Today’s indoor rowing session was 10K done with a pace target zone painted on the RowPro screen. I aimed to maintain a pace that was just a little bit slower than maximum for that zone.
The title of today’s post is the note that I wrote to myself on the notepad which is on a nightstand next to my side of the bed. It was intended to remind me, first thing in the morning, to put off anything and everything else and just row, first thing early in the morning.
It worked.
Today’s “any distance” turned out to be 10K. I set up RowPro so that it would display an easy pace zone with boundaries of 2:25 and 2:15 /500 meters and aimed for about 2:20. (All versions of RowPro allow you to designate and display optional target target zones for pace, heart rate and/or rating).
Heart rate was irregular for about the first 1,000 meters and then smoothed out.
Today’s rowing was done with a target pace of 2:20/500 meters average for the entire distance. I started out slow and took a couple of brief breaks during the first half, so the second half was a bit faster paced than the first half, in order to achieve the target average pace.
Today’s session is categorized as both fun and also boring. It was fun, because it’s always fun to row in the company of others and it is fulfilling to finish what was started. What was started for today’s session was an online half marathon.
But it was also boring, because the others were a lot faster than me, so there wasn’t any element of competition, which is always a happy possibility when rowing online with others.
I was also bothered by a little bit of irregular heartbeat but it didn’t persist.
The guy who scheduled it was there at the start. But about a minute before the start he announced that he’d had a change of plans and would be going for a hike instead of rowing the half marathon. So … since he was there and he was the designated starter, he clicked the start sequence but he didn’t do any rowing. I guess the weather where he was and also the company he had where he was, was just a lot more appealing to him than rowing an indoor half marathon today.
Today’s main indoor rowing was 10K done online with two other guys. One of them was in England and he was the one who scheduled the session. He named the session “Hillbilly_10K”. I asked him about the hillbilly part and he said that’s his nickname because he makes home brew.
I know that making home brew of various sorts is a hobby for some people and that you can even buy kits, to get started. But that’s another topic.
The description he gave for today’s online 10K included the question, “are you tuff enough?” which seemed to add to the enjoyment of the whole thing by defining the completion of the 10K as an accomplishment worthy of some kind of recognition.
We all started out at about 2:04. After a bit, “Hillbilly” slowed a bit and gradually dropped further and further behind. Joe Vanischak and I kept that pace of 2:04 point something until about halfway then I slowed down.
I continued to row at a slower pace until “Hillbilly” caught up, then I picked up my pace to stay even with him. When the distance counted down to less than 200 meters, Joe started a sprint, then Hillbilly started sprinting. When the remaining distance was less than 100 meters, I did a little sprinting also and we all finished very close to each other. It was fun.
There wasn’t much time to spare for rowing this morning, so little rowing was done. But the amount of rowing done this morning was about 19% more than was done yesterday, so that was an improvement.
For four days, I did no rowing. I don’t know why, except that there was some deep-seated subconscious reluctance. My better half remarked, yesterday, that she was worried about me, because I hadn’t done any rowing for four days.
When I do row every day, she leans toward considering it obsessive. But when I don’t, she starts to worry… because she knows I feel better and am much more inclined to be in a better mood, if I do some daily rowing.
Today, the reluctance was still present and unidentified/undiagnosed. So I compromised with it and suggested that I row just 1,000 meters. The subconscious regions immediately agreed, with no argument.
Today’s rowing session was online but nobody else joined in. Which wasn’t surprising, because I scheduled it less than 25 minutes in advance and it was on a week day when most people are working or going to school.
Because there wasn’t any company, I took it easy and barely did any hard rowing at all. Only about 200 meters of hard rowing, near the end, with the rest of the effort at an easy level.