Stroking

This morning I went back in time to my freshman year of college. I did this via: the Erg.

The Erg is a medieval torture device, the modern incarnation of which you will recognize as the rowing machine you've probably seen sitting unused in some dark corner of your gym. It looks like this:


Unless you've been on a crew team at some point you've likely never been on one of these. There's really no good reason to get on one unless you are a rower or a masochist.*

I was not in a particularly self-punishing mood this morning, so it remains a mystery why I hopped on and started pulling. The pool just looked so...wet. And all the good Elliptical machines were being used.

I think I was partly just really curious to see what it was like after all these years. How much less strong am I now than I was then? It was time to find out.

The first 25 strokes were glorious! I was amazing! My splits were fast and I was feeling great. I started to think this could become a viable part of my regular workouts.

My sudden super-rower abilities quickly faded, but I was actually able to hold my own for a full 2000m, which is the length of a the races I used to do. For good measure, I did another 3000m after that but not at quite the same intensity as that first one. Would it be weird to admit that it actually felt really good? It felt cleansing somehow; there was an element of relief.

I believe that memory is stored not just in our minds but also in our bodies. When I started swimming again recently I found myself recalling people and experiences I haven't thought about since my days on the high school swim team. This morning was similar but this time taking me back to my freshman year of college: faces, moments, images all came flooding back as I cruised up and down, up and down the slide. Like when I tripped in the college cafeteria and did a slip'n'slide through my chicken curry.** Or when I lost a few teeth when I got ejected from a boat mid-race. Or like when I put Clarence Carter's "Stroking" on the Erg room mix as a joke to my teammates. It just seemed so apt.

I might even get on that old horse again sometime.


*Rowers are really just a subset of the larger masochist community.
**So weird that I ate meat back then!