At the gym today, my trainer — I’d like to omit that detail, but it’s hard to tell the story without it — mixed in some cardio with the usual weights, lunges, Bosu balls, etc. On the second round, he brought me over to the ergometer and said: “Do you know what this is?”
I almost ran screaming from the room.
The Concept II ergometer is a training tool for rowers. It is smarter than most workout equipment, able to determine actual effort as measured in strokes-per-minute and meters traveled. If you pull quickly, you’ll have a high strokes-per-minute count. If you pull hard, the stroke count might drop, but you might also travel farther. But you cannot fool the erg the way some people cheat treadmills and stairclimbers. The erg knows all.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” I said. “I used to row.”
“Funny,” the trainer said. “I have another client who rowed, and she said the same thing.”
I rowed on a club team when I was 30. I was very, very, very bad, a fact I’ve never tried to conceal. I rowed in a women’s four and while we were never DFL (dead fucking last) we were sometimes DFP (dead fucking penultimate). Rowing starboard, I never really mastered the balance one needs in a good stroke. I was the queen of the quick-catch. But I was strong and I showed up for practice, so I got to row in races such as the Head of the Charles and the Head of the Ohio, not to mention a sprint in Philadelphia where my oar caught a dead rat and sent it flying.
Erg workouts were for rainy days, the off season, and supplemental training. There are actually events just for the erg (Crash B sprints) and some girls are qualifying for college scholarships on their erg times alone. All I remember is this bit of coaching wisdom: If you don’t feel like vomting after an erg workout, you didn’t try hard enough.
Today’s goal was 700 meters in three minutes and, bear in mind, I was already 40 minutes into a pretty intense workout. The timer showed me pulling 500 meters in 2:04 — not the sub-two minute goal I aimed for in my rowing days, but not too shabby. I pulled 700 in 2:50 and then sat, head between my knees, sure I was going to throw up, not because it was that hard but because my body was heaving with some scary old memories. My yoga instructor — again, another phrase I hate to invoke — says the body has memories and sometimes these are released during exercise. She says it’s not unusual for people to begin crying during yoga. Lord knows, I’ve felt like crying during yoga, but I’m not sure that’s what she means.
What does your body remember that you wish you could forget? Were you an athlete? A “spaz,” as I was called in my youth? What does your body never, ever want to do again?
I don’t know if this counts, but I must confess I sometimes do the air guitar–and wish I could forget it every time.
Lizzie, I am on the verge of an intervention . . .
Makes me want to throw up just reading about it…i’m impressed at your versatility Laura.
I can just watch gymnastics on TV and feel my feet/ankles hurt. I was so clumsy that I almost didn’t graduate “off the stage” as my PE requirements were non existant. I kept falling and spraining something that would keep me from doing anything in gym for weeks at a time.
I wish I could say that I out grew it and became graceful but, alas, with two stress fractures in the last 4 years, I don’t think I did.
“What does your body never, ever want to do again?”
Drink any kind of flavored Vodka.
Oh–yeah, Dusty just reminded me of mine.
Jim Beam.
In the vein of Dusty and Keith:
Tequila. Bleh.
I also used to run cross country in high school because it was the only sport I could letter in that didn’t require any sort of coordination. But it was hell on my legs and chest and mind. Nowadays I’d rather walk 20 miles than jog a block.
>>>>”What does your body never, ever want to do again?”<<<<
Be thirteen years old.
Keeping the drinking theme, Southern Comfort.
Athletics-wise, downhill skiing. It was fun, but a couple falls too many and that killed my desire to try it again.
In the vein of Dusty and Keith and Bryon and Sarah:
sloe gin (puke)
And I took swimming in college (am afraid of the water even though I’m a Pisces), did all the required “elements,” such as holding breath under water for however long, jumping off that damn high dive, etc., but my instructor told me the last day of class, “Never tell anyone where you learned to swim.”
Also tried downhill skiing. Once. And I now live in Colorado. Oh well. Get nervous watching it on TV.
I’m excellent at sitting on my couch though.
Interesting question Laura
In high school I did modern dance. It was fun but I was tall and gangly and awkward so it felt like I was never reaching the goals set by the teacher but I was told I looked pretty good and I thought that was amazing. I was pretty good at basketball because of my height but I didn’t enjoy it that much, too much running.
