Today’s rowing session wasn’t boring. That’s because I decided to row a bit harder than yesterday and with a bit of a plan. The overall average Wattage level for today’s main 10K session was around 120 Watts. Have you ever touched a lit 100 Watt light bulb? Or even a lit 60 Watt bulb? Incandescent bulbs are what I’m thinking of. I didn’t feel anywhere near as hot as a 100 Watt incandescent light bulb, but maybe its because I’m bigger than one of those and, unlike those bulbs, I’m cooled by continuous evaporation of water.
Today’s indoor rowing session was a maybe session. I thought “maybe I’ll go for a pace faster than 2:03/500m in a half hour. Maybe.” If I did it, it would have been a season best 30 minutes and would have moved me up several places in the world rankings.
I guess it was a double maybe session and it got the double whammy, which according to Websters is “a combination of two usually adverse forces, circumstances, or effects”. But I don’t know what those two forces etc were and I don’t care enough to ponder them. It was a non-obligatory-to-do-anything-particular rowing session.
After 5K at a pace that about matched my current season best 5K, I decided to slack off and work hard for the entire 30 minutes on another day.
It was a good workout and I should sleep well again tonight, like I slept well last night after yesterday’s 37K.
Warmup graphs30 minute graphs and finish screenEntire session reportRowPro graphs for the 30 minute portionConcept2.com’s online logbook graph for the sessionWarmdown graphs
The above photo is actually of a half marathon, not a full marathon. But it does have a nice view of the FINISH line banner. The photo is found on a website/blog called What. No Mints?
Today I decided to row a marathon to help make up for 5 days of no rowing due to laziness or one of its close relatives. I felt fine after half the marathon. But after another 10K my body started to complain. The mind was not complaining, but it took note of the body’s complaints. I finally decided to stop rather than enter into the torture zone. So the marathon was and will remain unfinished.
An interrupted marathon can be finished but today’s marathon was just plain stopped after a little over 37,000 meters. So it will have to be done over as a new session. At the moment, I’m taking aspirin and advil and hoping those will alleviate the various aches enough that I’ll be able to sleep okay.
Another view of the runners in the same event as the first photo. They will be even happier looking when they reach the finish line. I love the way people look when they are running. You can see the race on their faces. This is from the same blog, called What. No Mints? She hasn’t discovered indoor rowing yet…at least, I didn’t find any mention of rowing when I used the WordPress blog search thing. Instead, it showed several instances of the word “growing” which is totally not rowing.
Here are the screenshots and the report of today’s unfinished marathon.
The finish screen or at least what the screen looked like when I was too finished to keep going.The RowPro report of what was doneYou can see where I took two breaks, for the necessary purpose of visiting the bathroom because I had over-hydrated.The is the way it was charted by the online Concept2 logbook.
Today’s musical accompaniment included more 1950s music. The above screenshot is a picture from the 1950s of some teenagers back then dancing to a song called “At the Hop.”
There were unanticipated interruptions today which forced the rowing to be delayed. So, when I could finally get to the rowing machine, I decided to shorten the workout and only do 5K instead of 10K or more which had been planned.
The 5K accidentally turned out to be a season best, though it felt like a medium workout.
Today’s 10K was done at a bit more than a stroll-equivalent effort and at less than a race pace. I’m not sure if I it should be called “medium” or “medium hard” workout so I’ll toss a coin and let heads be medium and tails be medium hard.
Heads
Today’s performance of the 10K shall be called a Medium Workout.
Today’s indoor rowing was a 10K and it would have been a season best but when the distance counted down to about 8,400 meters the phone rang.
It was the “iceman,” (delivery man for the new icebox). In other words, a new refrigerator to replace the old one which wasn’t keeping things cold enough to avoid food spoilage.
It was scheduled to be delivered sometime between 3pm and 5pm. Those things usually happen later than they say but … this time the delivery guy called to say he was going to be about 40 minutes early.
So I had to stop the 10K, no warmdown, change clothes while I was still drenched in sweat and be ready for the delivery. Made it, with about one minute to spare, though I was still sweating profusely and the dry t-shirt I’d put on when changing out of the rowing clothes was already half-soaked in sweat when I answered the doorbell.
Maybe tomorrow will be another 10K. Maybe not… don’t know yet what tomorrow will bring in the way of mental motivation.
In my rush to end the unfinished 10K session and change clothes, I forgot to get a screen shot of what the RowPro “finish screen” looked like. So all there is to look at below is data and its graphs.
Today’s indoor rowing was set back in time a bit due to birthday present shopping with Diane for one of the children. We decided to go shopping at about the time I would have started rowing, so by the time we returned home there wasn’t much time left for rowing.
