Astute followers will know that today’s workout was supposed to be yesterday. Astuter followers with math skills will know that I bagged most of the second 5,000 meters.

This just barely a week in.

I need to talk to my coach. But first, meet my coach: Tom Corcoran, age 27. He rowed at Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia and at the University of Pittsburgh. He has a law degree. He’s been a foot soldier in some local Pennsylvania political campaigns in the past few election cycles, but what he really wants to do is coach rowing. Listen to him talk about it, see the sparkle in his eyes as he does, watch how the sport itself brings him to life, and you can only envy the passion he clearly feels.

You can read what he blogs about here. I particularly like in his first entry where he talks about how in the sport of rowing one needs to make it as a coach from either inside the sport, or out. Tom’s starting on the outside, looking for the in.

Right now he’s the brand new coach of the girls program at a high school in New Jersey and my own personal guru. I asked him to set me up with an every-other-day regimen. I long ago decided that back-to-back days was counterproductive. I asked him to keep in mind that I’m almost 57 years old and that I have heart disease. He said we can adjust as needed. Well, adjustments are needed!  More about that once I talk with him.

Before I forget. Read any good books lately? This summer I rowed through “Kelly: A Father, a Son, an American Quest,” by Daniel J. Boyne. The story of the rowing John Kellys, senior & junior, of Philadelphia.

This from Publishers’ Weekly on the Amazon site:
“In a time when rowing rivaled boxing and baseball in popularity, Jack Kelly (1889-1960) was its greatest champion. … Boyne chronicles Kelly’s rise from modest beginnings as the son of Irish immigrants to Olympic gold. … [Y]ears of training on Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River made Kelly the fastest rower in the world, but prejudice barred him from England’s prestigious Henley Regatta. That sleight, never forgotten, lead him to push his son Kell into the sport, and ultimately to win the Regatta in 1947.”

John the Dad was also of course the father of Grace Kelly, of whom no introductions are needed. Keep in mind that for an Irish Catholic kid like myself growing up York, Pennsylvania, which orbited within the gravitational pull of Philadelphia, the Kelly’s story, especially Grace’s, was merely the stuff of legend. What I liked so much about “Kelly” is that Boyne says at the get-go that much of the entire point of writing this book was to bring to the front the ROWING story. Grace, for maybe the only time in her life, is a bit player.

And now for some Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (another son of Philadelphia, come to think of it). In MY book, “My Father’s Heart: A Son’s Reckoning With the Legacy of Heart Disease,” when I write about my 20-plus year love affair with the Concept2 rowing machine, I talk some about how the Vesper Boat Club from Philly went to the Tokyo Olympics as the U.S. Eight, won the gold and then a few months later some of the crew were celebrity guests at a big-deal gala in my hometown. If only I’d know this when I was writing “MFH”: Kelly the Son, by then in his early 40s, put that team together, presaging the large-net methods the U.S. now employs when forming national teams.

Monday, September 14, 2009
Today’s Workout:
10,000m
Split: 2:25
Strokes per minute: 16 to 22
Drag: 110
Compliance (1 awful to 10 great): “7”
Total meters rowed: 16,000m

As Dolly Parton used to sort of sing it: “Here I row again.”

The C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s, the World Indoor Rowing Championships, this year are on Valentine’s Day. This must be love. I have run a marathon. I have done a triathlon. What I have never run/done is one of them again. But after doing the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s back in February, I have decided to come back for more. Good idea? Hold that thought.

Back when I worked at what was then called American Health magazine, when I was an editor for a group of weightlifting/workout magazines, even when I was the sports editor of the first incarnation of The Wall Street Journal’s sports page, we used to run the occasional essay/article on “How I Did My First (fill in the difficult athletic challenge of your choice here).”  But I always thought a better, more instructive, more telling essay/article would be “How I Did My SECOND (fill in the difficult athletic challenge of your choice here).”

A first ANYTHING is never not fun, never not exciting, never not a stand-the-hair-up-on-the back-of-your-neck experience. “It Feels Like the First Time,” Foreigner declared. Well, no. It never feels like the first time again, does it? BECAUSE YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT IT’S GOING TO FEEL LIKE.

And so it will be with this second row, me on the Concept2, blogging “My Rowing Heart: The Repachage.” I know how much work this is going to be. I know how much this is going to hurt. The accomplishment will be in knowing all that and still doing it anyway.

Not that it won’t be fun. Not that it can’t be fun. I just need to keep in mind that whatever it will be, it will be different from the first time.  

