Today’s indoor rowing session was 10,000 meters at a mostly easy pace, with 2 or 3 faster intervals toward the end. The last 2-3K was mostly warm down.
Happy rowing to you.
A 10K Sort Of Day
Month: November 2017
Sleeping To Row, Rowing To Sleep
The above cartoon was found on the Condé Nast website as one of the results for images when I searched for “rowing” and “sleep”. I thought it was particularly appropriate after the especially good night’s sleep I had last night, which was greatly helped by yesterday’s rowing. After yesterday’s inspired-by-lively-company half-marathon, I felt extremely relaxed and slept about 30 minutes longer than average and very soundly last night.
For that reason (good sleep), I’d like to row fast and hard or even race every single day, but there is a real danger of over-training if a person does too much too hard and I don’t know what my own boundaries are. So I lean toward taking it easy, most of the time. If you’ve never heard of the over-training syndrome, it is something you should read about and take special care to avoid. Rowing is ethereal but over-training syndrome is dismally earthbound and can drag a person down, down down. I’d rather stay “up,” so I try to avoid over training.
When in doubt, row easier during long rowing sessions and be moderate with the amount of racing you allow yourself. Racing is fun and the “pain” is like the pain of jalapeño peppers. It goes away and gives you an emotional boost and desire to do it again. A person can overdo it with jalapeño peppers and also with exercise and racing, but in moderate and reasonable amounts, they can both be positive, healthy addictions.
Today’s rowing was a recovery session, 8,000 meters, with a couple intervals and sprints in the mix.
Happy rowing and peaceful sleeping to you.
Lively Company Makes For Lively Rowing
Today’s rowing session was scheduled about a day in advance and there were two other guys who signed up and rowed. They could row a lot faster than me, so they took turns with one of them pacing even with me while the other one would sprint ahead and then slow down to let us catch up. It was a great session as far as I was concerned and I made a season-best time in the half marathon.
A few hours after today’s rowing session, while Diane and I were having dinner, I noticed that some of the muscles in my upper body, arms and even my hands felt a bit sore. It was a pleasant soreness, not a painful feeling. It must have been because of the higher than usual amount of effort I’d allowed myself to exert during today’s half-marathon. (See the caption below the screenshot at the top of this page, for a description of how it went.)
Happy rowing to you.
Keep Rowing While People Come And Go
Today’s indoor rowing session was scheduled a day in advance. It was another half-marathon and two (TWO!!!) other rowers signed up for the session. Only one of them showed up though. The guy who showed up was located in Oklahoma. I told him that I’d pace him/row alongside him, if he didn’t row too fast. He didn’t row too fast, but he did row a bit slower than the range of paces I’d anticipated and so… after about one or two kilometers, I decided to pick up the pace, so I’d be finished with the session before dinner time.
It was just as well, that I didn’t row at his pace because he had some kind of connection problem before half the distance was completed and I rowed most of the distance alone anyway.
Happy rowing to you.
Company Is Good
Today’s rowing session was a half-marathon scheduled online about 24 hours in advance. The most popular online rowing sessions seem to be those that are 30 minutes or up to 10,000 meters. A half marathon seems to be much less popular.
I titled today’s online rowing session as “I will finish if you will”. By the time it was scheduled to begin, nobody else had joined it. Like I said, the half marathon isn’t one of the more popular distance for online rowing. Just check the Oarbits site for yourself, on a daily basis, to confirm that assertion. (After you go to the Oarbits web page, click the Schedule tab or the Results tab, to look at the collection of times and distance rowed online.) One of the most popular online rowing sessions seems to be 30 minutes.
If you look closely at the first two screenshots above, you might notice that RowPro 5 for the Mac is doing something very weird with the characters of the Canada rower’s name. Apparently it can’t handle some of the letter accents used by those who spell their names in other than standard American/English/British spelling. Hopefully, this WordPress blog thing can handle them. The other rower spelled his name André Doré, according to the way it is displayed in Oarbits results as you can see in the screenshot immediately below this paragraph:
I’ve never rowed with him before, to my best recollection but it would be nice to row with him again because he not only rowed 18,000 meters with me, but we kept apace with each other the entire time and he finished the entire half-marathon. So today’s rowing session, in contrast to yesterday’s, was a finished symphony. Good company.
Happy rowing to you.
More Than Half Unfinished Symphony
The longer distance indoor rowing sessions are like symphonies. Symphonies of inner music, ambient sound, thoughts and feelings, sweat and emotions. Today’s rowing piece was scheduled online a few hours in advance, but not in time for anyone who was interested to notice it and sign up. It was a half marathon, which is one of the longer of the standard indoor rowing sessions or “events” (they are events, if part of a competition).
