It must be confessed that, in spite of the many pleasures indicated as belonging to this training, one gets very tired of it, just as one might tire of living in Arcadia, if, as is probable, there were no Club or Italian Opera there. It is with considerable joy, therefore, that one hails the approach of the race when it is still a week off; but this feeling is apt to be modified as the days draw on after that. "Funk," of course, attacks everybody more or less; but its violence differs very widely in different men. Many of the most unlikely people are most liable to it; and it would probably astonish a good many people were I to say who is the "funkiest" oarsman before a race that I know. I mean by "funk," not the under-estimating of one's chances--for some of the most nervous men have a very shrewd idea of them--but the irrational excitement which keeps the brain constantly thinking of the impending race, and prevents the sufferer from sitting still or having any comfort, or, in the most serious cases, any sleep, for two or three days before it. It is a real malady, which is most distressing to those who are subject to it, but which, luckily, does not do any harm when once the race is begun.
Of the race itself there is very little to say, except one thing, that could not be said equally well of a hard game of football or a foot race across country. The exertion is, no doubt, considerably greater than is involved in either of these, but the physical sensations are very much the same, and anyone who has entered for any race at all knows the sort of feeling of desperate resolve which is the pleasure that racing gives. Except one thing, I said, and it is that thing which puts boat racing, in many people's minds, far above any other form of sport. It is this, that while in a foot race a man can leave off as soon as he finds the exertion more than the prize is worth, and while in football a man may recover his breath in the scrimmage or justifiably leave the work for a moment to the others, in rowing every man knows that, by a single careless stroke, he may throw the whole boat into a confusion from which they often cannot recover for many hundred yards. Everyone is expected in a boat race, and in a University race as much as anywhere, to row his best and hardest every stroke he takes, and never to slack off at all. If it is considered desirable to save up for a spurt at the finish, the "stroke" will do that by putting in a few less strokes to the minute till the time comes. Every man behind him is bound in honesty to the rest to shove every stroke through "as if there were no hereafter"; and when the "hereafter" comes, as it does about Chiswick Eyot, he will have to rely on the thorough condition he is in to pull him through. It follows that the whole secret of a good crew is that each man rows hard because it would not be fair to his neighbours in the boat if he rowed lightly, not entirely because he wants to win the race. I do not want to disparage other sports in the least degree; pluck enters into them fully as much as into rowing. The difference lies in the incentive.