When you do a 2k test on a rowing machine, you get two thirds of the way through it before you start feeling like you’ve pushed your body to the absolute limit. 2k takes less than ten minutes, but it’s the most strenuous exercise I’ve ever done in my life. Never have I felt more exhausted after a workout - and that’s including the times in my life when I used to exercise for 2 hours a day. Anyway, once you’re on the last 800 meters, you’re absolutely certain that your body is just going to give out. You feel horrible. You think you’re going to puke or faint or cry. I actually thought I might wet myself. You truly believe you’re going to collapse right now…
…and then you keep going.
You think your body can’t possibly do anything more, but you’re wrong. You think you have mere seconds left before your muscles give out, but you keep going for another five minutes. Your coach keeps cheering you on, even though you’re saying out loud that you’re going to vomit, that you can’t do it, that you won’t be able to finish. The coach hears you, but doesn’t respond, just tells you to breathe, to push, the keep on working.
Four minutes later, you’re done. Four minutes after you thought you’d pushed your body to the absolute limit. You’ve stayed in that state for, quite literally, a hundred times longer than you thought you could.
That’s why you want to do it again.
