Today’s 10K was done at a bit more than a stroll-equivalent effort and at less than a race pace. I’m not sure if I it should be called “medium” or “medium hard” workout so I’ll toss a coin and let heads be medium and tails be medium hard.
Heads
Today’s performance of the 10K shall be called a Medium Workout.
Today’s indoor rowing was a 10K and it would have been a season best but when the distance counted down to about 8,400 meters the phone rang.
It was the “iceman,” (delivery man for the new icebox). In other words, a new refrigerator to replace the old one which wasn’t keeping things cold enough to avoid food spoilage.
It was scheduled to be delivered sometime between 3pm and 5pm. Those things usually happen later than they say but … this time the delivery guy called to say he was going to be about 40 minutes early.
So I had to stop the 10K, no warmdown, change clothes while I was still drenched in sweat and be ready for the delivery. Made it, with about one minute to spare, though I was still sweating profusely and the dry t-shirt I’d put on when changing out of the rowing clothes was already half-soaked in sweat when I answered the doorbell.
Maybe tomorrow will be another 10K. Maybe not… don’t know yet what tomorrow will bring in the way of mental motivation.
In my rush to end the unfinished 10K session and change clothes, I forgot to get a screen shot of what the RowPro “finish screen” looked like. So all there is to look at below is data and its graphs.
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.
Finish screen for today’s short rowingSession reportgraphs
Buddy Holly in the foreground and The Crickets in the background.
Today’s musical accompaniment for indoor rowing included a Buddy Holly song from the 1950s. The band was called “The Crickets” and the particular song being performed when the image above was originally formed was called Peggy Sue. Buddy Holly does some interesting, innovative things with the vocals when he sings this particular song.
One of the things that impresses me the most about Buddy Holly is that he looked like a total nerd or geek (although I don’t think either of those words existed in the 1950s), but his singing and musical talent are top notch. For those of you who are too young to know anything about Buddy Holly, he was a pioneer in American popular music and he died at the very young age of 22. Cause of death: airplane crash when he was a passenger in an airplane which was flying in bad weather that required flying by instruments but the pilot was not certified as qualified for instrument flight. The photo below shows a signpost near where Buddy Holly died when the airplane crashed.
Today’s indoor rowing accompaniment to the Buddy Holly song and other 1950s music was mainly a 30 minute piece with a target pace of 2:10/500 meters. I’m taking a break from the series of 5,000 meter season bests, because I don’t want to overdo it with the 5K season best efforts. The effort level for the 5Ks has risen to the level that I should probably do no more than from one to three per week at the most recent effort level. But if the 5K pace raises very much at all, I’ll have to limit them to no more than one per week.
Today’s main rowing piece was preceded and followed by 10 minutes of warmup and down.
Warmup was 10 minutes. This was the warmup finish screen.Finish screen view for the 30 minute portion.RowPro session reportRowPro graphsThis is how the graphs are displayed in the Concept 2 online logbook.Warmdown was 10 minutes. This was the warmdown finish screen.
The Vikings of ancient history did a lot of rowing so this music selection among today’s musical accompaniment was particularly appropriate because of the name of the singing group.
Today’s indoor rowing session was another incremental increase in average pace for the 5K. Yesterday’s was done at an average pace of 2:06.5/500 meters which was a power level of about 174 Watts. Today’s 5K was done at a pace of 2:06/500 m for the first 4,500 meters and then the pace was increased a bit for the final 500 meters, to bring its average pace to 2:04.9/500m which was a power level of about 180.7 Watts. That difference in pace of less than 2 seconds/500 meters and in power of about 7 Watts more was enough of a difference that I’m categorizing today’s rowing session as “Medium” instead of “Easy”. Purely subjective, but if you look back through each of the recent, incrementally faster 5,000 meter pieces I’ve done, you can easily see that the heart rate is definitely increasing with each increase in pace for the 5K.
The rowing was fun and the music was too. I seem to have run out of Appalachian music to listen to on youtube. And some of the previous music I’d enjoyed, which included “psy trance” and “shuffle dance” “house” music… had grown repetitive and boring. So today’s choice of music was from the decade of 1950s anno Domini and the playlist included such musical hits of that era as “The Del Vikings singing Whispering Bells“. There are literally hundreds of ear-pleasing songs and melodies from that nostalgic era, so I may be listening to 1950’s music for a while.
If you are among those who have been keeping up with this blog for a while, you may have noticed that the rowing sessions that are classified as “mentally absorbing” burn more calories per hour than the ones that are classified as “boring”… It’s true. The harder you row or work at anything, the more mental focus it requires. The more mental focus required for the rowing… the more fun it becomes, in a jalepeńo-pepper-strangely-pleasant-pain sort of fashion.
5K finish screenRowPro’s session reportRowPro’s manner of graphing the session.Concept2.com’s online logbook manner of graphing the session.Warmdown finish screen.
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 rope ladder for sale on ebay looks like so much fun that for a few moments I considered ordering one. But it only has five rungs, so the fun would be of very short duration.
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.
5K finish screensession reportrowpro graphsConcept 2 online log’s way of showing the graph.warm down finish screen
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.
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.
Speaking of rowing plans – this website in the UK might be of interest to anyone who lives nearby in the UK. They also will coach and advise people who are anywhere in the world. Their contact information and prices can be found on their website at Fitness Matters Indoor Rowing. (Rowing is a more well known and popular activity in England, than in most of the US)
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.
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 music and dancing was quite good, if you like Appalachian music and dancing. I like it a lot…
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.
