I think everyone at one time in their life was (or still is) afraid of doing things in public. Society has all these set standards on what we should be doing, how we should be doing it and where we should be doing it. Today’s Valentine’s Day and I didn’t have any special plans except to participate in my crew team’s ergathon fundraiser. Erg is a land rowing machine that simulates the pressure and stride of rowing with a monitor to measure stroke rate, speed, distance, time and our supporters can donate $10 for every 1K we row or $1 for a power 10 (10 fast strong strokes at 150% effort). Despite the number of students who didn’t know us, or lack of carrying real money around and that weird feeling you get knowing you want to support a good cause but you don’t have money and you’re a broke college student and hungry but you can actually see all the hard work your friends on the crew team are working. And I think while we may not have raised a huge amount of money at our ergathon there were a lot of friends, classmates and even prospective students and families on tour that got to see how hard all the rowers work and what crew is about.

We had hour erging shifts for everyone to get their daily Saturday workout and show our campus (at least those that were up and ventured to the Sub in the morning, although we kept going until 3pm) more about crew. We’re a more obscure sport, we don’t have an official DIII conference anymore and by nature of the sport, smaller teams, less knowledge about it (it’s a legs sport guys NOT an arms sport) that being out in public was good!