4 Years to Live. 6 Minutes to Die

The butterflies in my stomach felt more like angry hummingbirds.

"Lane 6, give me half a stroke."

My heart was thrumming in my ribcage.

"We have alignment. We will be going on a five-count command."

I sat up and moved to three-quarter slide, that cocked position where the rowers' legs are bunched almost completely to the front end and the oar is extended out in front of him. I met the eyes of my coxswain briefly. She gave me the slightest of nods, her eyes fierce, her expression grim and determined.

"All rowers sit ready," the official said. I heard my stern four breathing in slow, measured breaths. My bow four I could only presume were doing the same. I forced my hands to relax around the oar handle. Rowing with a death grip like that can cause cramping and worse.

"Five."

I glanced over to my right. Wisconsin. Beyond them Purdue.

"Four."

I looked to my left. U of M. Temple University. Army.

"Three."

I got my head back in my shell and tensed my body for that first stroke, the first of a couple hundred.

"Two."

Grand Final. Varsity 8. Two thousand meters to go. Six minutes to die.

"One."

Breathe.

"Row!"

* * *

David Halberstam in his book, The Amateurs, follows the lives of amateur rowers, all of whom have Olympic aspirations. In it he describes rowing as a process of tearing yourself down every day at practice and then voluntarily waking up the next morning to do it all over again. Halberstam compares the lives of collegiate rowers to those of soldiers who knew terrible hardships and sacrifice that only fellow soldiers could understand.

During their college years the oarsmen put in terribly long hours,
often showing up at the boathouse at 6:00 AM for pre-class practices.
Both physically and psychologically, they were separated from their classmates.
Events that seemed earth-shattering to them—for example, who was demoted
from the varsity to the junior varsity—went almost unnoticed by the rest
of the students. In many ways they were like combat veterans coming back from
a small, bitter, and distant war, able to talk only to other veterans.¹

I found that Halberstam was right, the sport of rowing takes something more than just physical prowess or being as strong as an ox. It takes mental prowess as well, and having a will that's more like a vein of iron running through the rower's core. More, it takes sacrifice. One of our favorite sayings that we stole from a t-shirt at a regatta in Cleveland is, "I can't, I have crew."

The first few weeks and months you have to get used to your free time being slowly siphoned away like air from a balloon. You have to realize this is a commitment, a very, very large and taxing commitment. The sport chews up and spits out more athletes than a farmer chews tobacco.

If you can hang on for those first few months, you know you have that iron will needed to hang on till the last. Even if you get there and you can't breathe.

* * *

The first 40 strokes I came to the realization I wasn't going to make it. This was normal. This is how every race starts. Needles were pushing themselves into my legs on every stroke. My shoulders ached. My arms were going to fall off. My chest heaved and my lungs burned. And this was only the first few hundred meters. This was with five minutes or so left go.

I was sitting stroke, that is the person the other seven guys follow. I was in the stern, my coxswain hunched over in front of me, and we had taken it off the line like monkeys on speed. Those first 40 strokes are about pure horsepower, prying the boat to its maximum speed and then hanging onto every...