During this 15-day Concept 2 Rowlympic Challenge, I’m trying to make each day of my rowing different.
If you wonder what the title, “EONs of fun…” refers to you will find out a few paragraphs down. It is a pun on someone’s name plus the fact that when I was rowing the piece which included him, it was so much fun that it fit the definition of the English word “eon,” which means “an indefinite and very long period of time”. During that particular session, time seemed to stretch out and last longer than it actually did.
Today the rowing consisted of two main online pieces and there were rowers in 9 different countries: Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Poland and the United States. You might say it had an international element.
The first piece was 5K which I did at a vigorous but not race pace and an online 6K which I did at a somewhat more vigorous but not all-out race pace. No race-pace for me because after all… what would be the point of me trying to do any piece as fast as I can? There is no monetary reward nor medals nor fame with any dame (Diane is not impressed, no matter how fast I row).
Though … Diane once did seem sort of impressed when I rowed as fast as I could for her in a short sprint to show her that I could get the calories/hour readout momentarily as high as about 2,500 cal/hour… and then stopped. When I stopped all of a sudden without gradually slowing down, she raised her voice a bit and said something to the effect that I needed to WARM DOWN GRADUALLY! So I wouldn’t have a heart attack!. 🙂
So… since I can’t impress the women or earn any money by rowing as hard as possible to the point of almost dropping off the C2 in exhaustion, I just row for fun and health, at whatever pace feels good at the moment. Mostly, I row slow, most of the time.
There were actually 4 pieces rowed today, if the 10 minute warm up and 15 minute warm down were counted. But who’s counting?
The session that was the MOST FUN today was the 6K. But first was the 5K which I did with a targeted pace of 2:05/500 meters. The result was exactly precisely 2:05/500 meters. But even that 5K was fun, because Wilbert de Jong of Germany asked, before it started, if I’d like to row at 1:22/500 meters. I replied that if he rowed at 1:22/500 meters, he would deserve a gold medal. When we rowed the 5K, Wilbert paced right along side me and matched my 2:05/500 meter pace…. until the last 500 meters or so when he unleashed himself and sprinted at speeds up to and including 1:22/500 meters. Very impressive. He truly deserved a gold medal for that.
The 6K was more fun for me because I aimed for a faster pace, about 2:02/500m with the intention of sprinting the last 500 meters. One of the others, EON Phillipe of France, started out rowing quite a bit faster than me. But then perhaps he got bored because there was nobody close to the pace he wanted to row, to race with him. So he slowed down and let me catch up and then he sprinted ahead to gain about 25 meters lead. Then he slowed down again to let me catch up again. Then he sprinted a tiny bit but not for long and slowed down even more, to let me get a little lead. Then he sprinted to catch up and then slowed again to let me get ahead again. I kept rowing at a more or less constant pace of around 2:02/500m.
EON let me get about 28 meters ahead of him by the time the remaining distance was down to about 500 meters to go and then he sprinted faster than he had done at any time before in the 6K. I had already decided that I was going to sprint for the last 500 meters, so we both sprinted to the finish line. EON was still rowing faster than me and catching up to within a few meters, when I crossed the finish line. It was a lot of fun and I am very thankful to EON for what he did to make it so enjoyable.
Here’s the data for today:
Happy trails to you, until we meet again.