Month: June 2016

Today is the longest day of the year and Concept2.com had a rowing challenge for this day, called the Solstice Challenge.

So that was the reason for choosing 21,000 meters for today’s rowing session.

Happy trails.

Today’s rowing session was 9500 meters with eyes shut while maintaining a constant, easy, good-feeling effort level.

Time can seem to drag if rowing at an easy, non-racing pace and watching the distance count down to zero.  But time seems to fly by if I shut my eyes and count strokes until I reach the total of what it should be for 1,000 meters, then open my eyes to check progress, then do the same thing for the next 1,000 meters.

Happy trails.

Before deciding what to do in the way of rowing today, I looked on the Oarbits app and saw a scheduled session named “40 min easy,” with the description that it would be at 75% HR max.

Everyone’s HR max is different and so everyone’s 75% is also different.  The “Easy” part is what I liked because I wasn’t ready yet for another 10K race.  I wasn’t going to pay  attention to keeping HR at 75% HR max, which would be around 143.  I was just going to do the EASY part. So I joined the digital river session.

I started out very easy for about the first half until I felt warmed up and then picked up the pace a little bit. As you can see from the results below, each person’s definition of an easy 40 minute row was different:

Averaging heart rate for each of the 20 splits gives an average of about 126 bpm which is lower than my 75% HR max.  But it felt 100% easy.

Here’s the session report for today:

Happy trails.

 

Today’s session was 12K easy, while watching an episode of Star Trek.

Happy Trails.

Today’s session was 15,000 meters at very easy effort level. Maintaining aerobic base, burning calories…

Happy trails.

Today’s session was 10K online with several other rowers who were located in Canada, France, Italy, Germany and one other guy besides me who was in America.

Before the 10K I did a 7 minute warm up.

For the 10K I planned to row a pace of 2:12.7/500 meters, which would be fairly easy and 1/10th of a second/500m faster than I’d entered into this season’s rankings so far for a 10K.

But after it started, the guy in Italy kept even with me and then picked up the pace slightly.  I picked up the pace slightly also, to stay even with him and we settled into a pace of about 2:05 for a few thousand meters.  At a little more than halfway, he went a little faster and so did I.  It was turning into a race but so far it was fun and there was no strain.

He picked up the pace a bit more and I started thinking about whether I wanted to continue staying even and wait until the last 500 meters to do a finish sprint or… if perhaps he would be able to sprint faster than me in those last 500 meters then perhaps I should pick up the pace earlier and see if he would let me get a lead before the last 500 meters.

I did the latter and picked up the pace to 1:59+ for the last 2,000 meters and gained about 35 meters on him to finish ahead. I looked him up on concept2.com and he appears to be quite competitive because his photo shows him at the C.R.A.S.H.-B. races in Boston in 2014.  So maybe he let me win. Whether he let me win or not, the race was fun and a nice change of pace from rowing a slow 15K with my eyes closed.

So this is for him if he happens to read this blog post: Grazie, Matteo.

Happy trails.

Today’s session was another 15K.  This one was done at what felt like an easy effort level.  It went “by feel” because I rowed with eyes closed again.

Today’s perception of “easy” was a higher effort level than yesterday’s.  I don’t know why energy level perception varies from day to day but the reason I felt lower energy yesterday might have had something to do with having taken an oxycodone pill yesterday afternoon after getting a wood sliver stabbed deep into a finger tip.  Diane tried to remove it, but it was too deep.  So I decided to soak it overnight and see if she could remove it the next day.  Took another oxycodone that evening before bed.  The pain wasn’t excruciating by any means but it was a bit distracting and I wanted to be able to sleep that night.

The oxycodone pills were from a small prescription for it which a dentist had given to me in 2012.  I never needed to resort to them in 2012 and so they sat unused for about four years until yesterday when I took one and then 6 hours later took a second one before going to bed.  I slept well but felt a bit sluggish the next morning, which might have been the main reason for feeling low energy when rowing yesterday.

