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.….

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

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 overc….

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 sel….

Those of us who stayed were younger, more tractable. Less sure of ourselves socially and intellectually, we gave ourselves to the sport with little i….

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 ….

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 ….

[Trading] With the French one had to be especially careful. French oarswomen were known to take men aside, point to whatever they wanted, and then pe….

As a competitor, winner or loser, one crosses the line into limbo. The adrenaline is gone, the anticipation is gone. The verdict is either comforting….

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

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 ….

Hundreds of feet above us, cars whisked by, oblivious to our drama. Up there were the shortcuts, the excuses, the world of infinite possibilities sep….