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.
Happy rowing and pleasant nostalgia to you.