Diane couldn’t remove the sliver yesterday, so I ended up going to an urgent care facility where a skilled doctor with the right tools was able to remove it quickly.  The most time consuming thing about the urgent care visit was filling out the paperwork.

The doctor asked how I’d gotten the sliver so I told him I’d reached for a wooden board on a shelf and got the sliver stabbed into my finger as soon as I touched the board.  I added, “Next time I’ll wear gloves.”

While the doctor was treating me, he showed me one of his fingers which had the remnants of some expanding foam still stuck to it.  He said it was impossible to remove and he had to just let it wear off because it seemed to have bonded to his skin like super glue.

I said, “You weren’t wearing gloves?”  He responded, “That’s what she said,”  referring to his wife, who made that comment when he showed her his hand.

So a question is: If either of our wives had been doing what we did, would they have donned gloves first?

Diane didn’t say anything to me about not wearing gloves when I got the sliver.  She has pulled many cactus thorns out of me, which gloves would not have prevented and so maybe it didn’t occur to her to pose the question about wearing gloves when handling sliver-covered wooden boards.

One of the reasons I’ve been doing 15K lately is to build up a “reserve” of meters rowed which will enable me to take some time off when and if needed this season.  One of the goals for this season is to finish with a daily average distance rowed of up to 10% more than last season.  The daily average so far is in excess of 14,000 meters.  10% more than last season would be a daily average of 9,469 meters.  So there is a comfortable reserve building up which will allow some time off from rowing when necessary.

Happy trails.

To compare easy rowing to walking, it is like a slow uphill walk.

But rowing uses more muscles than walking

Indoor rowing is like rowing against the current of a river at exactly the same speed as the current, so the boat remains motionless relative to the river bank (floor and the walls of the room).

Today’s session was another easy 15K like yesterday, except today’s included a 500 meter sprint starting when the distance counted down to 1,000 meters.  That sprint increased total calories burned by 8.  To compare apples to calories, that extra 8 calories would be the equivalent to about 1/2 ounce of apples.

Happy trails.

Today’s rowing session was done at an easy pace of about 2:28/500 meters.  That translates to about 7.5 mph, which is faster than a horse… if you limit your equine thoughts to only seahorses.  Which are actually fish. According to what I could find on the subject of how fast can a seahorse swim, the answer was: their top speed is about 3 miles per hour.

 

Today’s rowing was done in a manner that seems to make time pass very quickly by rowing with eyes closed. I counted each stroke, starting at the beginning of the session. When the count reached 130 strokes I opened my eyes and watched the first 1,000 meters finish.  Then I closed my eyes and counted each stroke until the count reached 130 again, opened my eyes and watched the next 1,000 meters finish.   Et cetera.  At the pace I was rowing, it took about 13 rowing strokes per 100 meters and 130 per 1,000 meters.

Counting was a background activity in the mind while I rowed at that relaxed pace, did some mindful meditation and also thought about things such as recent conversational topics with Diane.

Happy trails.

Today’s indoor rowing was done in silence in the respect that no music was playing during the session.  There were the other usual sounds: the rotation of the C2 flywheel, the rhythmic whooshing of air out of the flywheel shroud and the sound of a fan in the room.  All of those sounds are white-noise, surfy-type sounds. Eyes were closed most of the time except for periodically opening them to check on progress and glance at the readings on the RowPro screen and Concept 2 PM (machine-mounted personal monitor).

It was done at a “walking” pace for rowing, instead of a “jogging” or faster pace.  The distance was set to 15,000 meters.  Even though the pace was so leisurely that my heart never even got up into heart rate zone 1, the lowest of the five aerobic heart zones… it still burned a nice amount of calories.  Which illustrates that walking is great exercise… if done for a long enough time. Rowing at a walking pace burns more calories than literal walking, because rowing exercises many more muscles in the body. To burn a comparable amount of calories by walking, a person could wade in water.

I like to row fast but it’s best in a race.   So  I just keep watching for an occasional scheduled internet race at an opportune time.

Happy trails.