Faster than a speeding octogenarian

I did another 2k test erg earlier this week. It went well. I was looking for 7:40, which I suspected may have proved to be a little ambitious, but happily (for my time, at least) I arrived at the boathouse to find men on the scene.

"Is that your 2k? Do you need someone to shout for you?"

Translation for non-rowers: "Are you doing that horrendously painful, stuff-of-nightmares workout? Can you beast yourself sufficiently or would you like some encouragement to inflict ever more pain on yourself?"

"Err..." I replied, my mind racing to come up with a plausible excuse for why I needed to be left alone to kill myself at my leisure in the corner, rather than with a bunch of chaps urging me onto greater and more painful efforts. Unfortunately, excuses have never been my strongest subject and I somehow ended up with what seemed like an inordinate number of people encouraging me to hurt myself a lot and then with 10% extra pain thrown in for free. This went on until I'd finished the 2k in less time than I'd initially thought was ambitious. Bloody men... :)

So, the upshot of that little escapade was that I pulled 7:38.8. Courtesy of some research undertaken at the Concept 2 records, I can report that this means that I:

• Have done a 2k faster than every octogenarian on the planet of which the kind folk at Concept 2 know;
  
• Am faster than every woman of 65 years or over;
  
• Am still slower than some women more than twice my age and who are older than my mother (but I will fix this by losing another eight seconds from my time);
  
• Would make a roughly world-class 60-year-old (with a UK record to boot);
  
• Am still being beaten over 2k by 12 year old girls (This Hurts A Lot, and will be fixed by dropping another 8.5 seconds from my time).

Having managed to roundly beat the times of a bunch of (admittedly rather special) pensioners, I spent the evening coughing feebly to myself (something that seems to happen after strenuous exercise, and which seems related to the chest infection I picked up following rather stupidly deciding to inhale the Zambezi river - this is daft for two reasons: a) The volume of the Zambezi is far greater than that of my lungs, and b) the Zambezi contains all sorts of bacteria that my lungs evidently weren't designed to cope with).

With the erg safely out of the way, I could focus on task 2 for the week: The Stairs.

As a postgrad student working on the 6th floor of a chemistry block, I used to race my colleagues back upstairs after Friday pub lunches. I took the stairs, carrying a couple of pints, a steak and a heavy stomach. They took the lift. I would usually win, and feel rather smug if a little out of breath and possibly regretting that second steak or extra pint of beer...

A few years on, and many months into working on the 20th floor of a tallish building, I suggested racing the stairs to a colleague. (This would have to effectively be a time trial rather than racing the lift as my guess of 10 seconds a flight would give a projected time for the stairs of 3 minutes 30 seconds*, and even on a bad day, the express lift doesn't usually take longer than a minute and a half including arrival time and stopping at every possible floor). He responded to my suggestion by arriving back on the floor several minutes later, having run the stairs in 3 minutes and 10 seconds. Damn him. I wanted to get the first marker down, and head up the leaderboard, if only by virtue of having gone first.

Another colleague took up the challenge and posted a 3:27 time. Nothing new to worry about there, then. But it seemed that the race was firmly on.

I mentioned this little competition which I'd accidentally established to the chap who sits behind me, who is a sporty, outdoorsy kind of guy. It evidently pressed all the right buttons with him, as he spent the next hour fidgeting. It then took only my consulting buddy arriving breathless on the scene having done the stairs in 2:52 for the chap behind me to remove his tie and extraneous pocket-junk and make his way to the bottom of the building. He made it up in 3:14, looking and sounding rather the worse for wear. I had the small matter of a test erg to get out of the way before posting my effort to join them on the leaderboard.

I was looking for a sub 2:50 time, aiming at 8 seconds a flight to bring me in at 2:48. (Being a rower, pain is one of the things I do best, as is expecting all of the major problems in life to be solved by working out a split time and then sticking to it.) I took the lift down to the ground floor, then made my way to the bottom of the main stairwell. The air was warm, still, stifling. I took an unsatisfactory deep breath and started what should have been a rhythmic trot up twenty-one flights of stairs.

By the seventh floor, I wasn't having much fun, but was still on for 8 seconds a flight, but probably not for much longer. I could see my pre-attempt confidence that I would be running up twenty flights without needing to walk rapidly evaporating. In addition to the gloomy realisation that I probably wouldn't be shooting to the top of the leaderboard, it was hot and sticky in the stairwell. I would smell for the rest of the day. It was only 8am...

