and you will know us by the trail of blood/sweat/tears...
ERGS! do not read on if..well, if you can't be bothered, or if you detest spirited sporting rivalry, or any other such sentiment.
i have just been to Queen's Ergs, taking place at Queen's College (obvious), which is a huge crazy thing with rowing machines (not so obvious.) apparently thats an erg. but then they call it an "ergo competition"...and it all gets confusing, but hey, it's just sport, so we don't think about it too deeply.
so anyway, this started off at 4pm, with women's first league (that's us! woo!) so we all warmed up, then filed into the sports hall, with balconies on either side for our ardent fans. oh yes. and soon enough we started rowing. the idea is, you jump on the machine and "row" (for "row", read "pull") as hard as you can, until you've done 500m (which takes just over 2 mins on average) and then you stand up (or attempt to! jelly legs ahoy) to let the next person on, and they start their 500m row-athon. it's hard work, even though it's only a couple of minutes...and you have your whole team plus cox and coach yelling and screaming...and it goes a little something like this...
"GO GO GO! YEEEEEAHH KEEP THAT SPLIT DOWN! DOWN! DOWN, COME ON! PUSH! PUSH! SPLIT! PUSH! LEGS! MORE LEGS! SPLIT DOWN, SPLIT DOWN!"
(split is...well, if you keep it under 2:00 thats good...basically like an average speed...obviously not measured with the same units though...as far as i am aware... there must be some subtle difference to warrant a specialist term.)
all the while, there's a thumping "DUN! DUN DUN DUN! DUN DUN DUN! DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH!" (that's "eye of the tiger" btw, classic erging song apparently, as is "simply the best" "final countdown" and somewhat ironically, a song containing the word "halfway"...well, i thought it was ironic at the time, but now i forget the title...damnit! but, like, if you're erging and someone shouts, "NEARLY HALFWAY! NEARLY HALFWAY! PAST HALFWAY! PAST! KEEP GOING!" you jsut wanna yell....something very rude back at them. halfway mon oueil!
so in the first round we came 5th/10 which wasnt bad...but we weren't sure about whether we'd get to finals, cause there's only 8 teams out of 3 leagues in that...so went home, got tea, yadayada, came back to cheer our women's thirds (we had 2 women's teams, but hey, we're Trinity First and Third BC, whatcha gonna do) and then we found out we were in the finals. so woohoo! but also oh-no-more-thigh-spasm-inducing-misery. our finals, as it turned out, started at 10pm, but the whole thing was running over an hour late.
feeling drowzy at this point.
*yawn*
but we warmed up again, and before we knew it (although conveniently after i found my friend siobhan - hurrah inter-collegiate bonding!) we were again in the big hall with lots of screaming people. wooooooooooooooooo! and we erged. and we erged. and we erged the house down. and, although starting off in approx 5th/6th position in the finals, we erged our way to 3rd place. YEAH! and we were all very proud (and the LBCs were proud of us too, as apparently the 2 teams last year came 15th and 17th. aww :S )
so in general, trinity first and third bc (or "FaT" as it is affectionately named) rule. end of.
hope you enjoyed/didnt mind that odd rant, but this day was thoroughly enjoyable, if not tiring.
i have just been to Queen's Ergs, taking place at Queen's College (obvious), which is a huge crazy thing with rowing machines (not so obvious.) apparently thats an erg. but then they call it an "ergo competition"...and it all gets confusing, but hey, it's just sport, so we don't think about it too deeply.
so anyway, this started off at 4pm, with women's first league (that's us! woo!) so we all warmed up, then filed into the sports hall, with balconies on either side for our ardent fans. oh yes. and soon enough we started rowing. the idea is, you jump on the machine and "row" (for "row", read "pull") as hard as you can, until you've done 500m (which takes just over 2 mins on average) and then you stand up (or attempt to! jelly legs ahoy) to let the next person on, and they start their 500m row-athon. it's hard work, even though it's only a couple of minutes...and you have your whole team plus cox and coach yelling and screaming...and it goes a little something like this...
"GO GO GO! YEEEEEAHH KEEP THAT SPLIT DOWN! DOWN! DOWN, COME ON! PUSH! PUSH! SPLIT! PUSH! LEGS! MORE LEGS! SPLIT DOWN, SPLIT DOWN!"
(split is...well, if you keep it under 2:00 thats good...basically like an average speed...obviously not measured with the same units though...as far as i am aware... there must be some subtle difference to warrant a specialist term.)
all the while, there's a thumping "DUN! DUN DUN DUN! DUN DUN DUN! DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH!" (that's "eye of the tiger" btw, classic erging song apparently, as is "simply the best" "final countdown" and somewhat ironically, a song containing the word "halfway"...well, i thought it was ironic at the time, but now i forget the title...damnit! but, like, if you're erging and someone shouts, "NEARLY HALFWAY! NEARLY HALFWAY! PAST HALFWAY! PAST! KEEP GOING!" you jsut wanna yell....something very rude back at them. halfway mon oueil!
so in the first round we came 5th/10 which wasnt bad...but we weren't sure about whether we'd get to finals, cause there's only 8 teams out of 3 leagues in that...so went home, got tea, yadayada, came back to cheer our women's thirds (we had 2 women's teams, but hey, we're Trinity First and Third BC, whatcha gonna do) and then we found out we were in the finals. so woohoo! but also oh-no-more-thigh-spasm-inducing-misery. our finals, as it turned out, started at 10pm, but the whole thing was running over an hour late.
feeling drowzy at this point.
*yawn*
but we warmed up again, and before we knew it (although conveniently after i found my friend siobhan - hurrah inter-collegiate bonding!) we were again in the big hall with lots of screaming people. wooooooooooooooooo! and we erged. and we erged. and we erged the house down. and, although starting off in approx 5th/6th position in the finals, we erged our way to 3rd place. YEAH! and we were all very proud (and the LBCs were proud of us too, as apparently the 2 teams last year came 15th and 17th. aww :S )
so in general, trinity first and third bc (or "FaT" as it is affectionately named) rule. end of.
hope you enjoyed/didnt mind that odd rant, but this day was thoroughly enjoyable, if not tiring.