Category: Fun Workout

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 images of people focusing on their indoor rowing effort were found on a website called “Breaking Muscle,” in an article on their website called “The 17 Commandments of Rowing-My Journey From Hate to Happiness“.  The author’s first experience with rowing was unpleasant and as a result he “hated” it.  But – he was trying to compete, the very first time he rowed.  It would have been frustrating to a lot of people, I imagine.

My first experience at rowing was the opposite of his experience – it was very pleasant.  So pleasant, that I “fell in love” with it after that first half hour experience.  But I wasn’t competing, during my first experience.  I was doing the opposite – because I realized that I might not be doing it right, I rowed extremely easy, trying to row so gently as to not perspire at all, just to get the feel of it.  The next day, I ordered a Concept 2 rowing machine.

Today’s 5,000 meters was easy, really.  I’m taking my time to the approach of an all-out effort at a 5,000 meter season best.  The effort of today’s 5K raised just a little sweat, but nowhere near enough to saturate a sweatband.

Today’s 5K was done at the average pace of about 2:10 for the first 4,500 meters, then worked harder for the next 300 meters and sprinted almost all-out for the last 200 meters.

Happy and relaxed rowing to you.

The above screenshot is from one of the youtube video recordings I watched while doing today’s rowing.  It shows people having fun together, the way they used to do so before the days of internet and other modern technology. The above video is appropriately called “Oldtime Dance Party…”

Today’s main rowing was only 2.0242914979757% of all the meters rowed today.  The “main” event was to sprint 200 meters from a standing start, for my contribution to RowPro Team’s entry in the c2ctc.com August 2017 challenge.

The remaining 9,680 meters was easy rowing for warmup and warm down, which I won’t bother showing in this blog post.

If the plots for HR look strange in two of the below graphs of HR with stroke rate and pace, that’s because the HR signal wasn’t showing at the start of the 200 meter sprint.  It took about 9 seconds for the heart strap sensor to start transmitting HR signal.

Happy sprinting to you.

Today’s indoor rowing was going to be a final try, on the last day of the month, for a better time in the C2CTC July 2017 intervals challenge.  But when I looked and saw how the others on the RowPro team had done and discovered that there was no point in working for a better time because it would not change my position in the team standings … unless I could do something impossibly faster… I changed today’s plans and decided to do another 5K instead, to beat yesterday’s 5K time and then enter the result into the Concept 2 World Rankings for the current (2018) season.

So far, all of the 5Ks which I’ve ranked this season have been easy.  But… I’ve only done 3 and each subsequent 5K will be a little harder.

Happy rowing to you.

Today’s indoor rowing was done to the accompaniment of Appalachian music and Appalachian flatfoot dancing.  The above screenshot is of one of the youtube videos, called “Flatfooting to “Lady of the Lake“”.  It shows one of the two fiddlers and it also shows the dance floor, which is a square of plywood upon which the Lady of the Lake dances later in the video.

The rowing session today was 5,000 meters, during which I rowed the first 4500 meters at a pace that was about the same as the overall average of yesterday’s 5K.  For the last 500 meters, the pace was increased a bit. So… yes, I did do today’s 5K in less time than yesterday’s.

Happy rowing and …. if you are so inclined… happy flatfoot dancing to you.

Today was another day with musical accompaniment.  The choice today was among results which came up when Appalachian Gospel was searched for on youtube.  One of the groups included was the one pictured above.  In the recording associated with the above screenshot, they were singing “I Can’t Even Walk“.

Today was almost a non-rowing day, due to problems with an essential major appliance, the refrigerator.  After a few hours of two-minds/one-flesh brainstorming, Diane and I decided to risk the price of a service call and call a repairman instead of giving up on the less-than-a-decade-old current model.

Then… I thought about not rowing and decided that a little bit was better than nothing and settled on doing 5K.  Did it with a very slow start and gradually increasing pace until reaching 4,500 meters and then used the remaining 500 meters as a warm down.  It resulted in a time that should be easy to beat tomorrow, if I want to feel good tomorrow about beating myself. 🙂

Today’s data is below:

Happy little bit or a lot of rowing to you.