Today was the first rowing done in over two weeks and was just in time to begin the first day of the Concept 2 Fall Challenge.
I set up the session to be a half marathon distance of 21,097 but after about an hour it seemed enough, so I rowed a little bit more as a warm down and was content with a total distance of a little over 15,000 meters.
Happy resumption of rowing or anything else you take a break from.
Today’s rowing was once again shorter than preferred but better than nothing. It was an all-in-one 8K. The musical accompaniment was a series of organ concertos composed by Handel.
Happy handle holding to you.
Today’s indoor rowing was 14K starting at a pace of about 2:25/500 meters and increasing the pace slightly faster each 1,000 meters.
Happy rowing whatever ramp you do.
Today’s session was prematurely cancelled due to lateness and lack of enthusiasm. Several things that needed repairs around the house were repaired, earlier, with the help of a handyman so that was good.
The topic of viewing while trying to work up enthusiasm for rowing was a live view of Hermosa Beach, California, which is where the above screenshot was obtained.
May you have enthusiastic rowing.
Today was going to be another 10K in the zone of a 2:08/500 meter pace. I had a boring documentary to watch which wouldn’t (and didn’t) demand much of my mental focus, so I’d be able to give plenty of attention to the rowing, to maintain that pace.
But after sometime between 8 to 10 minutes, things didn’t feel right, so I slacked off. The boring documentary remained boring and the rowing session, once slowed down, became boring also. But I finished it, so as to be able to log all the meters and keep the daily average of meters rowed up in the target area.
May all your rowing systems be go.
Today there was no rowing plan except to keep making one easy stroke after the other until the pre-set distances counted down… while watching three videos which featured wild birds -such as doves and quail- feeding and interacting with each other.
If I’d chosen a music video to watch, or even a movie, I could have given a lot more mental focus to rowing and that would have resulted in a higher effort level. But it took almost all my focus to pay attention to what those birds were doing… and occasionally respond to a text message.
Happy rowing -where ever your mental focus – to you.
Today’s indoor rowing was an uninspired and somewhat interrupted 10K. Yep, it was boring.
May you have more exciting rowing than this.
Today’s indoor rowing session was a maybe session. I thought “maybe I’ll go for a pace faster than 2:03/500m in a half hour. Maybe.” If I did it, it would have been a season best 30 minutes and would have moved me up several places in the world rankings.
I guess it was a double maybe session and it got the double whammy, which according to Websters is “a combination of two usually adverse forces, circumstances, or effects”. But I don’t know what those two forces etc were and I don’t care enough to ponder them. It was a non-obligatory-to-do-anything-particular rowing session.
After 5K at a pace that about matched my current season best 5K, I decided to slack off and work hard for the entire 30 minutes on another day.
It was a good workout and I should sleep well again tonight, like I slept well last night after yesterday’s 37K.
Happy rowing minutes at any pace to you.
Today’s indoor rowing was set back in time a bit due to birthday present shopping with Diane for one of the children. We decided to go shopping at about the time I would have started rowing, so by the time we returned home there wasn’t much time left for rowing.
The musical accompaniment to today’s rowing was more 1950’s music and the last song in the string of music was by a singer I don’t recall ever hearing of before, Ella Mae Morse. <— The link at the end of the previous sentence is to a Wikipedia article about Ella Mae. She seems to have been a very accomplished and talented singer. The most negative factor which prevented her from becoming more well known was one of her most positive attributes: She was extremely versatile. As the Wikipedia article says, “However, she never received the popularity of a major star because her versatility prevented her from being placed into any one category of music.”
So I guess she was a “star” in all categories and wasn’t given the credit she deserved in any of them. That’s how the world works…. The world basically sucks, and you can read the Bible for plenty of verification of that statement, though the Bible does not use the vocabulary that I just now resorted to.
What does the Bible say about the world? Do your own research, kiddo. But here’s a sample: “For all that [is] in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” And here is another one: “… the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”
But back to Ella Mae Morse: The song I heard which was sung by her was “Rock Me All Night Long” and the Wikipedia article mentions that she had six children. So after reading that I thought: it’s very possible that she spent “all night long” rocking some of those children. Ella Mae deserves a ton of credit for being a mother to six children. Anyone who has children knows that there are times when sleep must be sacrificed, sometimes “all night long,’ for the sake of caring for babies.
Happy rowing, however long.
The above image is from ebay but it does show a ladder and rungs and someone having fun climbing. A rope ladder is especially fun, rung by rung, since the ladder swings and moves in immediate response to each move made by the person climbing it.
The “ladder” I’m currently climbing is a bit of fun for a similar reason, because each subsequent 5K in this series of 5,000 meter season bests is slightly faster than and directly related to the average pace of the previous 5K.
Today’s target pace for the 5K was 2:08/500 meters, which was 1/10 second faster than the overall average pace for yesterday’s 5K. That target pace was maintained through the first 4,500 meters and then the final 500 meters was done a bit faster.
The overall effort for today’s indoor rowing is still being classified as “easy” because that’s how it felt and also because of where HR was during the first 4,500 meters. The classification of “easy” or “medium” or “medium hard” etc is subjective and relative to how I remember feeling in other comparable rowing sessions of various effort levels.
The resulting overall average pace of today’s 5K was 2:06.5 so I don’t know yet if tomorrow’s target pace for the first 4,500 will be 2:06 or 2:07. If I use a pace boat generated by RowPro 5 for the Mac, the pace for the pace boat has to be an even number of seconds, so it would have to be either 2:06 or 2:07. I’ll choose one or the other or just skip the pace boat and aim for 2:06.5 exactly by trying to keep the average pace 2:06.5 where it is displayed in the field for average pace on the rowing machine’s monitor.
The most important thing about today’s rowing session is that is was not boring. It was, generally, fun.
Happy and generally fun rowing to you.