The musical accompaniment to today’s rowing was more 1950’s music and the last song in the string of music was by a singer I don’t recall ever hearing of before, Ella Mae Morse. <— The link at the end of the previous sentence is to a Wikipedia article about Ella Mae. She seems to have been a very accomplished and talented singer. The most negative factor which prevented her from becoming more well known was one of her most positive attributes: She was extremely versatile. As the Wikipedia article says, “However, she never received the popularity of a major star because her versatility prevented her from being placed into any one category of music.”
So I guess she was a “star” in all categories and wasn’t given the credit she deserved in any of them. That’s how the world works…. The world basically sucks, and you can read the Bible for plenty of verification of that statement, though the Bible does not use the vocabulary that I just now resorted to.
What does the Bible say about the world? Do your own research, kiddo. But here’s a sample: “For all that [is] in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” And here is another one: “… the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”
But back to Ella Mae Morse: The song I heard which was sung by her was “Rock Me All Night Long” and the Wikipedia article mentions that she had six children. So after reading that I thought: it’s very possible that she spent “all night long” rocking some of those children. Ella Mae deserves a ton of credit for being a mother to six children. Anyone who has children knows that there are times when sleep must be sacrificed, sometimes “all night long,’ for the sake of caring for babies.
Finish screen for today’s short rowingSession reportgraphs
Buddy Holly in the foreground and The Crickets in the background.
Today’s musical accompaniment for indoor rowing included a Buddy Holly song from the 1950s. The band was called “The Crickets” and the particular song being performed when the image above was originally formed was called Peggy Sue. Buddy Holly does some interesting, innovative things with the vocals when he sings this particular song.
One of the things that impresses me the most about Buddy Holly is that he looked like a total nerd or geek (although I don’t think either of those words existed in the 1950s), but his singing and musical talent are top notch. For those of you who are too young to know anything about Buddy Holly, he was a pioneer in American popular music and he died at the very young age of 22. Cause of death: airplane crash when he was a passenger in an airplane which was flying in bad weather that required flying by instruments but the pilot was not certified as qualified for instrument flight. The photo below shows a signpost near where Buddy Holly died when the airplane crashed.
Today’s indoor rowing accompaniment to the Buddy Holly song and other 1950s music was mainly a 30 minute piece with a target pace of 2:10/500 meters. I’m taking a break from the series of 5,000 meter season bests, because I don’t want to overdo it with the 5K season best efforts. The effort level for the 5Ks has risen to the level that I should probably do no more than from one to three per week at the most recent effort level. But if the 5K pace raises very much at all, I’ll have to limit them to no more than one per week.
Today’s main rowing piece was preceded and followed by 10 minutes of warmup and down.
Warmup was 10 minutes. This was the warmup finish screen.Finish screen view for the 30 minute portion.RowPro session reportRowPro graphsThis is how the graphs are displayed in the Concept 2 online logbook.Warmdown was 10 minutes. This was the warmdown finish screen.
The Vikings of ancient history did a lot of rowing so this music selection among today’s musical accompaniment was particularly appropriate because of the name of the singing group.
Today’s indoor rowing session was another incremental increase in average pace for the 5K. Yesterday’s was done at an average pace of 2:06.5/500 meters which was a power level of about 174 Watts. Today’s 5K was done at a pace of 2:06/500 m for the first 4,500 meters and then the pace was increased a bit for the final 500 meters, to bring its average pace to 2:04.9/500m which was a power level of about 180.7 Watts. That difference in pace of less than 2 seconds/500 meters and in power of about 7 Watts more was enough of a difference that I’m categorizing today’s rowing session as “Medium” instead of “Easy”. Purely subjective, but if you look back through each of the recent, incrementally faster 5,000 meter pieces I’ve done, you can easily see that the heart rate is definitely increasing with each increase in pace for the 5K.
The rowing was fun and the music was too. I seem to have run out of Appalachian music to listen to on youtube. And some of the previous music I’d enjoyed, which included “psy trance” and “shuffle dance” “house” music… had grown repetitive and boring. So today’s choice of music was from the decade of 1950s anno Domini and the playlist included such musical hits of that era as “The Del Vikings singing Whispering Bells“. There are literally hundreds of ear-pleasing songs and melodies from that nostalgic era, so I may be listening to 1950’s music for a while.
If you are among those who have been keeping up with this blog for a while, you may have noticed that the rowing sessions that are classified as “mentally absorbing” burn more calories per hour than the ones that are classified as “boring”… It’s true. The harder you row or work at anything, the more mental focus it requires. The more mental focus required for the rowing… the more fun it becomes, in a jalepeńo-pepper-strangely-pleasant-pain sort of fashion.
5K finish screenRowPro’s session reportRowPro’s manner of graphing the session.Concept2.com’s online logbook manner of graphing the session.Warmdown finish screen.
