January 26, 1999 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d “You’re not going to throw up, are you Dan?” asked Lake Lanier Rowing Club executive director Sara Nevin \u00e2\u20ac\u201d only half jokingly \u00e2\u20ac\u201d after I completed 2,000 meters on an indoor ergometer rowing machine, affectionately called an “erg” by those familiar with indoor sculling parlance.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, for some reason, I decided to participate in the fifth annual Rock-N-Row Ergatta at the Clark’s Bridge Park boathouse, a multi-event indoor rowing competition sponsored by the rowing club and Fit For Life health center.<\/p>\n
I had never been on a rowing machine. I was surrounded by more than 40 “ergers.”<\/p>\n
No, my stomach felt fine. It was the rest of my body I was worried about. I was still waiting for the feeling to come back to my legs.<\/p>\n
Two-thousand meters. About a mile and quarter.<\/p>\n
Doesn’t seem that long \u00e2\u20ac\u201d until you hit the halfway point … and realize you’re only at the halfway point.<\/p>\n
My arms started to go at about the 700-meter mark. My legs started throbbing soon after.<\/p>\n
At 1,000 meters I discovered the real reason it is called erg racing.<\/p>\n
“Erghhh!” I would grunt involuntarily with each stroke. “Erghhh! Erghhh!”<\/p>\n
It’s best not to focus on the pain, though, because inevitably every part of your body will ache at some point during the 2,000 meters of the Rock-N-Row. That’s where the “rock” part comes in.<\/p>\n
Richard Stokes, 45, of Ball Ground, served as DJ for the event, when he wasn’t busy winning the Senior Men division of the Ergatta.<\/p>\n
“Basically, I play stuff that I would like to row to,” said Stokes, who chose Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” and Warren Zevon’s “Excitable Boy,” for my heat, aptly called Never Ever Men.<\/p>\n
I remember closing my eyes and trying to focus on the music.<\/p>\n
What in the heck is a Steppenwolf?, I wondered.<\/p>\n
That Warren Zevon is one odd dude, I concluded.<\/p>\n
“The music really helps, it sort of distracts you,” said Stokes. “But you still really have to focus on every stroke, on keeping your split where it is.”<\/p>\n
Ah yes, splits and strategy. I had no idea so much thought went into indoor rowing.<\/p>\n
“Don’t start out too hard,” warned Nevin before my race. “Pace yourself, pace yourself, pace yourself. And it still won’t be enough.”<\/p>\n
But what if I choose the wrong pace?, I thought. I sought further advice.<\/p>\n
I found a competitor who just finished rowing in the Never Ever Women division. Surely, a fellow beginner could offer some helpful tips.<\/p>\n
“In the beginning I try to do a 2:04 split,” explained Angie Webster, 34, of Lawrenceville. “And then I go up every 30 seconds. I go up to a 2:05 and then 2:06, 2:07 until I get to 2:13 and I try to stop there. And then I try to work my way back down. That’s my strategy. It’s pretty much a pyramid.”<\/p>\n
What?!?<\/p>\n
“You haven’t done this before, have you?” asked Webster, smiling into my blank stare. “Well, what do you set the wheel at?”<\/p>\n
Huh?!?<\/p>\n
Turns out “Never Ever” only excludes those entrants who have rowed competitively on the water. The guys in my division were not strangers in the world of erg, like me. A couple of them had their own rowing machines at home.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, Henry Kannapell, former rowing club president explained what all the numbers meant on the rowing machine’s readout screen \u00e2\u20ac\u201d elapsed time, distance, split per 500 meters, strokes per minute \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and told me what I would want them to read while I was rowing.<\/p>\n
I was told to keep my 500-meter splits under two minutes. An overall time under eight minutes would save me from embarrassment.<\/p>\n
I settled in to the rowing machine in Lane 7 and waited for Stokes to start the tunes.<\/p>\n
“Erghhh! Erghhh!”<\/p>\n
Seven minutes, fifty seconds. Third place \u00e2\u20ac\u201d out of five. Ten seconds shy of embarrassment.<\/p>\n
The feeling did eventually come back to my legs. I watched the remaining races.<\/p>\n
Sarah Hirst, a member of the Emory University rowing team, won the College Women contest.<\/p>\n
Her time: 7:34.6.<\/p>\n
Now that made me want to throw up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
January 26, 1999 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d “You’re not going to throw up, are you Dan?” asked Lake Lanier Rowing Club executive director Sara Nevin \u00e2\u20ac\u201d only half jokingly \u00e2\u20ac\u201d after I completed 2,000 meters on an indoor ergometer rowing machine, affectionately called an “erg” by those familiar with indoor sculling parlance. On …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,7,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":473,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions\/473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}