Marathon runners talk about hitting ‘the wall’ at the twenty-third mile of the race. What rowers confront isn’t a wall; it’s a hole - an abyss of pain, which opens up in the second minute of the race. Large needles are being driven into your thigh muscles, while your forearms seem to be splitting. Then the pain becomes confused and disorganized, not like the windedness of the runner or the leg burn of the biker but an all-over, savage unpleasantness. As you pass the five-hundred-meter mark, with three-quarters of the race still to row, you realize with dread that you are not going to make it to the finish, but at the same time the idea of letting your teammates down by not rowing your hardest is unthinkable…Therefore, you are going to die. Welcome to this life.
― Ashleigh Teitel
May 22 20:29 with 80 notes
coolbones: Ahhh I see. Does anyone just go in their socks?
A lot of people do, but our coach prefers shoes because our boathouse is on this public island park type thing and there’s tons of gross crap and glass on the ground.
coolbones: Hey just wondering, what are dock shoes? At my crew'd normal practice we just wear our normal running workout shoes and throw them on the boathouse floor before launching.
For us, we have like the boat house then a stretch of land that we walk to the docks. We wear like slides (basically athletic flip flops) or crocs so that they’re waterproof and we can wear them between the boathouse and the dock.
May 20 20:39 with 1 note
Anonymous: thoughts on CRI?
So far as I hear, CRI is wicked competitive, tough to beat, and pretty high end. I seriously wouldn’t discount them if they’re in one of your races or heats.
Anonymous: what are these "slides" you speak of wearing. are they like the slides in the boat? i am v confused.
Ah, perhaps only my team calls them slides? They’re what we wear as dock shoes (since sneakers risk getting wet) so they’re like slip on sandals of sorts, usually plastic ones, almost like flip flops without the little toe separating thing.
May 19 23:25 with 2 notes
