I’m writing this from the United Lounge in SFO while I wait to board my flight to Taipei.  It departs at 12:05 and I’m looking forward to spending as much time on the flight as possible asleep.

Monday:

I left for California first thing Monday morning.  Before I left, I scouted potential Crossfit boxes to drop into while I was in the San Jose area.  I struck out on the first three that I contacted.  I guess that Crossfit is popular enough in the Bay Area that they don’t have the capacity to support drop ins.  The fourth place I tried, NorCal Crossfit in Santa Clara seemed happy to have me drop in and row.  Their policy was the first day was free and the second day was $30, which seemed pretty fair.

NorCal Crossfit is big!  With high ceilings and lots of floor space.  They could support a class of 20 people in the central area and additional smaller classes in other areas at the same time.  Everyone was really nice and they had an area with about 20 model D rowers all set up and nicely maintained.

I fly in the morning, then had meetings all afternoon, finishing up around 5:30pm.  Then I headed to NorCal Crossfit.  I was dehydrated, tired and hungry, but I was looking forward to a workout.

The plan was:

• 4 x 12′ / 1’30”
• Cat V: Pace – 2:01, rate: 22

I started off trying to use ergdata with a usb cable to the PM3.  That worked for about 8 minutes.  Then I started to get “Are you finished rowing” messages flashing up on the phone, and I would ignore.  They would go away in a few strokes and everything was fine.  However, in a minute or two, the ergdata screen stopped updating, but the PM3 kept happily counting down.  This is starting to piss me off.

The excitement of rowing in a new gym with all the activity around me caused me to row with a bit too much vigor in this first interval.  Instead of the target 2:01, I ended up with a 1:58.6 avg pace.  Bad Greg!

So, determined to get my data, I changed machines.  The second machine I sat on, wouldn’t link up at all, and the third hung up about 3 and a half minutes into the second interval.

By this point I had done enough experimentation on the USB connection, I decided to default to the good old days.  I connected my HR sensor to the wahoo app, which always works and did 3 more 12′ intervals that way.

My heart rate was through the roof, even though I slowed down considerably.  At least I was able to get it to plateau around 160.

It was a pretty short workout so I am not overly worried about it being a black hole session.

Tuesday:

Back at NorCal Crossfit.  Today, I had no desire to screw around with ergdata and usb cables.  I just went with the tried and true manual method.

The Plan:

• 5 x 2000m / 2′ rest
  • 1500m: r22, 2:01
  • 500m: r24, 1:55

I’ve done this workout a few times before and I’ve enjoyed it every time.  Today, I set it up as a variable interval session on the PM4 of the rower I picked so I could see an accurate avg pace for each segment.  This was an elaborate 11 segment workout that I managed to get exactly right the first time I tried.  It sure made me wish that there was a way to define workouts in an app and download them to the PM.  Maybe someday.

Anyway, the workout went great.  HR was a bit high, but was generally reasonable for the lack of sleep and large amount of caffeine that I had consumed during the day.  I tried to behave during all the reps until the last 500, when I got a bit crossfit happy.  I maintained the 24 spm rate, but pushed the pace below 1:50.  It was a very satisfying way to finish.

That’s a bit hard to deal with, so here it is in spreadsheet form.

So, now I am flying to Taipei.  I will arrive around 6am local time.  I’m planning to go to the hotel, check in, take a quick nap and then head to the office for some meetings.  Then to a customer event in the afternoon and evening.  I lose Wednesday to time zones and Thursday is a rest day.