm of sweat and pain.

We shook hands. For a moment our eyes met - which I found surprisingly destabilizing. Then we pulled back and there was a mement of what seemed like mutual appraisal. For me, it was like being at a regatta, sizing up the competition on the dock before climbing into the shells. Could I take him? ... He could inflict serious damage. I sensed that. But he would be unfamiliar with rowers - men used to toiling backwards, blindly, trained, most of all, to endure.

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.

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.

Karen rowed for what the venerable American shell builder George Pocock called `the symphony of motion.' As dawn breaks over the river, the shell is lifted from its rack out into the morning. On another rack the oars hang ready to be greased and slipped into the locks. Then, awakened to the river and the feel of the oars, the oarsmen blend in fulfillment of the shell. The symphony is not of competition. It is the synchronous motion over water, the harmonic flexing of wood and muscle, where each piece of equipment and every oarsman is both essential to, and the limit of motion itself.