I just blew $16.50 on a chicken caesar, a bag of trail mix, and a bottle of water … and left them under the bench when I boarded this packed-to-the-gills, foodless flight to Vegas. I have negative seat-room.
I just blew $16.50 on a chicken caesar, a bag of trail mix, and a bottle of water … and left them under the bench when I boarded this packed-to-the-gills, foodless flight to Vegas. I have negative seat-room.
Rowers are obsessive counters. From strokes per minute to the breakdown of the four-component stroke (catch, drive, finish, recover), a lot of rowers spend most of their mental effort counting through the agony. Combine that with the PM II monitor on the Concept2 erg, and a typical workout becomes a major exercise in Distance=Rate x Time.
Today I stepped up the first week’s average training distance of 5K to 6K. The focus for me now is weight loss (I don’t have a scale, so I can’t express my current fatitude). Weight loss is a function of time as a low heart rate. Low heart rate means the body goes after fat for fuel. Therefore, I need to work up to 45 to 60 minute pieces. Going for speed and trying to set records over shorter distance comes later in the training cycle.
The good news is after 8 days I can maintain a sub 2:00 split, coming down 5 seconds in a week. Anything over 2:00 is a grandmotherly pace for me. I know I’m in shape when I can cruise at a sub 1:55 pace.
Yesterday broke the back of winter (knock on wood), so I put the boat battery on the trickle charger, bought six gallons of high-test, hitched the trailer to the car, put on my waders, and launched the Tashmoo with crossed fingers. Fisher and I paddled it out to Bob Jensen’s mooring barge, tied up, and got ready to crank the motor over for the first time since November.
First try and we were in business! A Churbuck first! I let the motor idle for five minutes, varying the throttle to clean out the carburetors, then off we went for a fast blast at full throttle through a few acres of crackling skim ice in the cove. A full-speed boat jaunt in early March is an excellent demonstration of the concept of wind chill.
We tied up to the town dock and walked to the house to rouse the rest of the family into putting on boots, locating the camera, and donning windbreakers.
We circumperambulated Dead Neck. The dogs had fun and everyone got a little tanned. Home for the extra hour of daylight, dog baths, a fast dinner, then a trip to the movies for “The 300” (which was gory and over the top).
Whereabouts this week:
3.12 – Cotuit-Vegas
3.13 – Vegas, Community 2.0 conference
3.14 – Vegas-Cotuit
3.15-18 – Cotuit