Day 69: Rowing quotes

Feeling dreadful about tomorrow's microecon midterm
Outside temperature right now is 50' Fahrenheit
It's clear and humidity level is 29%
It's only 6:24 PM

As few of my friends outside of Middlebury know, I joined the Middlebury Crew club two months ago, and it has been a very wild ride. It also sucks the life out of you. The 2-and-a-half-hour practices are everyday of the week except Sundays. Since spring break two weeks ago, there have been races every Saturday against schools like Bowdoin, Amherst, and University of Vermont.

So, I'm just putting these quotes I've found in places here and there that kind of motivate me to push harder during practices.

"Marathon runners talk about hitting 'the wall' at the twenty-third mile of the race. What rowers confront isn't a wall; it's a hole - an abyss of pain, which opens up in the second minute of the race. Large needles are being driven into your thigh muscles, while your forearms seem to be splitting. Then the pain becomes confused and disorganized, not like the windedness of the runner or the leg burn of the biker but an all-over, savage unpleasantness. As you pass the five-hundred-meter mark, with three-quarters of the race still to row, you realize with dread that you are not going to make it to the finish, but at the same time the idea of letting your teammates down by not rowing your hardest is unthinkable...Therefore, you are going to die. Welcome to this life."
-Ashleigh Teitel

"All your life you are told the things you cannot do; all your life they will say you’re not good enough or strong enough or talented enough; they will say you’re the wrong height or the wrong weight or the wrong type to play this or be this or achieve this. They will tell you no, a thousand times no, until all the no's become meaningless. All your life they will tell you no quite firmly and very quickly. But you will tell them yes."

"The best pace is suicide pace, and today is a good day to die."

"The self-destructive way to do it is to convince yourself that 'there's just one more to go' and pull out at about a 1:30. If, and only if, you can convince your body that it's only got one stroke left, you can really empty the tank (and, immediately afterwards, your stomach)."

"The window of X Factor opportunity opens up in the closing seconds of a race--you might be sprinting at the time or just hanging one, trying to get across the finish line. With a supreme act of will, you can prolong your effort, essentially fighting off the inevitable lactic acid shutdown. You'll have little time for contemplating the options: either wholeheartedly go for it, or back off. You must train your X Factor to unequivocally respond the way you want--go for it. Once the window is closed, it's closed forever." -Brad Alan Lewis

"We can't have a perfect world, but hopefully there is at least a balance between times when you say to yourself, "This sucks," and times when you say, "This Rocks!" I guess as rowers we should have a bit of an edge on other people. We erg 10 and 12k on the side to get ahead, row in cold, rain, sleet, barge wakes, snow; and then to top it all off, when we go up and over heads, a torrent of water comes pouring down on our heads. But then for 20 minutes on a brisk fall day or 6 minutes on an equally brisk spring day we push to the max, feeling on the verge of dying, then we cross the line first, and the pain, the cold, wetness, blisters, and even the frost on our brows doesn't matter, as it is all swept away in a wave of victorious jubilation and most importantly, satisfaction. As in rowing, academics and many aspects of life are hard work, and I think I'd pull a 15k over writing a paper or physics problem set any day. But when academic work gets hectic, WE REMEMBER the hundreds of thousands of meters we've dug out of lakes and ergs with our bare and often frostbitten hands, and we know beyond the shadow of any doubt that there is nothing that can truly resist our power. I say this not just to remind you, but also to write it out for myself so that I never forget. And when I'm racing this Sunday, I will remember every subfreezing degree, 12k, wake, and frickin’ legs-only-make-my-back-hurt workout that is fueling the burning desire to destroy boats that would resist me. With that, I now begin my physics homework, which is presenting considerable resistance... but it's still futile.”
-Vesty Black, Ignatius Chicago, Class of 2005