the joy of the erg

After 6 months of rowing, my first season on the water finally came to an end. I am resigned to the onset of winter, and have headed indoors for winter training. Tanks and weight training are completely new to me, and I am learning just how slow I am at the catch, and how much more I have to learn at the finish. Weight training has helped me identify at least 7 muscle groups that I appear to be genetically lacking. These weekly classes are sure to identify further personal deficits, although the instructors are positively lovely. "Robyn you are doing really well. That backsplash is great." "Robyn, bench pressing 30 pounds is a terrific starting place." "Robyn, your form really isn't so terrible."

Ha. I know better. But I guess the coaches want me to keep coming back, so they can keep their income. Makes sense.

But the erg. Ah the erg. Indubitably invented during the Spanish Inquisition, the rowing machine has been greatly improved with the advent of electronics and the "painometer" screen which tells you just how slowly you are pulling on that chain, despite your screaming quads, and searing lungs. It is the only form of torture that Amnesty International doesn't protest.

And it provides equal amounts of psychological and physical pain.

In a boat, you can be anonymous. On an erg, anyone can come up behind you and watch over your shoulder to see exactly how hard you are working, and how slow you really are.

It is embarrassing.

As a marathoner, I know about steady state. I can pull forever at a decent pace. But rowers do these periodic evaluations called 2ks. These are effectively sprints. Rowers also do intervals--not unknown in the world of running, but marathoners don't do short intervals. Rowers do. And I discovered that 250 meter erg intervals--all out--12 times--is among the worst forms of torture I know. I may need to write Amnesty directly.

I have learned many things from the erg, but here are the top ten.

1-Ergs are more pleasant than tempo runs at 5 degrees fahrenheit. Or 35 degrees and raining.

2-Ergs are less fun than easy runs at 50 degrees and sunny.

3-Always check your drag factor. As one of the tiniest people to use the ergs at CRI, it is likely the previous person was pulling against a lot more resistance than I could possibly do without sacrificing a couple of vertebral discs. I usually have to lower the resistance by a factor of 2+.

4-while erging, be aware of your coach's location at all times. It is not good to suddenly notice that the 6'7" shadow looming over your shoulder belongs to the man who told you to hold your splits at 1:54. Especially if you are pulling at 2:04. Painful (and potentially embarrassing) conversations are started this way.

5-You know you working at below anaerobic threshold when your lips turn blue and your mouth goes dry. This feels like dying. Or worse. (Erging has provided me with many opportunities to ponder how much worse you can feel than just simply dying.)

6-You can only pull a fast 2k if your lips turn blue and your mouth goes dry.

7-You can't actually stand up off the erg after you have pulled a really fast 2k.

8-Your coach tells you get get up and keep moving precisely when he knows you can't stand up off the erg. Fortunately, he is usually willing to lift you up by your armpits and push you in the direction of the bathroom. To puke.

9-Intervals make you faster. Like cod liver oil makes you healthy. If you don't suffer, you didn't do it right. 

10-If it is true that pain is weakness leaving your body, then my body has lost a lot of weakness this winter. I am now waiting for the strongness to fill in the void....

Stadiums

4:45AM. I pull on my running tights, shirt, vest, jacket in the early morning darkness. I don the hat and mittens demanded by the winter cold and head out the front door toward Harvard. The 2 mile warm up to the stadium is peaceful--through the empty streets of Cambridge and across the snow-blown intersections of Harvard Square. I continue over the river and into the sports complex, where the monstrous Stadium looms large in front of me.

The sky is completely dark as I head into the dark entryway under the seats. For this brief moment, I am sheltered from the wind. This is when I feel the nudge in my belly--do you really want to do this? Wouldn't a nice easy run be better? Why go up and down all those steps--30 minutes of torture with little noticeable mileage?

I stop for a moment, contemplating my options. The stairs leer at me--the faintest light coming through the entry at the top. They threaten pain, and seem to shoo me away. Outside is the flat Charles River running path. No pain there. Just an easy pace for a few miles and then back home. Which shall I take?

I sigh. I know that I have no options. At some point, options may have existed. But once I enter the stadium, the choice has been made. I have only one direction to go, and it is a whole lot of up.

So I head up the stairs, out into the nose-biting cold, where the full stadium opens up around me. I jog down the few steps to the bottom, turn, and look up at the height of seats above. The number "37" is painted at the top--this is section 37--the last seats by the goal line. Or in my case, the first.

I start my heart-rate monitor (the only worthwhile measurement to take in this workout), and start running up the seats.

The Harvard Stadium Workout is a thing of beauty. It invokes terror or glee in the hearts of its victims. You run (or plod) up the seats--each step requiring you to lift your leg thigh high--all the way to the top. 28 steps by my count. By the last step or two, you fight the urge to push on your quads with your hands to keep the momentum up. The searing pain starts half-way up, and continues to grow until you can't imagine taking another step. Your lungs are ready to explode from the lack of oxygen, and you want nothing more than to get to the top. To stop going up.

At last, you get to the final step, gratefully turning around, and you stare at the closely-spaced little stairs heading down. These, you will run down as fast as you can, carefully to avoid tripping and falling on your head. This part takes immense concentration, and it diverts your attention from the pain in your quads, which you swore, only seconds before, you would never forget.

At the bottom, you smile. You have made it down 56 steps and you are breathing less like a fish out of water. But you haven't finished. You have barely begun.

This sequence is repeated 36 more times as you run up each section on one side of the stadium, around the curved end, and back up the sets on the other side. In the cold, your lungs alternate between burning pain of gasping breaths and the icy pain of the sub-freezing air you have gulped in too quickly. There is no happy middle. Your quads feel fine for the first step or two, and then they immediately revert back to the searing lactic acid burn for the remainder of the climb. By the half-way mark, your legs tremble on the way down--just one more factor to overcome on the perilous descent.

This is a Harvard Stadium workout.

I am heading down to the middle stretch of the stadiums when the black sky starts to fade into grey. The stars lose their brightness, and I feel the first glimmer of hope. Despite the shaking in my legs, I feel my growing belief that this workout will end. Even if I cannot breathe in enough air, the sun will rise. This day will begin soon. My pain will stop at the end of the last stadium section.

I continue on, past section 19, where I begin to count down rather than up. At the top of each set, I glance at the faint line in the eastern sky. The line becomes progressively lighter--slowly changing from grey to a washed-out blue, and then to a faint beige--moving ever closer to day as the earth spins on its axis. I push up another set, and the sky is no longer black. The stars are too faint to see.

I head up the last flight of seats, and come to a complete stop at the top, facing North, into the cold wind. Here I pause, appreciating the hard work I have accomplished. I feel the burn in my quads, the tightness in my hamstrings, the smoldering in my lungs. And I smile. This pain is a good feeling. The day has not yet begun, but I have finished this daunting task of running up and down (and up and down, and up and down...) these 37 sets of cement seats. I imagine the crowds cheering on the Crimson at the Harvard-Yale game. I all but hear the cheers of excitement and the roar of victory. But I imagine they are for me.

My easy jog home takes me back through the slowly filling streets of Cambridge. My quads register their unhappiness, but the rest of me feels victorious. I will not have to face the stadiums again.

Until next week.