The main thing that still burns in my bodys memory is the way I used to pick plates off of a stack when I was cooking for a living. I’d do this sort of twirl and spin as it came down and sometimes my hand wants to do that but the plates are in cupboards now so this is not even possible. Also I used to play acoustic bass in a jazz combo in San Francisco and when I listen to jazz certain pieces will send me right back to that and I played in an orchestra so the same thing happens with clssical music. I’ve been physically disabled for about 25 years and working and playing music are what I’ve missed the most.
1. Eat the candy known as Boston Baked Beans.
2. Crack the back of my head on the ice (yet I continue to skate…)
3. Get hit in the face with an airbag. If I close my eyes, I can still smell it.
In order not to follow one of our dear colleagues into that unquiet slumber (Same problem, different cause, and I’m not technically ill yet), I was instructed to quit drinking (which I’ll do when I get back from Chicago) and lose 30-50 pounds by next January.
I’d like to forget I have weak ankles, chronic tendonitis, flat feet, and nothing resembling knees to speak of. All these things were made abundantly clear to me in my mediocre career as a high school cross country runner.
I hate doctors. On the other hand, I don’t have nearly the internal fortitude our dear departed friend had, so I guess I should shut up and start running.
After I get this move done.
too….many….opportunities….for….dirty…..jokes!
This brings back a myriad of ballroom dance lesson memories. Walking into the studio, watching poised and graceful dancers waltzing around, yet stumbling through the beginning box step.
Flash forward about seven months, and we’re doing our first “showcase”…a tango. Neither my husband nor I even remember actually doing the dance. Our bodies just went through the moves without us, our faces frozen in that deer-in-headlights look I’ve come to know so well.
Don’t even get me started on the infamous mambo meltdown! I cringe just remembering it.
Five years of dance lessons, a two or three year layoff; I find certificates for lessons under the Christmas tree. New studio, new instructor, new moves. I should be one of those poised and graceful dancers waltzing around after all those lessons, but no. My body remembers the old moves and will NOT accept the new.
Stumbling around is just how I do.
This seems like the right place to confess that I really want to take fencing lessons.
In the vein of Dusty and Keith and Bryon and Sarah and Peg:
Long Island Ice Tea. And I did it twice.
In 1988, where I <b>lost</b> ten hours of my life. I was told I did a lot of nutty things during those ten hours, but puking wasn’t one of them.
In 1992, where I didn’t black out, but I did get pretty sick.
How does one cheat on a treadmill or stair stepper? Maybe by taking short steps on the stairs. While in college (�60�s) I had a job as a bio-medical engineer. One of the things I worked on was an exercise machine for use in space. Sort of a recumbent bicycle sort of thing. I was chosen as the guinea pig to calibrate it. Actually we started by calibrating me. At the time, treadmills were rare and used for medical stress tests. We had to go thirty miles to find one, and that was in Los Angeles.
Though I had been on the track and cross country teams in high school I was a lousy athlete. I was in great shape as I didn�t have a car and rode a bicycle everywhere I went. They had to really crank up the treadmill to get my heart to speed up. It would have been easier to figure out how many urgs the bicycle was absorbing. Urgs are a measure of work (metric), which is just force times distance. If that�s what is measured it�s hard to cheat. Anyway, we didn�t get the NASA contract, so we went on to other projects.
It�s not that my body doesn�t want to do it, I just can�t. My body�s rebellion is much more mental. I do remember reading the early Tess Monahan novels and having the rowing scenes make me tired. That seems to have dropped off, in later books.
Yeah, I did the “lose ten hours of my life” thing too, when I was fifteen, after wangling my way into a wine-and-cheese party for marine biologists in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Woke up the next day in the hospital, still drunk, with a busted-up face, a broken finger, and the possibility of a hidden hairline fracture of the skull.
(“If he exhibits any personality changes, get him back here on the double,” the doctor told my Dad, as if I didn’t already feel like my personality had changed. How was I supposed to tell?)
It’s a little town, and EVERYONE but me had seen me during my blackout hours. The next day, I went out, the bruises and scars like my very own Scarlet Letter across my face. I don’t know which was worse, the barely hidden laughter or the sympathy.
Okay, THAT’S the thing I did that I’d never want to do again.
I wish you had a picture of the dead rat flying through the air, that is HYSTERICAL!
People cheat treadmills and stair-climbers by leaning on them with the upper body. I knew one guy whose feet barely made contact.
