A Ghost In The Tree

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Today’s rowing was different from the past few days’ rowing sessions in that it was started before noon. The distance was 15K and the effort level was easy.

Afterwards, Diane and I worked together to relieve a nearby mesquite tree of its burden of hemiparasitic plant invasion.

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Happy trails to you.

A Non Stop 15K

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Today’s session was a rest day easy row of 15K distance.  It worked out that there was no need to take a break and there were no interruptions, which is always nice.

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Happy trails to you.

Pondering Greatness While Rowing Restfully

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When we think of greatness and creatures associated therewith, the lion frequently comes to mind. The particular lion that comes to my mind is the Lion of Judah. I hope the promise to relocate the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem is a promise that is promptly kept.

Though I haven’t yet returned to the Pete Plan or any particular training plan, one of the features of the Pete Plan that I’m continuing to observe now that my back is 99.98% pain free is the concept of alternating recovery days with hard days.  The current “hard days” aren’t very hard – they are simply long distance with the inclusion of variable paces and a little time spent doing moderate sprinting.  Enough to get the engine of the heart a bit revved up but not for too long.

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Albert Einstein reminds us that the path to greatness is not a bowl of cherries without pits or a rose garden without thorns.

So today was a recovery day.  15K easy pace.  Watched part of the inauguration ceremonies while rowing.  Wonderful prayers by the 7 or more pastors and rabbis who spoke and prayed. Felt hopeful.

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The price is responsibility …. great, huge responsibility. Anyone who wants to be truly great must truly rely and call upon God constantly.

Since the new president’s motto is to make America great again and I agree that would be a good thing, I pondered for a bit on what is greatness.  The included images are some food for thought.

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Happy trails to you.

Pre – Inauguration Rowing

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It was beautiful to hear the words of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which gave glory to Jesus with the words, “In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me. As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free”

For something to occupy my attention while rowing 10K+ meters today (17,240 meters, to be exact) I watched the pre – inauguration event on 3 news channels:  CNN, FOX and MSNBC.  Mostly on the first two.  So tomorrow will probably be a long-distance rowing session also, since there should be constant coverage of the historical event all day.

Today’s rowing session was variable paced with a few breaks.  A little bit of sprinting at moderate sprint effort but mostly easy rowing.

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Happy trails to you.

Some Online Rowing For A Change

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a view of online rowing courtesy of a partial screenshot from digitalrowing.com

Today’s rowing session was a bit different than the past few weeks or months in that 30 minutes of it was done online.  There was a 15 minute offline warmup followed by the main session online and then a 1K warmdown.

First, the warm-up:

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warm up finish screen
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you can see from the warm up report that it was very easy
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warm up charts

Next, the main session of 30 minutes:

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I didn’t get a screen shot of the online 30 minute finish screen. So you can consider this photo instead. Its a creative commons picture from National Geographic, I think.
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This is a screen shot of digitalrowing.com’s listing of the results for today’s online 30 minute session (It’s the part in the yellow area)
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session report for the 30 minutes online. I did variable paces.
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chart for 30 minute online session.

As for the 1K warmdown, I’m not going to bother to process that for display.  If you really want to see it, say so in the comments and I will add it.

Happy trails to you.

Impromptu Intervals

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The elderly bicyclist with whom I had a brief but inspiring conversation today looked kinda like the guy in this photo, only very different.

Today’s session was 17,234 meters.  There was not an iota of back pain but I didn’t feel inspired to return to Pete Plan yet.  However, I did feel inspired to work a little harder than during the recent few days which have consisted entirely of easy distance rowing.

The inspiration came from a chance conversation I had with a senior citizen bicyclist while I was in a nearby grocery store parking lot.  He looked trim and fit, so I asked him how many hours per week he spent bike riding.  He said “about 10 to 12 hours,” and when I thought about that and compared it to my recent average of maybe 7 or 8 hours per week of low-effort rowing, I thought I’d keep today’s time about the same, but increase the effort a little.

So the session was divided into 14 splits and I did every other split at a higher effort level and alternated that way between hard and easy for 14 splits, with only one necessary break during the session.

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Happy trails to you.

Rowing In Desert Places

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If someone in the desert wants to do some rowing, they will find a rowing machine usually more satisfying than a boat, since most of the water in the desert is either under the sand or up in the clouds.

Today’s rowing was 15K done with mostly only one break.

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Happy trails to you.

Intermittent Rowing

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Today’s rowing session was more intermittent and variable than usual.  It was the same distance as the previous recent sessions, 17,234 meters. There were several breaks. Nonetheless, it burned over 800 calories which is still not too shabby for such a slow paced session.

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Happy trails to you.

A Few More Meters And Another Break

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Today’s session was sort of a repeat of yesterday’s.  It was the same distance, but it took longer because I took a longer break, of about 11 minutes instead of single digit minutes for a break as was done yesterday.

The session report today was glitch-free because I successfully divided it into 14 splits which resulted in all splits including the last one being of the same distance.  If they are not, RowPro 5 for the Mac (beta) will give glitchy results for the last split.

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Today’s finish screen
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Today’s glitch-free session report

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Happy trails to you.

An Odd But Even Distance

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Today’s rowing was 12K plus a bit more to help make up for the past days which included either no rowing at all or less than 10K.  The chosen distance was 17,234 meters.  An odd distance, in that it is not a standard distance, the results of which can be entered into the Concept2 world rankings.

But it is also an even distance, in the sense of the mathematical definition of an even number.

The effort expended was an easy level of effort because I’m still recovering from the most recent and incomplete Pete Plan training session.

If you are one of the rare people who look closely at the session report for this rowing session, you can disregard the results for the 29th split in the columns titled “Avg Pace”, “Avg Watts” and “Cals” because RowPro 5 for the Mac (beta) screwed up again and gave incorrect results.  It actually did more than that incorrectly – I told RowPro 5 for the Mac (beta) to divide the session up into 14 splits but it disregarded my instructions and divided it into 29 splits.  Not that it matters one iota in the grand scheme of creation.

The session was done with only one break which lasted 3 minutes or less. You can see the break illustrated in the graphs of pace in the images below. It was mostly during the 16th split.

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Happy trails to you.