Saturday, December 8, 2007

How the East Was Won

I had my erg race today, and did emphatically hoist my flag of victory in the erg-studded sands of the Tohoku University gymnasium.

I rowed a 6:15, which is what I was hoping for. I kept asking myself "who's Japanese here?" Everyone else was slugging their 2ks out at a stroke rate of like 27 or 28 strokes per minute, while I had it pegged at a feverish "hamster on a crack suppository" 34.

Anyway, the dudes on my team seemed pretty pleased to take home the win for our little club, so that's good.

So here's some pictures of me in my post-university "Uncle Rico" moment (where the washed-up former athlete stuffs himself back into his ill-fitting uniform and tries to recapture that old glory...although this race was against my will and I actually won, so I hope that mitigates the Uncle Rico-ness.)


This is from the part where I haven't started yet--notice the no death-grimace of pain.





I did the entire race barely hanging onto my handle. My fingers are just THAT strong.





Hey, what's the best way to make your 7-year-old hate you? I know! Make him wake up really early on the weekend to go do a 2k in a freezing cold gymnasium.

11 comments:

Azure said...

Congrats Nate! Did you a a trophy, cash or new unitard for your efforts?
-Tom

Unknown said...

Sorry, about that, we have guests and they were using my compute and did not sign out---

Anonymous said...

Nice alter ego, Tom. Inner feminine and all.

Good going Nate! Excellent result and it looks like you didn't even break a sweat.

Nate said...

nope, I didn't win a unitard, "azure." I don't even know what that is, I row in a "unisuit."

I got a nice certificate in indecipherable (to me) kanji proclaiming me to be awesome (although there were like 10 certificates handed out for various things).

Unknown said...

from hillsboro erg champion to international erg champion in less than a year.. congrats

Luke said...

I hope you've now got that out of your system and you can do some more fun/interesting sports than erging... You're in Japan for god's sake! Go learn the ways of the ninja!

PS
Congrats

Sam said...

I agree with Luke. Congrats, you're awesome; now please stop erging before I have to fly over there and destroy all the ergs in Japan.

Nate said...

Sam/Luke: I agree, it's a huge waste of time and soul to erg in a cool new country. However, I didn't have a choice in the matter and it made the guys in my club really happy to win. I figured if I was gonna do it, I might was well come out guns a-blazin.

Sam: that would be awesome if you were some eccentric reverse-Johnny Appleseed who traveled the world destroying ergs. I would write a book about you.

Todd Johnson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Todd Johnson said...

Nate, what program are you in? I want to do what your doing but in Spain? You like it? Or does it suck hard? Great job crushing the tiny Asian men that you erged against.

Anonymous said...

this is so sad, nate.

maybe they should fill the gym up with water and make you row in a real boat in circles.

at least you get delicious fish though. delicious delicious fish. so worth the effort.

アニー