Today’s indoor rowing session was another 10,000 meter piece. It was done at a gradually increasing and mostly easy effort, with the main exception to “easy” being a single kinda hard 500 meter sprint.
The rowing session was done online but it was a solo session. Mental focus on rowing effort was maintained throughout. Time flew by.
Happy rowing to you.
The above cartoon was found on the Condé Nast website as one of the results for images when I searched for “rowing” and “sleep”. I thought it was particularly appropriate after the especially good night’s sleep I had last night, which was greatly helped by yesterday’s rowing. After yesterday’s inspired-by-lively-company half-marathon, I felt extremely relaxed and slept about 30 minutes longer than average and very soundly last night.
For that reason (good sleep), I’d like to row fast and hard or even race every single day, but there is a real danger of over-training if a person does too much too hard and I don’t know what my own boundaries are. So I lean toward taking it easy, most of the time. If you’ve never heard of the over-training syndrome, it is something you should read about and take special care to avoid. Rowing is ethereal but over-training syndrome is dismally earthbound and can drag a person down, down down. I’d rather stay “up,” so I try to avoid over training.
When in doubt, row easier during long rowing sessions and be moderate with the amount of racing you allow yourself. Racing is fun and the “pain” is like the pain of jalapeño peppers. It goes away and gives you an emotional boost and desire to do it again. A person can overdo it with jalapeño peppers and also with exercise and racing, but in moderate and reasonable amounts, they can both be positive, healthy addictions.
Today’s rowing was a recovery session, 8,000 meters, with a couple intervals and sprints in the mix.
Happy rowing and peaceful sleeping to you.
Today’s rowing session was scheduled about a day in advance and there were two other guys who signed up and rowed. They could row a lot faster than me, so they took turns with one of them pacing even with me while the other one would sprint ahead and then slow down to let us catch up. It was a great session as far as I was concerned and I made a season-best time in the half marathon.
A few hours after today’s rowing session, while Diane and I were having dinner, I noticed that some of the muscles in my upper body, arms and even my hands felt a bit sore. It was a pleasant soreness, not a painful feeling. It must have been because of the higher than usual amount of effort I’d allowed myself to exert during today’s half-marathon. (See the caption below the screenshot at the top of this page, for a description of how it went.)
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s indoor rowing session was scheduled a day in advance. It was another half-marathon and two (TWO!!!) other rowers signed up for the session. Only one of them showed up though. The guy who showed up was located in Oklahoma. I told him that I’d pace him/row alongside him, if he didn’t row too fast. He didn’t row too fast, but he did row a bit slower than the range of paces I’d anticipated and so… after about one or two kilometers, I decided to pick up the pace, so I’d be finished with the session before dinner time.
It was just as well, that I didn’t row at his pace because he had some kind of connection problem before half the distance was completed and I rowed most of the distance alone anyway.
Happy rowing to you.
Today’s rowing session was a half-marathon scheduled online about 24 hours in advance. The most popular online rowing sessions seem to be those that are 30 minutes or up to 10,000 meters. A half marathon seems to be much less popular.
I titled today’s online rowing session as “I will finish if you will”. By the time it was scheduled to begin, nobody else had joined it. Like I said, the half marathon isn’t one of the more popular distance for online rowing. Just check the Oarbits site for yourself, on a daily basis, to confirm that assertion. (After you go to the Oarbits web page, click the Schedule tab or the Results tab, to look at the collection of times and distance rowed online.) One of the most popular online rowing sessions seems to be 30 minutes.
If you look closely at the first two screenshots above, you might notice that RowPro 5 for the Mac is doing something very weird with the characters of the Canada rower’s name. Apparently it can’t handle some of the letter accents used by those who spell their names in other than standard American/English/British spelling. Hopefully, this WordPress blog thing can handle them. The other rower spelled his name André Doré, according to the way it is displayed in Oarbits results as you can see in the screenshot immediately below this paragraph:
I’ve never rowed with him before, to my best recollection but it would be nice to row with him again because he not only rowed 18,000 meters with me, but we kept apace with each other the entire time and he finished the entire half-marathon. So today’s rowing session, in contrast to yesterday’s, was a finished symphony. Good company.
