G.L. from NJ does it again!

For the 5th year in a row I decided to erg the super bowl, its a bizarre tradition that becomes hard to break. My rowing partner joined me in the madness again (this is her 2nd Super Bowl Erg so you could say she is a repeat offender).

We planned a nice Steady State row with a power 10 each time New England scored. Since neither of us are fans of football and my rowing partner's daughter graduated from Providence College that gave us a reason to cheer for New England. We both agreed that the first half was uneventful and that we seemed to be working harder than the football players.

Keeping with tradition at half time we changed trou and dined on peanut butter sandwiches and gatorade. So of course we missed the most memorable and talked about moment of the game!

Fortunatly the second half proved to be more interesting, but nothing got our heart rate up like when the Panthers tied the score late in the 4th quarter. The thought of overtime was not appealing to either one of us. We held our breath as Adam Vaneteri set up for the field goal our prayers were answered, the field goal was good and we were saved from the dreaded overtime!

We were both pleased with our efforts as we increased the number of accumulated meters from previous Super Bowl ergings! Our thanks goes to Peter Olrich for a Super idea.

G.L.

"Pretty much the pictures say it all..." thanks to Pete Whittaker

Erging is the only way to watch the Super Bowl... From G.L. from N.J., 2003's sole survivor- well done!

Erging is the only way to watch the Super Bowl especially if you don't like football. This was my 4th year to "erg the Super Bowl" and it just keeps getting better! Racking up 33,453 meters it was my best effort yet (no heroics just trying to stay on). While my husband and son snack on wings, mozzarella sticks and subs, I am content with gatorade and raisin bread with peanut butter during halftime. This year's game was not as exciting as in the past and a lot of players were forced out of bounds, which stops the clock (unfortunatly). It was a little scary in the second half when the Raiders started catching up, (thankfully no overtime!). We have a debate going as to what was the best commercial - I favor the Bud commercial,you know the one with the clown. My husband liked the Fed Ex. All in all it was a great way to watch the Super Bowl. Congratulations Tampa Bay. Thanks Peter for a "super" idea! G.L. from N.J.

The best part? After it was all over... From Roman Horoszewski, who planted the idea for yet another year

Ed -

I competed the Super bowl Erg-a-thon just a little while ago. Whew! I'm beat. Happy that I completed it, especially since I not only haven't I been on the erg much lately, but I haven't been working out very regularly either. Wound up rowing 39,689 meters, burning somewhere around 2,500 calories (give or take). Didn't do anything special at commercials or 1st downs.....just kept going at a steady state. Thanks for posting my invite for others to join me, but since the Naples, FL is not exactly a hotbed of rowing, I rowed alone this evening. Even my family took off to a Super Bowl party across town.

Ate at halftime, changed my trou, and put on a warm shirt to keep from getting a chill.

The second half got especially hard as I wasn't hurting muscularly or breathing hard....I was just plain old running out of gas. Tried to stay hydrated and even had one of my many water bottles next to me filled with half water and half OJ for a little boost.

The best part? After it was all over (good game by the way- at least the 2nd half was), I went out and sat in the hot tub for a while. Now I'm off to bed. I'm NOT looking forward to waking up tomorrow as I know I'm gonna be hurting.

Roman

"Anything is possible, on any given day..." by Christy Shaver

I have planned several times through out the years to do this event, thinking it would be one of those insane challenges, I so look forward to. I often find myself erging to Sunday games anyway and this one would only be that more exciting.

My training partner who is only 5'4 and around 109 lbs, decided to embark with me on this challenge. We set the ergs up in my front room, only feet from the television, and stocked up on water. The most difficult part, was the anticipation of the opening kick off. But as we got started, the anxiety was replaced with adrenaline and anticipation of the finish.

Although, the minutes of each ending quarter seem to linger, longer than usual, we hung in there. We had planned to take the erg light, but both of us being fierce competitors and looking for the ultimate workout, there was no soft strokes. And we survived and also witnessed a great game. So now being a high school rowing coach, I can go back to my athletes and tell them anything is possible, on any given day.

Thanks,
Christy Shaver

A Record Number of Punts... by anonymous

After hearing about Peter Olrich's Super Bowl erg Ann decided to try it last year. All by herself in the basement of her home she erged to last year's game. It wasn't too bad so after the game she decided she would do it again in 2001. This time she tried to recruit some suckers. I became interested. I decided that it might be a better choice to erg the entire length of the game rather than be a couch potato and consume enormous amounts of food and drink.