So here I row again.

(For this row this year I have a coach to guide me. Tom Corcoran, the new head coach at a high school in New Jersey, he is also my wife’s cousin’s son. Official introduction coming soon. In the meantime, here’s his blog, and here’s the workout schedule he’s devised for me.)

Truth in headlines (take your pick):

Stroke! ‘Rangy’ Rower Powers to Personal Glory at Championship

McKee, Sticking to Plan, Hits Marks Throughout 2,000m C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s,
Clocks an expected 7:45.03 in Vet Men 55-59 Class in Setting New P.R.

Or

Stroked: Ragged Rower Hangs on at Indoor Championships

McKee, in C.R.A.S.H.-B Debut, Somehow Avoids Embarrassment,
Finishes Well Behind Winner in an Old Guy Category

Or

McKee at C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s: “I Had a BLAST!”

Like I said: Take your pick; they are all true.

I am going to do my best now not to sound like the wide-eyed rube newly arrived in the big city as I try to describe the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s and my reaction to it.  Meaning I’m not going to say, “Wow, it was really cool!” Or, “ I had a ball!” Or, “Golly, the way you can watch the races on the scoreboard with those little boat-thingies is really neat.” Or, “The organization is stunning.”

I’ll say none of the above. Though each is true, too.

I’ll just say this: This was my first C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s, but I had been there before. At the National Volleyball Championships, banged out in an airplane hangar near Memphis, Tennessee. At the National Juggling Championships, tossed in the humid air of a sweaty gym at SUNY-Purchase. At the National Jousting Tournament, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.; at the World Tiddlywink Championships, at M.I.T. I have followed friends (including eventual winners) in marathons in Fairbanks and Anchorage, Alaska.  Numerous times I have watched the passing parade of the New York City Marathon from Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, only blocks from my Boerum Hill house. And a couple of times I have followed friends borough by borough and then somehow found them in the post-race holding pens amid the milling about of thousands of aluminum-foiled, worn-out runners.

The C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s were just like all of those events. And all those events were just like the C.R.A.S.H.-B’.s. A gathering of the faithful, of the true believers in a religion known only to the lucky few, who for one magical day have come together in a swirl of energy to create their very own center of the universe.

Each unique; all the same.

At the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s, this experience of an alternate solar system was only enhanced by the Agganis Arena itself — with the 100-plus Concept2s on the floor, it seemed the pull of their gravitational force was holding all the rest of us in orbits even to the far reaches of the stands.  For this alone the past six months of C.R.A.S.H.-B prep were worth it.

One wide-eyed observation. I’m sure in the old days of the Charles River All-Star Has Beens there really was that anarchic spirit that is now so fondly remembered. These days there are too many competitors, requiring too much organization to leave much space for that. (And what would the originals make of the VENDORS in the hall SELLING stuff?) But I could still feel it. Some of it, at least, that original energy, the initial dream. It could have been so easy to have lost that, but they didn’t. Kudos.

As for me. We must start on Friday night. I was in Brooklyn by then, up from York, Pennsylvania. On Saturday I would drive to Boston. But to kill time on Friday I went to see “The Wrestler.” Bad idea. Should’ve picked “Slumdog Millionaire.” I didn’t at that exact moment in my life need to watch the story of an aging loser athlete who nearly dies of a heart attack. (and probably does if the movie lasts another 30 seconds.)

Because by then I had pretty much convinced myself that if I did the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s … I was going to die of a heart attack. And I am being as serious here … as a heart attack.

I really did think this, and I had been by then for a few days.
Why was I dong this?
What was the point?
How NUTS was I to think I could pull this off?
Where did I get off thinking I could do this?
And now I was going to die on behalf of the answers.

I had myself completely psyched out. The race was going to take me — not to mention my heart and its two 20%-percent-blocked arteries — to a place neither of us had ever been before. I mean, it could happen, couldn’t it?  This was all new, and quite suddenly, new terrain for me. Rarely, if ever, do I think of my heart in this way. I do think of it often, but always as this … thing … pumping within me that I, me, myself am keeping alive by getting on that rowing machine. Now here it was, this … thing … that was going to kill me. And a burned-out wrestling Mickey Rourke with a six-inch incision on his chest was no help at all. Neither even were a few long eyefuls of an aging stripper Marisa Tomei in various states of near-complete undress. I mean, geez. Walking home with my face buried in my coat against the cold and gloom, I searched for a believable reason I could use to tell people why I had blown off the race and the past half year of my life.

