Today inadvertently began 3 hours before dawn, which is almost three hours earlier than usual. I was wide awake, so I found a boring book to read about a computer operating system. It didn’t lead to any yawning, so I guess it is wrong to call it a boring book. Then I took a couple of super-strong Valerian pills, called “Formula 303.” I seldom resort to them. Their normal use is as a muscle relaxant but they can be a sleep aid if not resorted to very often.
Then I went back to bed and waited for the Valerian to relax me to sleep. But the muscle relaxant must have disagreed with one or more heart muscles, because I started to have irregular heartbeat. Which is very distracting if you are trying to go to sleep. It beats normally, then stops long enough to miss a beat every once in a while. So I gave up waiting for sleep and got up. Before sunrise. As has been normal lately.
Next I made coffee and did all the usual things with the exception of getting ready to row.
I hadn’t decided to do any rowing at all today because I’m signed up for a 5K race tomorrow. And I don’t know anything about training for a race or if there is anything special a person should do before a race… I just joined it for the fun of the experience. Though I don’t know anything about training, resting before a race sounds reasonable. So I contemplated not rowing today.
While I was contemplating not rowing today, I remembered that my driver’s license is about to expire, so I made a trip to Department of Motor Vehicles and renewed my driver’s license. That wasn’t very involved – just a vision test and a new photograph.
Continued contemplating whether or not to do any rowing today.
There was another 5 minute practice session scheduled today, for the Fitness Matters Devon online races. But I didn’t join it because I still hadn’t made up my mind whether to do any rowing today.
By late afternoon, I decided to do 30 minutes of rowing, for the sake of contributing some meters to the concept2.com Fall Team Challenge. So I setup a 30 minute QR (it stands for “Quick Row,” which is what Digital Rowing calls an impromptu, non-scheduled online rowing session). Nobody else joined, for the simple reason that nobody else was online at the moment. Except for someone named “Billy”. But Billy has had a presence in the chat room for a couple days now, so I don’t think he’s really there, though his instance of RowPro has remained logged in and connected.
So I rowed the 30 minutes at a very easy pace and watched part of a documentary about overseas sweat shops where clothes are made for the fashion industry. Another reason, besides budget economy, to ignore fashion and use clothes until they wear out.
Below, is the screenshot and data for today’s slow 30 min QR.
By the way… heart rate returned to normal after I gave up trying to go back to sleep. So it looks like “all systems are go” for racing a 5K tomorrow.
There are 2 heats for tomorrow’s 5K. Quite a few have joined the first heat at 10:00 GMT which is 3:00 am here and the time when I’d rather sleep. So I joined the other 5K heat, scheduled for 2200 GMT which is 3 pm locally and a much more sensible time to be doing such a thing. But so far… I’m the only one who has joined that heat, besides the official race starter. Hmmmm.
Here’s another bit of review related to RowPro 5 for the Mac: The notes feature does not yet work, for adding notes to individual sessions logged. You can add a note to a logged session but… as soon as you close then re-open the logbook, the note is gone. If you are connected to internet, the session uploads before you can add a note. But whether or not you are connected to the internet, the note disappears or is erased or moves to a parallel universe… it is no longer there if you leave the log and then go back after adding a note.
But that is minor, compared to the wonderful freedom and relative ease of being able to run RowPro directly on a Mac without having to install Microsoft in a virtual machine, run it from “Boot Camp,” or have a separate PC for RowPro.
All in all, I’m still very happy with RowPro 5 for the Mac and if it works okay in the race tomorrow I’ll be that much happier. Happy, happy.
Happy trails to you.