The big day was finally here. I loaded my erg into the car and headed for Ann's house. When I arrived, Ann's husband was preparing for a coach potato feast of wings, poppers, mozzarella sticks, stromboli, sandwiches and manicotti. "What would you ladies like after the game?" He knew if we didn't reserve the food now there would be none by the end of the game. Food was the last thing on my mind with this massively long erg piece ahead of me.

Down in the basement we did a couple of test stokes to make sure we could hear the game and more importantly the commercials over the noise of the ergs. I really didn't have a game plan on how to attack this erg piece but to spice it up Ann suggested that we could take a power ten every time the Giants got a touchdown. This was a bad move. The Giants scored one touchdown the whole game! There was one point during the first half that we saw the Giants player run down field and into the endzone. Looked like a touchdown to me so we took a ten. False alarm! There was some kind of penalty on the play so it didn't count.

By the end of the first half I had the pattern down. Every time there was a punt they would break to a series of commercials, usually about four. If I remember correctly this Super Bowl had a record number of punts.

At half time we refuelled with some water, Gatorade, fruit, crackers and peanut butter, changed into some dry clothes and were ready to go.

The second half wasn't as easy as the first but it was a few minutes shorter.

When we returned to the kitchen at the end of the game there actually was some food left, though Ann's husband said he felt like the dog in that Budweiser commercial.

By the end of the game, 2 hrs, 53 minutes and 57 seconds later (not including half time) combined we had rowed over 69,377 meters. Ann attained her goal of rowing more than last year's game by over 4,000 meters! She has already said she will try to do even more next year!

All in all it really wasn't bad. I'm actually looking forward to doing it again next year and like Ann I will try to recruit a few suckers to join us!

Picture Worth a Thousand Words
The Annual Winter Park HS Super Bowl Erg, from Derek Richmond

Click for larger version,
which can be sent as postcard

Sunday night no TV....
From RowingCrow:

Well, I did it again. This time I had to do it at the boathouse sans television. The super bowl on radio is a completely different experience. No Budweiser ads, no trendy Mountain Dew ads. They have public service anouncements about mammograms. (No really, that's not an exaggeration.) The announcers aren't exactly first-string, either. They say things like, "The Rams, moving from right to left on your radio dial...." (!) I guess nobody listens to the Super Bowl on the radio. At least I didn't have to watch the inane half-time show. The workout seemed easier than last year--the quarters were more even time-wise. The 3rd and 4th quarters were about the same. Radio doesn't tell you how many minutes remaining very often. I think that's better, not to know. This year I noticed that half-time takes too long, in the middle of an erg piece. I got too cold. And, as much as I like Steve McNair (almost as much as I dislike John Elway), I was really, really glad they didn't score that last touchdown.

Painted Faces, but No Football
From Kyle Marchesseault

I did not take this one on but a couple teammates of mine at Dartmouth, Frank Thorn, Kermit Cook, and Ned Hall did the "Braveheart" erg (entire movie, start to finish). Comes out to a little over three hours of fun

A Stupid Game Anyway... From Harriet Hamilton:

Thanks to you passing on Peter Olrich's super bowl workout I have a much greater appreciation of the NFL play clock. Even though I live in Atlanta I got to the point in the 4th quarter where I was thinking, "Let it go, already. You've lost. Just get it over with." I cursed every time either quarterback would go back to pass: "No, no, run it up the middle!" The first 4 minutes of the 4th quarter took about 30 minutes to play. And I was already tired. (Luckily the 3rd quarter only lasted 27 minutes.) Then those silly Falcons started calling time outs at the end just to use them up-they didn't even have the ball. After over 2 and a half hours I was starting to lose my enthusiasm for the whole project, although I did sprint the last 2 minutes. It's a stupid game, and I've never liked John Elway, anyway.

How Far Did You Go? From Winter Park Men's Crew:

We read on your excrutiating erg workout page about your superbowl erg. Three members of the Winter Park High School men's crew team are writing to let you know that it is now half time... we're still going strong at about 17000 down each. We'll resume the piece after the halftime show. We would like to know how many others did this same erg, and how far they went. Could you please ask others how far they went and how they did.