Today’s indoor rowing was the first in several days. I looked at my training partners and the most active training partner had rowed 8591 meters since the last day that I’d done any rowing.
So, I setup a RowPro session for that distance and that’s why the odd number was chosen.
Today’s indoor rowing session could not be construed as a minuet because it was solo and lacking in stateliness.
Today’s session was almost nothing at all, because of other things happening in the morning and because after those things happened I decided to skip rowing today.
But then I logged into the Concept2 logbook and noticed that one of my three training partners had done some rowing today, in spite of the fact that she is going through chemotherapy and today was a “crash” day, she managed to get on the rowing machine and do 19 minutes 47 seconds of rowing.
That was inspiring. So I decided to spend at least that much time rowing and did 20 minutes.
Today’s indoor rowing session was a total of 10K but it was done as two 5Ks. The first 5K was done with a target pace of 2:25 and the second with a target pace of 2:20.
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.