Coach Thrasher

Erg-A-Thon Report

Palo Alto Rowing Club held its annual Erg-A-Thon fundraiser on Saturday at Lytton Plaza in downtown Palo Alto. The program holds the event once a year in the spring as a fundraiser and exhibition for the program. Athletes in the program ask friends and family for a small donation to help fund their rowing program. The athletes in turn pledge to row for a full 60 minutes, non-stop, on a Concept II rowing machine - which takes some athletic prowess.

Our goal was for each athlete to get 20 people to donate $50 each to their 60 minute effort. If everyone in the club did that PARC would easily be able to purchase a new 8+ from Hudson with the income. As it is this year, we're debt-servicing our loans for boats purchased from Hudson, but not yet fully owned by PARC. It's like buying a new car - we're not able to pay for it all at once, but over a few years it'll finally be paid off. I think it's a difficult decision to do that given that new rowers next year will have to pay debt-service on equipment that some rowers get to row in, as new, this year. As a new and building program, there's really no alternative short of a large donation from a family or corporation. These boats run nearly $30k US, fully equipped.

So how was it organized to get everyone on our limited equipment? We had around 12 ergs set out under folding tents to keep the sun/rain off. Rowers were assigned a time to start, and we had 5 teams that had to arrive 30 minutes prior to their start to warm-up and stretch. We started at 7am, and finished around 1pm. Transitions between teams lasted about 15 minutes as people gathered themselves up off of the ergs.

We had nearly every member of the program out for the ergathon. Some of the athletes were trying for a PR. One of the novice boys, a freshman named Alex, averaged better than 1:57/500m splits for the whole hour. Go Alex!

I'm happy to say that this year Georgia, my dog, was well fed by many rowers at the event. She especially liked the homemade powerbars from Donna, and the banana bread with blueberries (from who?). The parent and booster volunteers kept a food/information table well stocked with food for people, and information for people passing by on the sidewalk. (I think we picked up a few donations from people that had rowed elsewhere and were happy to see rowing growing out here on the west coast.) The food at this event really keeps people around to cheer on everyone else suffering through their 60 minutes.

Posted at 09:35PM Apr 02, 2006 by jason in Rowing  |  Comments[4]