dad – Page 81 – Ethereal Rowing

Didn’t Do What She Did

didnt-do-what-she-did

Today’s rowing session was done with a female pace boat but I didn’t do what she did. In other words, I rowed to the beat of my own drummer. I let her get ahead, then caught up and passed and did that a few times. It was invigorating.

Today was also supposed to be a strength-training/pushups day, the 10th week of the 10 week plan. But I skipped it and might do it tomorrow instead. Or the next day… Supposedly, I’m supposed to be able to do 100 pushups consecutively without stopping, after the 10 weeks, but so far my maximum consecutive has been 14, so I have doubts that the “7 Weeks To 100 Pushups” plan is going to live up to its promise.

On the bright side, 14 consecutive pushups is a huge increase over the maximum of 3 that I was able to do before starting this plan.

AH-May-15th-11k--finish AH-May-15th-11k--rpt AH-May-15th-11k--gph

Today RowPro 5 for the Mac didn’t do what it is supposed to do with regard to saving the rowfile so that it could be uploaded to my concept2.com logbook from RowPro. After finishing the session, it was nowhere to be found in the online log listing. So I did a manual entry to log the distance.

Happy doing-your-own-thing rowing, to you.

Happy Mothers Day 2017

for-mothers-day

The above photo was found on a website/blog called Fit and Fabulous After Forty and was chosen for today because today is Mother’s Day! and its an appropriate-for-the-day picture of a mother and a child rowing side by side on Concept 2 rowing machines.

The photo came up when I searched images for the terms mother rowing and is located in an article where the author writes about her experience of participating in a marathon row. It can be found at THIS LINK.

Today’s rowing session for me was 30 minutes online in a group of 7 people including myself.

One of the other rowers asked if anyone planned to row exactly 7,000 meters in 30 minutes and I volunteered to do that pace, which was 2:08.5/500m.

I maintained an average pace of 2:08.5 for the first 28 minutes, but he rowed a bit faster. So when the time counted down to 2 minutes remaining, I sprinted a bit.

AGg-May-14th-30-min-online-finish AGg-May-14th-30-min-online-rpt AGg-May-14th-30-min-online-gph AGg-May-14th-oarbits-30-min-results

Happy rowing, however short or long you stay on the machine.

Do What She Does, Sort Of

bow-handstand — This rower could be somewhat distracting to anyone who is trying to focus on their pace and rating.

The above photo was found on the row2K website at THIS LINK. She can do a nice handstand, while someone else keeps the boat balanced… I wonder what kind of a 2K time she can do?

Today’s indoor rowing session was 11,000 meters with a pace boat. The pace boat had a pace of 2:21 and rating of 24 and its rower was a female with a Finland flag. The latter (female pace boat rower with a Finland flag) is because I discovered that RowPro 5 for the Mac can be set up with customized pace boats and a choice of options for the pace boat rower. So I chose the color of clothes for the pace boat rower and also gave her brown hair and rather pale skin, because I assume that people in Finland don’t get an over abundance of sunshine.

As far as keeping pace with today’s pace boat went, I only “sort of” kept pace, because I was watching a distracting video, some of which was in a foreign language which required me to pay attention to its closed-captioned translation into English.

AGMay-13th-11K-dword-start — The start screen shows the custom pace boat and its female, Finnish rower.

AGMay-13th-11K-finish AGMay-13th-11K-rpt AGMay-13th-11K-gph

Happy pacing to you.

Rowing Helps Fit Bottomed Girls

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The above indoor rowing photo was found on a general fitness website with ladies in mind. It is called Fit Bottomed Girls and is found at this link: fitbottomedgirls.com. The page which the above photo was linked to was on a page about indoor rowing found at THIS LINK which is titled “Indoor Rowing: What You Need to Know – and a Workout to Try”. The “workout to try” seems to be a set of intervals patterned as 6x400r200. That amounts to about 1.5 miles of sprinting and 3/4 miles of resting in between and after each of the half dozen 400 meter sprints. Sounds like fun, so maybe I’ll try it sometime. If I remember….

But … the next set of intervals I will do is this month’s C2CTC challenge, which is 10×0:30r60 which also sounds like a lot of fun. It’s results will be posted here sometime before this month is over.

Today’s activities were a duad. You might not know what that word means, but if you don’t you can look it up like I did, when I discovered it is an actual word(!) in the Words With Friends game that I play with Diane. Too bad, I never got an opportunity to make that word… Diane used that space when it was her turn the next time, so I had to look elsewhere on the board for whatever word I settled for.

The duad was two activities: strength-training via pushups and also rowing 15K in bits and pieces as combination warmup/down for pushups and in between doing each pushups set. Had to interrupt the whole thing in the middle, to take Diane for an eye exam which required dilation of the limpid pools of her lovely blue eyes. That’s why the 15th split of the 15K is over two hours – that’s when I performed the job of chauffeur.

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Today’s strength training/pushups results all fit on the bottom line labeled F (for Friday) of the screenshot below:

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Happy bottom fitness attainment to you.

Do What The Other Rower Does

do-what-that-rower-does — A pace boat like this one might inspire more than a few short daydreams.

Today was a rest day from the strength-training/pushups program and so the only thing I did in the way of exercise was rowing. And trimming a little bit of a cactus.

The rowing today was 11K done with RowPro and in the accompaniment of a single pace boat. It was done offline, because RowPro pace boats can only be generated when you row offline. If you want a pace boat when you are rowing online, you have to rely on another person who is also online and who is in the same session with you.

The pace boat was set to a pace of 2:20/500m and a rating (strokes per minute) of 25. I tried to focus on the pace of 2:20 and let the rating be whatever it would be.