Tess has had several off-season adventures — The Sugar House and No Good Deeds come to mind — and she spent one book in Texas, without her shell. But if it’s April through November, there’s usually at least one rowing scene in the books. Fact is, there are some rowers who read the books and they appreciate Tess’s rowing.
Jumped over the “horse” with my legs perpendicular. For a second or two, you were truly in flight. It was the most athletic thing I did but I was scared to death every time.
They are called 17s.
You sprint sideline to sideline on a basketball court 17 times, most coaches insisting that you finish in under a minute. It’s a distance of only 50 feet between sidelines, but the changing of directions, going back and forth seventeen times, is what makes it tough. Most coaches use them strictly for conditioning. Maybe five at any one time, at the most.
My first yr in college, our coach used them as punishment. He was an ass and he wasn’t very good, so it fit right in with his style. After losses, we had to run one set of 17s for every point we lost by. A minute for each set, no rest in between, each one starting on the minute and if one guy didn’t hit the last line in under a minute, we did another.
No problem when you lose by a couple of points.
One night in December of 1988, we lost by 26.
It took us 34 tries to get it done.
I can’t begin to describe how miserable it actually was in that gym, but it was the most physically damaged I’ve ever felt. And I still flinch whenever I hear someone say “seventeen.”
I never want to fall off a horse again. On the other hand, I still want to jump 3′ fences. The former comes with the latter, if you’re as badly made for horsemanship as I am. Sigh.
If I can sustain 500 in 2:30 on the erg for 20 minutes or so, I consider myself practically ready for the Olympics. You’re terrifyingly fit for an old broad, Laura.
Laura–my best friend Josh is taking fencing lessons and he loves them. I want to take them too, but for me, it’s mostly so I can make a few flashy moves and then go, “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya…”
Tequila. Never, ever again.
Physical activity-wise: Running. I hate running. I hated it in high school when I was forced to run cross country and I really learned to hate it in the Army.
They used to march us out to the rifle range, 7 miles, then make us run back, our rifles held over our heads.
We were not allowed to walk anywhere on post. The first Sunday of basic training a drill sergeant saw me sauntering back from the PX. Not good. I spent the rest of my day off running, doing push-ups and running some more.
And I haven’t touched on running with a fifty pound pack.
Running. I hate running. No more running.
The Mad Demon Roller Coaster. We were shooting a commercial for the park, and it took 67 takes to get it right. Sixty-seven rides. Sixty-seven near vomit inducing lurches and lunges and dips. Sixty-seven green Louise faces trying to smile.
Sixty-seven . . . ouch. I liked them when I was young, but discovered by tolerance for them is now very, very low.
By the way, I posted a previous comment that never appeared, in reference to 17s. When I was at Northwestern, and the school was in the middle of a historic losing streak, I remember going to a game against Iowa where its male cheerleaders did push-ups for every point scored. So they did 7+14+21+28+35+42+49+56. Because this was Northwestern, we amused ourselves by trying to remember the formula for arithmetic progressions.
Rock climb. Ice climb. Building clinb. Ride the glass elevators at the Hyatt Regency. I am afraid of heights. Can’t imagine how I used to ride the Zipper at the state fair when I was a kid.
But I love my latest sport: fencing. Even if my head gets hot in that beekeeper’s mask, and I trip over the electric body cord, it is fun to live out my Musketeer fantasy. En garde!
Crew. Crew was the ONLY time in my life I EVER enjoyed athletic activity. And I was good, not great, but good. It’s stunning to me that in college, for a very very short time, I was good at rowing and loved it. I did this before we got so serious – one semester and then it was “running stadium steps” and “training” and I was gone – not because of that but because of conflicts. But I got that one hit.
I was a classic nerd girl who would rather read than ANYthing. But how much of it was “nice Jewish intellectual girls don’t get sweaty” and how much of it was my body knowing that was a bad idea (given that at 42 I went on permanent disability and have something they can’t diagnose so who KNOWS what was wrong back then – back when I sprained 7 ankles and had foot surgery at 13 and blahblahblah). i GET the high and joy of athletics, sort of but never GOT it – except in that WOW feeling of 8 people rowing as one.
Andi,
A set boat is pretty magical and on the rare occasion when I walk back a television set (or a river) and see sweep rowers, I am always mesmerized.
By the way, from everything I read, you just sailed right through a wonderful conference. Congratulations on surviving LCC.