As Predicted …

Sunday, November 9, 2008
Meters: 5,556
Time: 25:00
Strokes per minute: one-minute sprints at 5/10/15/20
Total Meters Rowed: 111,132

See? Told-ja. Not back to it ’til Sunday. Today I hammered the final 1-minute sprint at the 20-minute mark. Took it down and held it below 1:50 for the full 60 seconds. Keep in mind that pace would bring me in at the C.R.A.S.H.-B. Sprints at a leisurely eight minutes for the full 2,000 meters. I held the minute no problem, but I could feel quick-hardening cement being pored into my quads, a weight being pressed across my shoulders. And for the final few seconds a pair of hands squeezing my lungs. And I need to do this for ANOTHER seven minutes just to get somewhere near a respectable zip code?

Know what? It’s time for me to do see what I got. In my tank. In my heart. In my head. Not to meantion my quads/shoulders/arms/back. I need to do an all-out 2,000 meter time trial. An exercise I have fully avoided in 20 years of using this machine. Why? Because. Bit it’s time: Steve, what-ya-got?

Moving on to other topics (in an effort to avoid the can of worms I have just opened!).

The Bucks County Community College reading was wonderful. It was fabulous. It was … spectacular. I mean it just was. BC3 sits on the former lands of the Tyler Estate. The first school building was the estate’s 60-room mansion. A not-bad beginning if you can find it. The reading took place in the “Orangery.” What is the “Orangery”?, you ask. (And, I was told, everyone does ask). Why, the “Orangery” is the large, cathedral-ceilinged, three-walls-of-floor-to-ceiling windowed space wherein the Tyler family would shelter their citrus trees during the winter months. What? You didn’t know? You DON’T have one?

So, the space was perfect. And it was … packed — SRO despite 125 chairs. I didn’t sign many books after, but, well, you have to take it where you get it. Liz Luciano said that at least a dozen students from the classes I spoke to earlier in the day showed up. Now THERE’S a compliment., and she was thrilled.

The first person in line to get a book signed clearly had made sure she was there first. She had tears in her eyes. Her husband had died two years ago — of a heart attack, of course. Her son was 16 years old at the time. Earlier in the day he had been in one of the writing classes.