Happy rowing to you.
The longer distance indoor rowing sessions are like symphonies. Symphonies of inner music, ambient sound, thoughts and feelings, sweat and emotions. Today’s rowing piece was scheduled online a few hours in advance, but not in time for anyone who was interested to notice it and sign up. It was a half marathon, which is one of the longer of the standard indoor rowing sessions or “events” (they are events, if part of a competition).
But this was no competition and because nobody else joined in, it wasn’t much of a symphony either.
After a little more than halfway through the 21,097 meters, at about 14.5K, I sort of lost interest and stopped.
If any of this blog’s readership are wondering how the “symphony” of replacing and installing a new water heater has progressed, above this paragraph is a photo of one perspective of the current state of things in that rearrangement of arrangement. The old water heater was removed and replaced by the new one. But the new one was a little bit too big, from its front to its back, to allow the door to be closed on its metal enclosure. So the enclosure had to be removed and a larger one obtained.
But the larger one is different from the original enclosure, because the larger one has two horizontal braces across its back. The original enclosure had no braces across its back. There are pipes, both vertical and horizontal, which are in the way of placing the new enclosure with its braces. So I’m going to have to remove the horizontal metal braces and attach the enclosure directly to the wall of the house. A bit of a bother, but it will have to be done. In the meantime, the “symphony” of removing and replacing the hot water heater is unfinished. But neither half marathons nor the hot water heater installation have been forsaken.
Happy rowing to you and may you have plenty of hot water for your shower afterward.
The above photos have nothing to do with the title of today’s post nor do they have anything to do with today’s rowing. But I thought it was interesting that a lot of people have put cars and other things on the surface of the moon…. so why not a Concept 2 rowing machine? Diane volunteered to help put a rowing machine on the moon, so maybe soon … because she is a space cadet with the skills to do it.
Today’s blog post title was inspired by today’s rowing, which was a 30 minute online session with 12 other people. The above screen shot shows the Oarbits’ listing of the session results. The rower who is shown in 10th place is the one who called himself (or herself) Meerkat.
I paced Meerkat to stay within less than 1 meter of him (or her) throughout the first 23 minutes or so and then I increased my pace, to try to get Meerkat to row faster so we could perhaps have a fun race to the finish.
But Meerkat wouldn’t take the bait, so I raced my own shadow and the result was a tie.
Happy rowing to you and your shadow and anyone who will race with the two of you.
Part of the rationale for today’s title is the fact that the pull of gravity for someone on the Moon is only about 17% as much as the pull of gravity for someone on earth. If a horse which was accustomed to the gravity on earth were to experience gravity only 17% as strong, it could probably run faster on three legs in that weaker gravity, than it could run on 4 legs on earth. Keep that in mind when you read about the second online rowing session that I did today.
Today’s indoor rowing consisted of a 5 minute ultra slow session which I will call session 0 (zero) because it was almost zero effort. The main session was going to be limited to a single 30 minute online session. But one of the guys, who happened to be in Portugal (not that it matters, but I think its cool that people all over the world can row together online), asked if anyone would like to join him in a second 30 minute session, because he wanted to do more meters.
Nobody else wanted to, so I asked him what pace he would row the second 30 minute session. He said “Slowly, about 2:05.”
I replied, “I’m 71 and 2:05 is fastly for me.”
One of the other guys, who is located in Connecticut, chimed in with “LOL” and then added “Bigly fastly.” It was a joke which I immediately understood since I’ve been keeping up with current events in America but I don’t know whether any of the rowers in other parts of the world understood it.