But this was no competition and because nobody else joined in, it wasn’t much of a symphony either.
After a little more than halfway through the 21,097 meters, at about 14.5K, I sort of lost interest and stopped.
If any of this blog’s readership are wondering how the “symphony” of replacing and installing a new water heater has progressed, above this paragraph is a photo of one perspective of the current state of things in that rearrangement of arrangement. The old water heater was removed and replaced by the new one. But the new one was a little bit too big, from its front to its back, to allow the door to be closed on its metal enclosure. So the enclosure had to be removed and a larger one obtained.
But the larger one is different from the original enclosure, because the larger one has two horizontal braces across its back. The original enclosure had no braces across its back. There are pipes, both vertical and horizontal, which are in the way of placing the new enclosure with its braces. So I’m going to have to remove the horizontal metal braces and attach the enclosure directly to the wall of the house. A bit of a bother, but it will have to be done. In the meantime, the “symphony” of removing and replacing the hot water heater is unfinished. But neither half marathons nor the hot water heater installation have been forsaken.
Happy rowing to you and may you have plenty of hot water for your shower afterward.
6344 And More
Today’s main rowing session was 6,344 meters out of a total of 21,126 meters. The 6,344 meters was for the Indoor Rowers League’s November 2017 competition. The distance of 6,344 meters was chosen in honor of the experience, book and website of mountaineer and author Joe Simpson, who had the experience which led to the book whose cover is pictured immediately above this paragraph.
I did five rowing pieces today: A warmup, 30 minutes online with 4 other guys, 10 minutes easy, 6,344 meters at semi-race pace, a warm down and finally a 4,000 meter supplemental distance just for the sake of adding more meters to today’s total.
Happy rowing to you.
Rowed Ten Minutes After Too Much To Tell About Water Heater
Today was similar to yesterday in that most of the time was used working to remove the old water heater, cleaning out the pack rat debris that had been under the old heater, and placing the new water heater in the space. Then it was discovered that though the side-to-side dimensions of the new heater allowed it to fit comfortably, the front-to-back dimensions were about 6 inches too much.
So both the heater and its protective metal shed had to be removed. Then I had to make a trip to Home Depot to get a larger metal shed, which will require assembly.
The new water heater has feet, so its bottom doesn’t touch the ground and it does not matter if the ground gets wet.
While we are deciding what to do about the weird-looking two-level slab, the new water heater is hooked up and working so that we have hot water in the meantime.
There was no time for an ordinary rowing session today, after all the time spent with the water heater. So I rowed for ten minutes.
Happy rowing and plenty of hot water to you.
No Time For Rowing So I Rowed For Five Minutes
The time that would have included normal rowing today was swallowed up by busy-ness with the water heater.
The 15 year-old leaky one was removed, the new one was unboxed, the new one and its manual were examined and it was discovered that it is flat-bottomed without feet and the manual specifically says that it should only be used indoors and on a floor which is always dry.
Ours is installed outdoors and its floor gets wet … whenever we have rain. I’d told the Home Depot salesman it was going to be used outdoors …. long story, but bottom line is that it was returned and I did not get a different hot water heater from Home Depot because they said that all their water heaters are footless, flat-bottomed the same as the one we returned.
So I checked Ace Hardware, which had one and only one to choose from. But that particular brand had extremely low ratings and many bad reviews. So I checked Lowe’s and Sears and got one from Lowe’s. By the time that was all done, it was too late to do my daily rowing and too dark outside to install the new water heater.
So, since there was no time today for rowing, I rowed for five minutes.
Happy rowing to you.
A Preview Of Tomorrow’s Warm Up
The above photo shows the dusty top of our current hot water heater. It looks easier to work with than some of the water heaters I saw in some of the youtube videos watched yesterday. Tomorrow’s pre-rowing warmup might consist of disconnecting and removing the current water heater which has developed a leak, and replacing it with a new one of the same capacity. I say it might be tomorrow’s warmup, because some of the guys who made youtube videos of their work to remove and replace hot water heaters…. made the remark that they worked up a sweat in the process.
Today’s rowing consisted of 10,000 meters which was done about the same as yesterday with the exception that I used a lower stroke rate for the early few thousand meters and when I reached 7,000 meters I went from 185 Watts to a moderate sprint of around 230-250 Watts briefly, so as to quickly get the heart rate up to the goal of 158 BPM. Once HR topped 158, I immediately slowed to a tapering warm down for the remaining approximately 3,700 meters.
Happy rowing to you.