Saturday:  In the driveway was a pile of 5 cubic yards of dark pine mulch.  It was raining and about 60F.  I procrastinated until about 11am, and then I finally got my ass outside to spread it.  The process is simple and labor intensive.

• Use an edger to clean up the edge of the bed
• dig out the dirt and mulch that has settled into the edges
• Get all the weeds out of the bed
• Spread mulch

It sounds simple, but I spent from 11am to 3pm, and then from 3:30 to 7:00pm doing it and I didn’t quite finish.  By the time I was done, I could barely lift my arms, and getting up from a sitting position was a struggle.  I’d call that 7 and a half hours of strength/endurance training.

Sunday:  I was tired and sore when I woke up, but I really wanted to go rowing with my friends out in Worcester.  The morning was grey, around 50F, and windy.  The wind was blowing from the SSW between 10 and 15 mph.  It felt like the gusts were higher than that.

We had 6 of us rowing, two people wanted to take singles, so I doubled up with Bob in our “new” wintech double.  I was eager to give it a real tryout.

I didn’t have much of a plan for the workout, so we just rowed down to the south end of the lake, into the wind.  We had a lot of starts and stops at the beginning as I tried to get the speedcoach working and Bob got his Garmin Fenix running right, but after the first 1000m or so, we got into a rythym.  It was slow going into the wind, but the boat felt good.  I was enjoying myself a lot.

When we turned around at the south end of the lake, I asked Bob if he would be OK doing some rate ladders.  I ended up messing with some of the durations as we went, but it was good to row with specific rate targets.  I think we got better synchronized as the row went on.

After we got the north end of the lake, we noticed that the wind had picked up even more.  The row back to the boathouse was very slow and heavy going.  I was glad that I was in a double.  It would have been a bit hair raising in my single with that much wind and chop.

I tried to reconstruct the ladders as best I could.

Workout Summary - media/20170508-150701-SpdCoach 2182533 20170507 0744amo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10759|55:03.0|02:33.5|000.0|23.0|154.3|176.0|08.5
W-|10500|52:03.0|02:28.7|000.0|23.0|155.2|176.0|08.8
R-|00268|03:00.0|05:35.9|000.0|20.1|119.5|176.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00004|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|09.5|086.0|86.0|00.0
01|00682|03:15.0|02:23.0|000.0|22.3|141.1|149.0|09.4
02|01967|09:45.0|02:28.7|000.0|23.8|152.7|166.0|08.5
03|00651|03:00.0|02:18.2|000.0|20.7|142.9|153.0|10.5
04|00432|02:00.0|02:19.0|000.0|21.6|156.1|158.0|10.0
05|00218|01:00.0|02:17.8|000.0|23.0|159.1|161.0|09.5
06|00228|01:00.0|02:11.4|000.0|24.9|161.7|162.0|09.2
07|00860|04:00.0|02:19.6|000.0|22.8|163.0|169.0|09.4
08|00643|03:00.0|02:19.9|000.0|22.2|159.4|161.0|09.6
09|00438|02:00.0|02:17.1|000.0|24.7|163.9|167.0|08.8
10|00229|01:00.0|02:11.2|000.0|26.1|168.5|170.0|08.8
11|00812|04:00.0|02:27.8|000.0|21.1|161.7|169.0|09.6
12|00421|02:00.0|02:22.4|000.0|22.8|160.8|163.0|09.3
13|00702|03:15.0|02:18.8|000.0|27.0|168.2|176.0|08.0
14|01751|10:00.0|02:51.3|000.0|22.1|148.9|159.0|07.9
15|00462|02:48.2|03:02.0|000.0|24.1|157.4|167.0|06.9

It was hard work, but a pretty short session.

It was great to see my friends and I really like the wintech double.

After I got home, I spent another couple hours finishing up the mulching.  Not nearly as strenuous as Saturday’s labors but still.

Monday:  I felt awful last night.  I thought I might be coming down with something.  Or maybe I was just worn out from my busy weekend.  I felt like I might be getting a fever.  Nevertheless, I set out my stuff to go rowing this morning, and I was out the door before 5:30 to get to the river.

As I was driving there, it started to rain.  And I notice that the temperature was only around 42F.  I made an executive decision.  I decided to blow of “real” rowing and just go do a quick erg session at work before my first meeting at 9am.  I had some prep to do and I felt my stress level go down as soon as I decided.

I didn’t have any shoes, so I rowed in socks.  I don’t much like that since my heels tend to slip out, but it would do for the short session I had in mind.

I just did a easy 10K push.  I started with a target of 2:09, and sped up by a second for every 1000m.  This was easy to keep track of because the pace was the same as the leading digit of the distance to go.  9xxx –> 2:09, 8xxx –> 2:08, 7xxx –> 2:07, etc.

It was also really easy rowing at the beginning and only started to feel tougher with about 3000m to go.

I enjoyed that session too.

Tomorrow:  I will try to get back on the marathon plan.  I haven’y yet done any of these workouts on the water.  So tomorrow will be.

M1

4 x 15′ / 4′

6′ @ 5KP, 9′ @ MP

92.5%

(172)

Now, I don’t really know exactly how to pace this, so I will try to row it to power.  So that would make my targets  225 to 240 for 5KP and 180 to 195 for MP.  I’m interested to see how it works.

The other challenge that I have is river length.  I can just about squeeze in 15 minutes, but the longer intervals in the plan will require me to spin to get them done.