Anyway, the guy in Portugal then said he could row the second 30 minutes slower, at between 2:10 and 2:15. I told him that I’d row with him at a pace of 2:10 and that when the 30 minute timer counted down to 4 minutes remaining, I’d increase my pace to around 2:00 and then he could see how many meters he could finish ahead of me.
So the two of us rowed the second 30 minute session and when the time counted down to 4 minutes remaining, I changed my pace from 2:10 to 2:00. At first, the other guy kept on rowing at the slower pace. But then he seemed to notice and he picked up his pace to around 1:52 and caught up to me. But he didn’t stay at the 1:52 pace and pass me. Instead, he slowed to match my pace for the remainder of the few minutes left and we finished almost even with each other.
Afterwards, I told him that I’d expected that he’d have finished about 100 meters ahead of me. Paraphrasing his reply, he said, “I was rowing with only one leg. I’ve got a cramp in the other leg. LOL”
So… If he had been located on the moon and rowing online from there…. he could have rowed a lot faster than me, even with only one good leg and the other leg cramped. I think everyone could row a huge amount faster, if gravity were only 17%.
Today’s rowing added up to more meters than I’d originally intended, but I’ll probably sleep better tonight because of it.
Happy rowing to you, whatever your gravity may be and however many arms and legs you have full use of.
The title of today’s blog post is from among the words in a recent message generated by the sleep-tracking app that I’ve been using for quite a while. The app has a feature called “Discover,” which, if enabled, tries to find significant correlations between the health information that it has been given access to and my nightly sleep. As you see in the screenshot of its recent “Discover” message, there is more reason to believe that exercise is healthy for you.
Today’s indoor rowing was shorter than recent usual. Instead of doing at least 10K, I did only 5K. I will be doing shorter sessions between now and November 24th. On November 25th, I’ll start doing longer sessions of from 10K to half marathon or more per day and will continue doing longer sessions through December 25th. The reason for that is because Concept 2 is having its annual charity challenge and for everyone who participates, Concept 2 donates a few cents per 1,000 meters to one of the charities that they have pre-selected.
Today’s 5K piece was done online with 3 others. Two of the others were in Europe and one, besides myself, was in the U.S. The original tentative “plan” for today’s 5K was to do it at a pace of 2:02 or faster, so as to move up in the 5K world rankings at least one position. Those were very tentative plans. I ate lunch about 30 minutes before the rowing session and didn’t have time for any warm up.
After a little over 2,000 meters, I decided to slow down and do the remainder of the 5K at a warm down pace. When the remaining distance was 1,000 meters, I increased the pace to whatever it took, to keep the overall average pace at about 2:15. There was no particular reason or motivation for doing it that way – it’s just what I happened to feel like and agree to within my own mind, during the piece.
Happy rowing to you, whether short or long distance.
Today for the first time in quite a few sessions, I rowed online with a few other people instead of alone. But things didn’t go perfectly smoothly. Something went wrong with the RowPro server, which is located in Houston. Four people started out together, then the server announced that there was a “false start” but it showed two people to be rowing. One of them never came back. The other one, though he appeared to be rowing (because his chat room avatar turned into circular arrows) actually was still there, because his avatar turned into a pencil when he started typing to inform the other two of us that he was still there.
So… three of us set up a QR which stands for “Quick Row” which means it is an unscheduled row and we rowed together. I don’t know what happened to the 4th guy. He may still be tangled up in the Houston server.
The session online was 10,000 meters. Before it started, I warmed up with 10 minutes very easy. During the 10K, I rowed the first 1K at about 2:20, then picked up the pace to around 2:15 which was also about 130 BPM heart rate today. (It varies from day to day). For the last 1,000 meters, I went faster so as to elevate the heart rate with a little bit of semi-high intensity sort of rowing, but not too hard.
Afterwards, we said good bye to each other then I did 5 minutes of supplemental rowing. Because it’s almost dinner time now, I’m not going to take the time to include screenshots of the 10 minute or 5 minute sessions and will only show the 10K session screenshots.
Happy rowing to you.