By the tenth floor, I was using the handrail to help haul myself up. I was also getting a bit dizzy from the long, clockwise spiral. I suppose it could have been the exertion, but I blame the spiralling, myself...

By the fourteenth floor, my thighs were sorely regretting my ever having suggested this challenge. I could see I would be having another attempt at this if I wanted to beat my colleague's 2:52, but I was determined to beat his first effort (and the then second fastest time) of 3:10. That was definitely possible. Come to think of it, three minutes was possible. Good, something to aim for.

By the time I'd got to the top I could have sworn I'd done enough work to justify a steak dinner. My thighs felt leaden and my chest was heaving. I emerged onto the floorplate and rounded the corner to the wing in which I work to be met by gales of laughter at my inability to breathe coming from those who think that all us stair runners are stark raving bonkers. I'd stopped my watch at the twentieth floor at 3 minutes and one second. I was seething at myself. Damn that extra second. Still, it's the best first attempt at the stairs, and I'm quite certain that a few weeks of taking the stairs instead of the lift twice a day will haul me up to top spot.

I had earlier calculated that hauling my twelve-ish stone body weight up twenty one flights of stairs with a rise in the region of 4 metres per flight would require approximately 63 kJ, or about 15 (food) Calories. That's about a seventh of an average apple. All that work for only a thin sliver of an unexciting fruit? It makes me wonder what I would have to do to work off the banana I ate yesterday...

With those thoughts in mind, perhaps it's as well that I'm laid up in bed with no appetite. After all the exertion of ergs and stairs, maybe it's not surprizing that I've succumbed to something. I think it's a virus - swollen glands and fever on Wednesday, diarrhoea yesterday and today, still not really managing to absorb fluids... It seems to be resolving, but it has at least persuaded me that, six months after moving, the time has come to register with a GP. (It should be noted that this is something of a record for me, it having taken 14 months and 8 months after my previous two moves for me to get around to registering with my local medics. The reason for this is that mostly they're not open when I'm able to get to them (GPs not being noted for opening their surgeries at times amenable to people working something like a 9 to 5), and therefore I don't get around to registering until I need their services (my logic being that if I have to take time off work to see them, I might as well ensure I get some benefit from it by being ill at the time of registering).)

I would normally think about feeling sorry for myself at this point (the point at which I could rightly feel miserable for finding getting out of bed a challenging concept (not a good thing to have with diarrhoea...) and a small flight of stairs representing a towering obstacle), but with my dad's health record and current right leg woes, I'm reminded that having a-bit-of-a-non-descript-virus-thing really isn't very much to be dealing with.

Plus, I can console myself with the knowledge that I am extremely unlikely to come across an 80 year old who I can't beat over 2k.

*For those of you who spotted the apparent inconsistency, it's a double height ground floor...

Race-day psychosis

You would never have guessed I'd missed a week of training and half a week of food - pacing around the changing rooms and club room before boating for yesterday's race, I felt exactly the same as before every race.

Yesterday was a head race, a 4km time trial with the tide, from Chiswick to Hammersmith. Head races are notoriously painful affairs, being far longer than most regatta courses and, without a crew side-by-side to race down the course, far harder to maintain the necessary gee-ed-up-ness to work through the pain. When I woke yesterday, it was with the fear - the queasy disquiet at the thought of the looming, entirely self-inflicted pain - already firmly lodged in my core.

The hour before boating is the worst. Fear of the pain, uncertainty in my fitness, ability, technique. But as we go to get the boat out, a switch is flicked. All of a sudden, my usual calm demeanour slips away, replaced by that of a single-minded, rowing thug. I pace around, I focus inwards, I'm not about to get out anyone's way, and one look at my eyes will tell you that. I transform into a sado-masochist. One of the symptoms of this transformation is that the sorts of words and phrases which appeal to me change from things which I like the sound of, such as:

• lascivious;
  
• kumquat;
  
• delectable;
  
• gesticulate;
  
• onomatopoeia;
  
• oleaginous;

to things which raise my stress levels, blood pressure and presumably my ability to perform, things like:

• kill;
  
• death;
  
• rip;
  
• kill;
  
• explode;
  
• power;
  
• kick-ass;
  
• "I'm-gonna-stuff-my-presence-on-the-water-down-the-throat-of-any-passing-norovirus"; and did I mention my favourite psyching-up word...
  
• kill.

I'm sure you get the idea - anything aggressive pretty much does the trick.