For anyone who is not acquainted with indoor rowing in the company of a pace boat, that’s one significance in the title of today’s post: reference to the fact that I was using a pace boat. The other significance, of course, was humor, which is one of the little angels usually present on one of my shoulders. I shouldn’t have to explain these things, but Diane has told me more than once that my humor is not obvious. So I guess Diane thinks humor should be obvious but in my opinion, humor is better when it is not obvious.

A couple times or more during the session, I went off on daydreams and got separated from the pace boat by a few meters before I noticed what was happening, but most of the time we were side by side within less than one meter difference.

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Happy rowing alongside a pace boat to you.

Fitness Is Good

fitwit-blog

The above indoor rowing photo was found on a website called FitWit, whose site is at THIS LINK. The particular page where the photo was found was called “5 Reasons to Try an Indoor Rowing Class” located at this particular link. The physical location of the facilities seems to be in the Atlanta area, but you might find the website is interesting even if you don’t live near Atlanta.

Today’s session was strength-training/pushups and 11K of rowing during warmup/down & rests between sets for the strength training:

AEe-May-10th-11K-finish AEe-May-10th-11K-rpt AEe-May-10th-11K-gph pu-wk-9-session-2

May you have a happy journey rowing to fitness and health.

No Flared Nostrils Today

Today was not a day for me to enjoy the phenomena of flared nostrils. I didn’t row hard enough…. I’m still in the groove (or perhaps stuck in the rut?) of rowing easy and rather intermittently while multitasking with other activities. But … when you are rowing at an effort level which causes your nostrils to flare and requires your mouth to be open so that you can get a larger volume of oxygen-loaded air into your lungs with each inhalation… that’s when it is the most invigorating.

Today’s session was 11K while watching a mostly boring attempt at sci-fi in a Netflix video. Still a bit sore from the strength-training session yesterday. That soreness from strength-training seems to be a daily presence, but it is resulting in better and longer sleep most nights, which is an excellent benefit.

Notice that there is a slight glitch with the session report generated by RowPro 5 for the Mac for this session, evident in some of the columns of split number 4.

AE-May-9th-11K-finish AE-May-9th-11K-rpt AE-May-9th-11K-gph

Happy nostril-flaring to you. closeup-of-flared-nostrils

Row Push Up Row Etc

smiling-faces — They are smiling because rowing is fun.

The above photo was found at THIS LINK. And that link is just one of many pages on an excellent British rowing website called British Rowing, which you can find at THIS link. I say the site is “excellent,” because it looks nice … I haven’t really explored it or spent much time there at all. I did try exploring what it had to say about doing online challenges but ended up just going in circles, so the website might need a little bit of refining at least in that particular area.

Today was a day to do another strength-training session. Since I also wanted to log at least 10,500 meters, it was made more efficient by combining the two activities and doing the rowing in bits and pieces during times for warmup/down and rests associated with the strength training.

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The strength-training results:

pu-wk-9-session-1

Smiley rowing to you.

Just Keep Rowing

Just-keep-rowing-book

The title for today’s post is also the title of a book about rowing. I’m wondering whether it would be a good read but haven’t learned enough about it yet, to decide whether to get the book. If you have read it and want to share your opinion, your comments are welcome.

Today’s rowing session was another 10,500 m, done at a mostly very easy pace except for a little pickup toward the end. I’m still slightly sore from the strength-training/pushups session two days ago, so the main thing was to stimulate more blood circulation, to help boost that repair & recovery. The graph of heart rate is very spotty, because it has a low battery and I’m waiting for it to totally quit before replacing the battery.

Considered doing an online session today but when I looked at what was scheduled online, saw nothing before 0400 GMT tomorrow (which would be 9 pm tonight, local time).

May-7-online-view

There were 8 others logged in online besides myself. One of them was already rowing. The other 7 weren’t doing anything or even chatting, so I assumed they were logged in with RowPro but not actively present at their computer keyboards. (See the above screenshot, to understand what I saw when I looked online)

So I opted for another offline solo session, whose screenshots are below.

ACc-May-7th-10500-finish ACc-May-7th-10500-rpt ACc-May-7th-10500-gphs

Happy rowing to you.

Rowing Lightly In The Light Of Netflix

row-in-the-light — The light and scenery outdoors is much more fantastic than anything I’ve experienced with indoor rowing. When I see photos like this one, I vicariously enjoy the experience of the rowers in the photo.

For quite a few rowing sessions now, I’ve only felt inclined to row easy or mostly easy. While I ponder various things, including whether I want to do a marathon this season and do it at any sort of competitive pace.

Today’s rowing was set to a distance of 10,500 meters and was done while alternating between rowing easy and switching from one Netflix video to another, until finally settling on one that held my interest, though just barely. Some parts of it were so predictable that I’d grab the remote and fast-forward through the predictable and boring parts.

I’m still sore from the strength-training/pushups session yesterday. In addition to the pushups recorded in the log whose image is displayed in yesterday’s post, I did more sets after the 7th set and total of 70 shown in the pushups log entry for yesterday. The actual total was 164 pushups yesterday, during an elapsed time of about 90 minutes for all the sets and rest times. The motivation for doing more was to enhance sleep quality last night and it worked. Slept soundly and longly. Longly is not a word, according to the spell checker. Actually, I knew that but it’s okay to be loose with the language as long as the writer has the proper license, which I do. Its called a poetic license.

Anyway – here are the relevant screenshots for today’s bit of indoor rowing:

AC-May-6th-10500-finish AC-May-6th-10500-rpt AC-May-6th-10500-gph

Happy rowing to you.