That was a rude shock.  Over the Christmas holidays, I was sleeping in to 9 or 10 every morning and lazying about most of the day.  Then in the afternoon (or evening), I’d go hop on the erg for a workout.  That all changed today.  Back to my normal weekly schedule.  Alarm went off at 5:15am, and I rolled out of bed bleary eyed.  I was in the gym by 7.

Since I was rowing with less than 12 hours of recovery, I decided to keep it to an hour.  My training plan called for a rest today, but I took that one early on New Year’s Eve, so I was just subbing in a low intensity session.

The schedule change was too much for me.  I did two of the same 195 stroke sequences as last night for the first 20 minutes, then I dropped back to a 192 stroke sequence for the next 10.  A couple of minutes into the 4th 10 minute sequence, I just stopped rowing.  I wasn’t feeling that bad, but I wasn’t feeling that great either.  I just sat there for a couple minutes and decided what to do.  I debated just walking away, but instead decided to just dial it back a bit and finish the hour.  So I rowed out the rest of that 10 minute sequence at 19spm and around 190W.

Then for the last 20 minutes I did a couple of 188 strokes sequences.  These are 2 minutes each at 18/19/20/19/18.  This was just about right for my mental state this morning.  At the end of this, I took a lactate reading and it was 1.8 mmol/l.  So, I the adjustment put me right in the correct range.

One other note.  Since I am getting ready for indoor competitions, I am going to be rowing off slides for the next couple months.

In addition to lack of sleep and short recovery, I also had thermal differences to contend with.  The gym is almost 10 degrees (F) higher than my erg room at home.  Modesty also required me to wear a shirt, which I don’t do at home either.  I think this makes a difference.  Not huge, but noticeable.

Tomorrow:  Back to distance based intervals.  The Waterfall 3K/2.5K/2K.  Last time I did it with an avg pace of 1:47.8.  I’ll try to hold that for the first interval and see where I end up after that.