One World Record, 24 Hours

By Nick Morinigo | Wednesday, February 18, 1998

On Friday, January 30th at 8:00 p.m., the men's crew team began a mission: to break the world record for most meters rowed in twenty-four hours. It required a furious pace — an average time of under one minute thirty seconds for five hundred meters, the standard measure of how fast an ergometer (indoor rowing machine) is pulled.

The typical college oarsman can hold this pace for no more than forty-five seconds. Teams of ten oarsmen would take turns rowing for an hour, each team responsible for rowing three or four of these one hour shifts over the twenty-four hour period.

The event was set in Food Court, with huge caches of Gatorade and Power Bars littering the floors, the blaring of an enormous stereo, and hordes of lycra laden rowers milling about.

The first shifts, fresh and charged, led off at a blistering pace with the hands to
prove it; the average pace plummeted to a minute twenty-seven seconds for five hundred meters. My first shift was Friday 11:00 p.m., and at first I was swept away by the relative chaos and festivity instead of the task at hand.

Once I had taken a few turns on the machine, adrenaline started to flow and I quickly acclimated. I finished just after midnight, and lounged at Food Court with my teammates until after 1:00 a.m. Realizing I had only five hours to rest, I knew I should rest, but lingering endorphins kept me from sleep until two or three.

At 6:00 the next morning, as the local philhellenists were winding down, I was
back on the ergometer.

Rather than the aromatic scent of Folger's, I had the invigorating odor of the last sixty sweat-drenched bodies to pique my alertness; instead of turning on the morning news, I fired up AC/DC to a profane volume, much to Mass Row's dismay.

After my second shift, I struggled to walk to breakfast, feeling the effects of two hours of explosive sprints.

I was amazed we were still ahead of our goal, keeping this torrid tempo, considering the physical and organizational demands the feat required.

Imagine peddling on an exercise bike as fast as you possibly can, and then, when exhausted, getting off the seat and out of the foot bindings and being replaced by your counterpart in less than a second.

Then imagine doing this for an hour with ten persons and keeping this rotation and pace with only sixty other persons for twenty-four hours.

This is a lofty enough task assuming: everyone who is supposed to shows up at 4:00 a.m.; no one dies of exertion, and you are not interrupted by the EMS.

Then, of course, this assumes that you do not demolish the machine from your brute strength — Doug Van Citters had to do a dismount with a half backwards somersault and hop on a spare during his inspired turn.

For the final two hours the order of the ten man teams was abandoned altogether and the event quickly became an energized melee of rowing. At this point, we knew the record would be ours; the question became, 'By how much?' With increased rest, oarsmen began to sprint with rabid fury.

The room was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with screaming spectators and oarsmen fighting to add the most meters to the record. With a humidity that may have exceeded one hundred percent and testosterone so profuse it was pooling, you could swim through the room.

With forty-six minutes and thirty seconds left, the Dartmouth Freshmen Lightweights, Varsity Lightweights, Freshmen Heavyweights, and Varsity Heavyweights had joined to achieve a world record when senior Liam Krehbiel broke the mark held previously by Boston University.

In the end, Dartmouth Crew shattered the former world record by over 17,000 meters. The crews had rowed 497,072 meters, over 310 miles, all in twenty-four hours.

One World Record, 24 Hours

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