Then, once home, I decided (uncharacteristically) to check my email before going to bed.  One was from a John Butsch of the Chicago Indoor Rowing Club, enthusiastically asking if I still planned to be at the race, and even more enthusiastically bubbling on a bit about how great was rowing and that more Paralympian and adaptive rowers were getting into it, and wasn’t THAT great?

Yes, it was, I suddenly realized.  And I realized this, too: Steve, get over thyself.

I’m not now going to say that I snapped out of it because, by golly, if these adaptive rowers could C.R.A.S.H.-B., then I could, too. That’s too easy, not to mention insulting. No. They simply reminded me why I had decided to C.R.A.S.H.-B in the first place. Just to do it. Just to try it. And just to be alive in the moment of the attempt.  I went to bed and slept great.

More of what I won’t be writing: A stroke-by-stroke analysis of the race. The headlines actually do tell the story.  And those little boat-thingies ARE really neat.  I wouldn’t have minded a 7:40; I think I could have.  But I am THRILLED with my time and my 24th of 32. My two big worries were nonfactors: I didn’t go out too fast, and I didn’t get distracted by the rowers on either side and take on their stroke count. I never even knew they were there.  One thing I would do differently? I wanted to row the middle 1,000 meters in “sub-2:00.” But if I really meant that, then I should have said that: “1:58/1:59.” Because looking at that little boat-thingie computer race, it’s clear I was psychologically content with 2:00. And I shouldn’t have been.

Now, meet my coxswain, Katie McDonald. In 1983 I followed Katie borough by borough in the NYC Marathon as she qualified for the first-ever U.S. Women’s Olympic Marathon Trial, in 2:48.16.  Katie is one of the many women athletes now of  a certain age who back in a certain era laid the foundation for what women’s athletics has become. More, in 1981 Katie won the Atlantic City Marathon and took a straight-up, over-the-table, give-it-to-me winner’s check, the first of its kind. This may sound quaint now, but it was quite the deal then. Katie brought all this with her to the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s. And before my Vet Men 55-59 race she celebrated as she watched the Vet Women — “all these pre-Title IX women, Steve” — parade onto the floor.

Then it was my turn. Katie’s father died of a heart attack when she was 17. Perhaps I should have mentioned that before. I gave Katie an index card with some instructions. I asked her not to yell. I sat down on Erg 76 and Katie ran through the checklist. Then I rowed, Katie quietly keeping me to the straight and narrow of the pace I wanted to hit. I felt great. I knew I could do it. The only sound I heard for my 7:45.03 was Katie’s voice. With 400 meters left, when I wanted to go with whatever remained, get under a 1:50 pace if I could, Katie read exactly from the card: “Go, Steve. In capital letters, GO!”

When it was over and I was still sitting on the erg, I turned to Katie and hugged her. “Let’s see my Dad do that,” I said. I knew Katie of all people would understand.

* In competition

So, here we are, 160 days since this all began. A final 5,000 meters and I finish up at 343,178 total meters rowed. That’s 213¼ miles (!) for those of you scoring at home. Honestly, I’m usually not one to get caught up in the mathematics of all this — the numbers, the times, the stats. Really, I’m not; I find they can too easily distract from the larger point, the getting out there, the doing of it. But for getting to the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s it seemed an appropriate exercise to maintain. Still, geez: 213¼ miles! Glad I waited until now to make the conversion. From our house in York, Pennsylvania, to our place in Brooklyn, New York, followed by a circling of most of the 24-mile island of Manhattan.

It was windy on the Woodspring today.  I considered keeping the garage door closed, but no, I couldn’t. Not today, this final workout day before the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s. The wind made it feel cold, though it real wasn’t, as the breeze swirled stray pieces of paper and a few leaves around in a circle on the middle of the floor. In truth, there was nothing at all remarkable about today’s pull, just another 5,000 easy-does-it meters on my faithful Concept2. Except that this was the last one before, before … you know.

I don’t need to do the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s. Not really. Because I have accomplished all my goals I put to myself when I got started back on September 12. I wanted to get to the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s as prepared as I could be while still living in the real world. Put in as many meters as I could. Do as much sprint training as I could. Get my long rows as far out there as I could. And I did. Could I have done more? Sure. I could have signed on with a coach. I could have added in some weight training. Maybe I should have. But you can do something for the first time only once. The way I did this first C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s was EXACTLY the way I wanted to do it. And there within is my accomplishment.