I get properly psyched up. From the moment I'm in the boat, I'm switched on and hyper-sensitive to every sound, sensation and presence. I sit up taller, set my jaw to super-psyched rower position (very similar to aggressive thug position, but with marginally more gorm...) and block out any other crews on the water. They are not there, and on the off-chance that they are there and intend racing, they will lose. I'm not into making conversation with the opposition. Some people do - they go in for a bit of chit chat with their opposite number whilst waiting for the start, but I'd rather kill my opposite number. But before I stuff it to them out on the course, whilst we're paddling down to the start or waiting for the off, I'll use every inch of my height and reach, and every reserve of technique and composure to intimidate the opposition.

Any other day, I'd be convinced that all this is rubbish, and I'm intimidating no-one. I'm sure it is rubbish, and any other day, I wouldn't want to be intimidating anyone, but on race-day it's a vital part of the storyline forming the parallel reality that needs to run through my head to get me through the race. Yesterday, on top of the normal level of self-delusion required, I had to work extra hard to counter any concept that my preparation for the race may have been less than ideal. In addition to usual pre-race fear of pain, I was deeply worried that I would let rip only to find the tank very empty (thanks to Mr Norovirus and three days without food or adequate fluid intake), that perhaps a couple of minutes into the race I would find I had nothing left to give. But you couldn't have told me that on the start, oh no. By the time we'd got to the start, in my parallel reality I Was In The Shape Of My Life. I Have Been Fit As A Fiddle All Year. (I certainly hadn't spent most of it in close proximity to my toilet...)

The start of a head race always feels good - the built-up nervous energy and adrenalin carries us through our start, into our stride, and the first couple of minutes disappear in a display of real, sexy rowing - controlled power, smooth technique. Eight working as one. It feels fantastic. We're closing on the crew ahead, and the crew behind is disappearing into the distance. We're going to power down this course, and blow the other crews out of the water. The landmarks along the Thames pass by quickly. The pain creeps up more slowly, and more sinisterly.

Five minutes in, we're still moving well, but now my legs feel heavy. My body feels heavy. The rating seems unbelievably high and I have no idea how I'm going to continue to do this for the rest of the race, I just know that I am. I will. Norovirus can go hang. Every stroke I take tightens the noose on the virus. I can feel it. My pain is killing it. Every stroke. Every stroke. More pain. More Pain. Love the Pain. Love the Power. Kill. KILL.

My lungs are bursting for air, my abs are screaming for a rest, my legs feel like lead, my forearms are full of acid. Holding the technique is hard work, but I'm concentrating on the music of the boat, the strength at the finish, the smooth (increasingly ragged) glide up the slide, water trickling off the blades, the splash of the catch, the deep growl of the drive. I'm loving the visual symmetry, seeing the synchronised blades in the periphery of my vision. Forwards and back. Describing symmetric arcs (with a bit of translation and reflection). Nurture the Symmetry. Keeping it Tidy. Holding the Beauty. Loving my Blade. Loving the Crew. Loving the Music. Nurture the Pain. Nurture the Pain. Nurture the Pain. NURTURE THE PAIN.

There's a cheer. We're a minute from the end. The rest of the club is standing on the raft and cheering for us - this really is time to block out the pain and row sexily for the cameras. We're powering through. The finish. We're there.

The adrenalin drains away. We're shattered. We can't speak. It's bizarre how disabling losing the need to compete can be. We can barely move, yet seconds earlier we were firing on all cylinders, tired, but coordinated, and moving pretty quickly. Immediately past the finish, we might as well have been haggis for all the speed we could give the boat. The pain had vanished, but the energy was gone.

There were an awful lot of boats at the finish. It's striking - I had barely been aware of them at the start, and only aware of one during the race (did I not mention there was a bunch of schoolkids chasing us down the course?) They look as wrecked as we feel - no doubt we all look pretty rough. I know I'm a bit broken. Gone are my pre-race delusions of being in the shape of my life, my parallel reality sank at the finish. I don't need it anymore. It has done its job. It got me through...

The transition from wannabe killing-machine to knackered rower is extreme and exhausting. The adrenalin has gone. The competition has passed. I'm not interested in aggression. I no longer want to kill anything. I'm satisfied - it was a good row. As we paddle back to the boathouse, food, water, and sleep resume their customary positions at the forefront of my mind. My race-day persona is put away, shut back in its box, not to be seen again. That is, until the next race. And even as I file away my personal race-day sado-masochist, I can hear her declaring: Bring it on...