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A rowing shell presents several pictures as it glides across still water.
From above, the rower and his craft look like a giant water bug dancing across the surface, the oars making regularly spaced dimples on the calm, flat surface.
From inside the boat, it's the rower pushing to new levels of endurance
leg, arm and chest muscles straining to gain more power, heart
pounding, lungs grabbing at every molecule of oxygen.
But within the racer himself, there is often a kind of mental peace, no matter how competitive the outer world is.
That is what keeps men and women rowing against one another even after they've left their youth.
For Silicon Valley software executive Kirk Krappe, rowing is a lifelong obsession and one which he feels has prepared him for corporate competition.
"I grew up rowing, doing crewing," Mr. Krappe says of the interest which started in boyhood in Africa, and continues to this day on Redwood Creek and San Francisco Bay. The passion includes winning medals in the world championships in 1983 and the Montreal World Master Rowing championships in 2001, where he won his class.
"I've rowed in almost every country I've lived in," he says. He helped establish the California Rowing Association, one of the most active Bay Area rowing clubs.
"It's a very intensive sport," he says, displaying some blisters on his hands from recent rowing. "It's a very, very tough sport. But I love it. I wake up at 5 in the morning to row before work."
"Work" is as president and chief executive officer of Nextance, a Redwood City-based company that makes-software for contract management.
After helping get software maker Corio Inc. off the ground as one of its founding executives, Mr. Krappe was recruited to Nextance in May 2001, about 14 months after it was founded.
"This company had...