These past few days I have found myself thinking of the marathon I ran, back in September 1982, the Equinox Marathon in Fairbanks, Alaska. I had made those 26.2 mountainous miles my target probably 15 months before, not long after I had been hiking north of Fairbanks and found myself sucking wind as my heart pounded and the sweat ran of the tip of my nose. I was the guy who had watched his father die of a heart attack, who had promised himself he would always be in shape. Unable to complete that hike I realized that the occasional game of hoops wasn’t going to cut it, fitness wise. I was 28 — which suddenly seemed very close to 30. The next day I was out the door running, and a month or two later I made the Equinox my goal. Thus was the beginning of a beautiful relationship with being in shape that has led me to here, right now, three days to the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s.

I remember now what I was thinking back then with the Equinox only days away. That I didn’t need to run it. No. The running of those 26.2 miles isn’t what mattered. It was the preparing for them. It was knowing that I had got myself ready, that I would be able to do it. There is wonderful satisfaction in that; indeed, a great victory.

Of course, I then did still run that Equinox.  Next up: the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s.

* As of September 12, 2008

Appropriately, perhaps, I have had another Lolo Jones sighting. Do you remember Lolo? I have written of her before — twice, in fact. Lolo was the U.S. hurdler at the Beijing Olympics who won the gold medal in the nine-hurdle event, if only there had BEEN a nine-hurdle event. Alas, she hit that ninth hurdle hard, and — Just. Like. That. — the work of a lifetime went unrewarded. I see now where Lolo is back on the track, the indoor circuit. This past weekend she lost a race when she, yes, hit a hurdle and fell. Two days later at another meet, she won, in the best time of the year. Go, Lolo, go!

It is the journey, not the destination. This is what I think of when I think of Lolo.  I mean, once I get done just, uh, looking at Lolo. I think of Lolo, and of Arthur Ashe, too, as it is he, I believe, who is the author of that wonderful piece of advice. The journey is the destination. It can’t be about the reward, it must be about trying to get the reward. That has been my approach these past six months prepping for the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s. And I am better for it.

For ten days, two weeks now, with the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s nearly upon me, I have felt myself in a certain kind of mourning.  Not because the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s promise their own particular agony. (Well, OK, yes, that is part of the reason.) No, really, it’s knowing that once the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s aren’t out there waiting for me, these past six months will be over, done, finished. And I will miss them. I miss them already. I miss their, their … purposefulness. How they created a reason for me to get out to the garage, my boathouse, to sit down on the Concept2 and … pull. To pull sometimes as hard as I could, or for as long as I could. I wouldn’t have done that without the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s.

Oh, yes, I would have got out there. I would have pulled, worked out, put in the time, hammered it out. Of course I would have. I have been for too many years to stop now. But the looming specter of the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s made it all somehow different, important, necessary … somehow of greater consequence than it really was. I miss that feeling, those feelings, already.

* As of September 12, 2008

Time Trial!

I figured I needed one ahead of the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s. Today still gives me 10 days rest/recovery. Bottom line? Seventeen seconds better than the last trial. But I promise to be more sanguine with this report than I was with my report on that first one!

I caught myself off guard right at the start. Three quick half-strokes to crank some momentum, to get me off the bocks, and just like that I was at 1:45, 1:46, and hummin’. That scared me.  This is my biggest fear of the coming C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s: That I’ll get pulled into the adrenaline rush of the start, of the excitement, the SCENE, the VORTEX, and get way out in front of myself, guaranteeing that I’ll crash and burn on the back nine (to throw in a first-ever golf metaphor) and come crawling in, gagging and choking.

But whereas I knew 1:45 was too fast, 1:55 felt good (as opposed to my aimed-for 2:00), and so I decided to keep it there. Around the 750-meter mark I grasped a great good gulp of air that served to relax me, and with that I was CRUISIN’!

And then all of a sudden, at 1,000 meters, I fell to 2:00, right off the cliff. The next 500 meters were horrible, a never-ending story, as I fought the Concept2 and battled my brain, trying to keep it close to 1:55.

But then, by the time I got to Phoenix at the 1,500-meter mark, I was dialed in again, feeling … GREAT.  I have no idea why. You tell me. No, don’t.  Some questions aren’t meant to be answered. But it was ThatQuick, from awful to wonderful, a light switch flicked. Clap on! I decided to see if I could bring home the last 500 meters at 1:50. No. I could get there, but I couldn’t hold it there.

