This was a busy week at work, and I my lower back continued to give me trouble.  I had business dinners on Tuesday night and Thursday night, and I was preparing for an important meeting on Friday morning.  I was hoping that I could help out both situations by taking a few days off rowing.

I last rowed on Tuesday morning.  A tough interval session.  My back was killing me afterward.  Tuesday I had a full day of meetings with a group from a customer, and we had dinner Tuesday night with them.  Wednesday we had a group from a different customer visiting first thing in the morning, plus a big internal meeting that I was hosting.  I ended up working quite late.  On Thursday, more meetings and then a business dinner that kept me out until almost 11.  On Friday, I was presenting in an important meeting at 9am, so I want to get to work early to dry run my materials a couple of times before I was up.  It paid off, the meeting went well, and I felt a huge sense of relief after it was over.  I finished up what I needed to get done by about 3:30 and decided to go for a nice easy row on my way to relax a little.

The plan:

• 60 minutes
• Heart rate limit: 150
• Stroke rate target: 20  (This is a significant shift for me.  I have been rowing with much higher stroke power and lower rate)
• No pace target.

        Workout Summary - media/20170827-150206-Greg Smith 20170825 0437pmo.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|10795|58:28.0|02:42.5|136.5|18.6|140.7|152.0|09.9
W-|10315|55:25.0|02:41.2|139.0|18.2|140.7|152.0|10.2
R-|00485|03:03.0|03:09.1|111.8|22.8|141.6|152.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00908|05:00.0|02:45.2|144.2|18.7|127.1|141.0|09.7 - to start
01|03047|15:58.2|02:37.2|152.2|18.2|142.8|148.0|10.5 - to dam
02|02780|14:22.8|02:35.2|140.9|17.7|139.5|147.0|10.9 - back to start
03|01122|06:31.8|02:54.6|128.8|17.6|142.6|148.0|09.8 - 7 min out 
04|01333|07:25.2|02:47.0|128.3|18.1|144.4|152.0|09.9 - 7 min back
05|01125|06:07.1|02:43.1|119.5|19.8|142.7|150.0|09.3 - back to dock

The summary looks a bit weird for the pace on intervals 3 and 4.  The eyeball average for the pace looks a bit faster than the summary.

I got distracted during the row and I completely forgot to keep my rate up, so I reverted to my normal r18 kind of rowing.  But I did row a bit slower than a similar session from Monday.  I was also rowing a lot shorter (as measured by effective length).  I dug into the metrics

You can see that everything is a bit smaller for Friday’s row.  That’s me being careful with my back.