ULTIMATE VARSITY WORKOUTS

Sport: Men's Heavyweight Crew

Coach: Harry Parker

Title: "Tour de Stade"

Workout: One of the toughest dry-land workouts from legendary Coach Parker. Rowers run up and down all 37 stadium sections--field to top row--as quickly as possible. Parker's "gold-standard": 100 sections in 1 HOUR. Ouch.

Title: "Tour de Charles"

Workout: Coach Parker has the crew paddle through as much of the Charles as humanly possible: boathouse to the Science Museum, then up river to Watertown and back to the start for a grueling total of 17 miles. Translation: 1 1/2 hours of steady pain. Nice views... but is it worth it? Says Captain Henry G. Nuzum '99 of the infamous tour: "You don't even notice the scenery after about three minutes... my butt was real sore afterwards."

Sport: Men's Cross-Country

Coach: Frank Haggerty

Workout: Coach Haggerty doesn't hesitate to put his team to the test. A typical workout is a non-stop run in hilly Arlington at varying speeds. Aim for these splits: 4:44 for the first mile, 5:44 for the second mile, 2:12 for the next half-mile, then 11 minutes of the infamous "fartlek": 1 min. full-out, 1 min. jogging, 1 min. full-out, etc., for 12 minutes. Then for the final cool-down, another half-mile at a 2:12 pace. And if that's not enough, team members can always count on Coach Haggerty's 13 mile Saturday morning distance jog.

Sport: Women's Diving

Coach: Keith Miller

Title: Halloween Bonanza

Workout: Every year around Halloween coach Miller switches things up when he has his team practice diving in full clothing. Not only that, they set up a slip-and-slide on the 7-foot platform for belly-flopping fun. There's also the annual naked dive (date withheld for obvious reasons).

Sport: Women's Swimming

Coach: Stephanie Wriede

Title: "Fifty 100s"

Workout: Coaches Stephanie and Katherine have a favorite workout that they grew up on themselves while swimming for Harvard. swimmers know it simply as the "Fifty 100s." The details: alternation between a pair of 100-meter sprints and pair of 50-meter sprints, with the former getting faster and faster each time and the short pieces getting slower each time, until 28 lengths are over, at which point the process repeats itself in reverse, with the 50s getting faster and the 100s getting slower. Get that? The end result is three grueling miles for the day.

Sport: Fencing

Coach: Branimir Zivtovio

Workout: So what does one DO at fencing practice? It goes like this, according to Coach: the afternoon begins with a good half-hour of calisthenics, fancy footwork, warm-ups and stretching. After that comes time dedicated to "working with the weapon," then a period of partner work. Next is a lesson on the particular skill or technique of the day, and the final touch is a few good rounds of actual bouting. In addition to the cardiovascular demands, the skills of the foil are impressive and hard to attain. Perhaps the sabre team has a future as Jedi stunt doubles in the next Star Wars movie?