Still, the final 250 meters flew by, aided by some begging from me that the meters keep building. I mean, the faster you can go the sooner it’s over, right? Doh!

So, let’s review: Up, higher up, down-down-down, up, still up, now-just-sort-of-up, trying-trying-pleading, over, spent, exhausted, gasping. All in a lifetime of 7:43. This is why we do this, isn’t it, this rowing thing?

The C.R.A.S.H.-B.s are in 12 days.

Sorry, but that’s the only thought I can conjure.

Twelve days. XII. A Dirty Dozen.

* As of September 12 (this is COMPLETE coincidence, honest; I didn’t see the connection until after the fact), 2008

Friday, February 6, 2009
Meters Rowed: 6,250
Time: 28:00
Pace: Power Ten — 10 Strokes @ 1:45 pace  @ minutes 4,5,6,7 / 12,13,14,15 / 20,21,22,23
Total Meters Rowed * : 312,970

Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Meters Rowed: 298,115
Time: 40:00
Pace: 2:15, mostly
Total Meters Rowed * : 306,720

I do like a Sunday morning row.  Then to St. Joseph Church and I can just sit there in the pew and let it all wash over me, the workout and the worship both. A wonderful feeling, that. I remember reading when Kevin McHale was talking about how it was that he decided to come back and coach the Minnesota Timberwolves. He was at the six p.m. mass on a Sunday evening, he said (because, he confessed, he’d “missed” — that is, I’m sure, slept through — the morning offerings) and he was sitting in the pew “and that peaceful feeling came over me,” I recall he said, and he decided that the right thing to do was to come back and coach. And so he did. And I understood exactly what he was talking about. Not the coaching part, the peaceful part. (Though the coaching part apparently hasn’t worked out too badly for NBA January Coach of the Month Kevin McHale, either.)

Sitting there at St. Joe’s I could feel it coursing through me, that same sort of peacefulness, coming at me in waves. A quiet, contented satisfaction. A connectedness. And I felt like if they’d have let me sit there forever, by God, I would’ve ….

I decided last night on this 60-minute row. I was, to report on this precisely, standing in the bathroom, in front of the toilet, doing my thing, when I said it out loud: “Sixty minutes!” Yes. Why not? And then just like that I said, “Whoa!” Kind of sort of like that baby in the eTrade commercials might word it.  “Whoa!” Yeah — 60 minutes! A personal best for time by 10 minutes; a distance PB by a good 2,000 meters.

Weird how the mind works. (Indeed, this may be the lasting lesson the Concept2 has taught me these past six months on the water to the C.R.A.S.H.-B.’s, how it is so much in the head.)  I realized at the 20-minute mark that on another day, on a different row, I’d be winding things up near the end of a standard 5,000-meter pull. But here I was now, just getting warmed up. Then, doing calculations in my mind, I figured that I’d be coming home in just more than 13,000 meters. More ciphering with even just three minutes to go still had me at 13-plus, so when I finally realized that wasn’t going to happen, that I was going to … fail, I was suddenly — remember, I started this paragraph with “weird how the mind works” — pissed off. Seriously. Never mind the pair of PB’s I was in the process of setting — that were shattering, shattering, I tell you, my old marks.  I was so geared to seeing 13,000 pop up that when I realized it wasn’t going to, the air went out of me.

What pumped me up? I was so fixate on 13, and the goal I had envisioned was for a numeral 60 minutes, that when I looked at the monitor and saw “1:00:08,” the sight of it so surprised me and caught me of guard that I actually gasped in delight. The five columns of numbers! The pair of colons! The double zeroes! That “1” for the first time EVER in my nearly 21 years of rowing sitting out there proudly by itself! It all just looked so … so … so … peaceful.

Amen.

So much in fact that it’s almost not to mention the passage past 300,000 meters on Wednesday. Or as I like to think of it: 0.3 million meters. And not to mention the Power Ten on Friday and that killer 1:45 pace.  I mean, not to mention.

* As of September 12, 2008

Break in the weather today. Clear blue skies. Sunny.  Not really warm but so what it feels like it is after the past two weeks. Loud gurgling in the gutters that frame the boathouse, the melted snow gushing in a steady stream out the spout and down the driveway and into the Woodspring. I threw open the boathouse doors with glee, put on the sunglasses just for fun and after four days away did a combo long-row with hard sprints every five minutes. Maybe I could blow away the remnants of that sinus infection, too. Or maybe not. But overall, a great, great pull.

Of course, all this going on about a break in the weather is from a guy who loves winter.  I truly do. I have nearly eight years lived in Alaska as my bona fides. I loved running outside at 20-, 30-, occasionally even 40-below zero. Jack London! Robert Service! Give me the snap in the air. The squeaky squeal of running shoes on Styrofoam-like, hollowed-out snow. The facemask frozen to the beard at the end of a 40-minute run in the 3 p.m. darkness.

All of which means that despite today’s wonderful winter timeout , tomorrow on Groundhog Day I’ll be rooting for Punxsutawney Phil to see his shadow and give us six more weeks of winter.

* As of September 12, 2008

Sunday, January 25, 2009
Meters Rowed: 5,000
Time: 22:00
Pace: 3 x 1,000m @ sub-2:00 w/ 500m rest
Total Meters Rowed * :  285,070

Friday, January 23, 2009
Meters Rowed: 5,000
Time: 23:07
Pace: 2:22
Total Meters Rowed * : 280,070

Real life intrudes.  I am up in Brooklyn for a few days, mainly to do a book interview on the Dr. Memet Oz Radio Show on the Oprah Radio Network. This is a good thing of course. No complaints here. But it’s got me away from my Woodspring River Boathouse and out of what I was feeling was a pretty good groove. (Sunday’s disaster of a row notwithstanding, and about which more in a minute.) We’ve had some snow and with it a change in the weather, and with THAT has come my first sinus infection in I can’t remember when. Indeed, had it hit just 24 hours ago I’m not sure they would have wanted my voice on the radio. I brought my workout gear and had hoped get to the Y either today or tomorrow, but now I don’t know. Realistically? My next workout probably isn’t until next month. Well, OK. February 1. Super Bowl Sunday. But still.

Now, about Disaster Sunday. I mean it when I call it that. I completely broke down. There is no other way to say it. Perhaps I put the wheels in motion, or at least gave them a good greasing, the night before when I  stupidly, stupidly, stupidly did some ill-advised math.  I subtracted the likely winning time in my age group at the C.R.A.S.H.-B.s (6:20 or so) from MY likely time (7:50 if I’m REAL lucky) and the remainder — 1:30; a minute and a half, ninety full seconds – started to look like something akin to a complete lifetime. Worse, this image camped in my brain: me on the Concept2 at Agganis Arena at Boston University, still rowing like a fool while all the rest of the machines have gone silent, their rowers long done, everyone ready to move on, you know, to the next race, come on, if only this guy could, geez!, hurry up!

That was the spectral companion I brought with me to Sunday morning’s row. The plan was for three 1,000-meter sprints at sub-2:00, sandwiched around 500-meter rest rows. The first 1K I felt uncomfortable and out of sorts, but, OK , maybe I wasn’t warmed up enough. The 500-meter rest was, of course, way to short, and I was into the next 1K sprint before I knew it. This one actually felt OK. Not great, OK. I was halfway home! Bu no, the mind game didn’t take. By the time I was done the second sprint I could think only that I still had a third to go and it was going to be awful and horrible and even terrifying.

The 500 rest flew past. Sprint, steve, sprint! I cranked from 2:22 or so and within three strokes had it under 2:00. But I couldn’t hold it.  Within 100 meters I was slipping past 2:05. And then, somewhere around the 500-meter mark I remember saying out loud. “Come on, Steve … try.” And I did. I tried. I swear I did. I brought it again back under 2:00.

And then it happened. And it had never happened before, not like this. I didn’t just break down. I came apart.  The garage space closed down around me and for an instant I was claustrophobic. And then this wave of absolute weakness rolled over me, coming at me up my legs and up my arms and hitting me full in the face.  I was helpless to do anything about it. And I thought this in the moment: My body became a special effect like in the movie. I could see it from the inside. Suddenly it just fragmented around me into a zillion little pieces, each un-con-nec-ted and dis-con-nec-ted one piece from the other and there was nothing I could do about it. I mean, that is EXACTLY how it felt and what I saw.

And then I stopped, a good 400 meters left in the sprint. I just flat out stopped rowing, the handle coming to rest on my legs. I regrouped, but only barely. Who knows how long I sat there, unmoving? Probably less than a minute. But sit there I did, thinking thoughts I shouldn’t be thinking – me at the C.R.A.S.H.B.’s, still row-row-rowing my boat when everyone else is done. Come on!

* / * / * As of September 12, 2008