Tough December.

At the end of November, Strava told me that I was in the best shape I had been for 2 years. In January of 2018, I reached a 99. On 12/1/2019, I peaked at 95.

Then came December

September: 28 training hours
October: 29 training hours
November: 31 Training hours
December: 20 Training hours, and 10 of those hours are in the past 10 days. 7.5 hours between 12/2 and 12/20.

What happened? Well, I needed to prioritize work over training.

Week of 12/2: trip to Taiwan. I struggled with a packed schedule and jet lag going in both directions. I had a couple of lackluster workouts while I was there, but missed 2 days around each end of the trip.

Week of 12/9: Full day offsite management meeting with dinner on Tuesday. Then 2 day conference on wed and thursday.

Week of 12/16: Early morning meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday. Quick trip to California on Thursday, with a return on Friday.

Since then, I’ve been on vacation and trying to just do mostly steady state work.

When this happens, all I can do is to take stock and figure out where to go from here.

I think when I get back to work, I will do a set of fitness tests to get a baseline and then resume the wolverine plan variant that I was using.

Monday – 12/2: no training – flying to Taiwan

Tuesday – 12/3: no training – arrived in Taiwan late evening

Wednesday – 12/4: 40 minute steady state row. Felt very sluggish. Didn’t like the erg. shock cord tension was very low and it felt mushy. Not sure why.

Thursday – 12/5: No training – conference calls

Friday – 12/6: 3×20′ on the crappy erg.

Saturday – 12/7: No Training

I got in around midnight and home around 1:30AM. I slept late the next morning and felt terrible all day long.

Sunday – 12/8: 3 x 30’/2′ L4

Long and easy.

Monday – 12/9: 4 x 1000/5′

Back at it! Start with a fletcher warmup. It was a rude shock to the system.

Then the fun part. I wanted to hit 1:45 for all the reps, but I had a bit of a breakdown in the third interval. I backed off on the fourth.

Bummer

Tuesday – 12/10: No Training

Management Offiste meeting

Wednesday – 12/11: No Training

I was catching up on email and really got into a creative groove. I wrote two articles for our internal corporate blog. I looked up and discovered that I had just enough time to shower before my first meeting of the day.

Mid day, I went in to the Massachusetts Conference for Women. My company is a sponsor of the event and we send about 90 people. It was the first time I attended and it’s an impressive conference with a great line up of speakers.

Thursday – 12/12: No Training

Back to Boston for the rest of the conference.

Friday – 12/13: 3×20’/2′ L4

Just a nice steady state L4 session.

That evening, we went down to the cape and I sleep like a deadman. It was such a great night’s sleep that I have thought of it fondly ever since.

Saturday – 12/14: 3×30’/2′ L4

Down on the cape.

Sunday – 12/15: Half Marathon L3

Target power 190W. Lost a bit of steam around the 60 minute mark. I was tired.

Monday – 12/16: No Training

No idea why.

Tuesday – 12/17: 60 minute L4

I had a 7:30 meeting, so I ended up sneaking down to the gym before lunch.

Wednesday – 12/18: No Training

8am meeting and no chance to train during the day. We had a corporate holiday party Wednesday night.

Thursday – 12/19: No Training

Woke up at 3:45 to catch a 6:10AM flight to California. Had a couple of customer meetings, including a nice dinner.

Friday – 12/20: No Training

Woke up at 5AM so I could get to the airport in time to join a 6AM conference call. Flew home, arrived around 7pm.

Saturday – 12/21: 3×30’/2′ L4

Feeling the decline in fitness.

Sunday: 12/22 – 4 x 20′ / 2′ L4

Still a struggle.

Monday – 12/ 23: 60′ L3

This was brutal. I really thought I could hold a 1:58. Turns out I couldn’t.

Tuesday – 12/24: 3×20’/2′ L4

My mind is really on christmas, but I am enjoying the audio book I’m listening to. So, I’m just piling up steady state meters.

Wednesday – 12/25: 3×20’/2′ L4

Merry Christmas! I went and rowed while dinner was cooking. Same session, worse heart rate. I suspect that this is from the 2 beers on Christmas Eve.

Thursday – 12/26: 3×20/2′ L4

Same again. Even worse. Starting to wonder if I’m coming down with something.

Friday – 12/27: 30 minute aborted session

I was planning a 3×30 L4, but I felt tired and listless and bored, so I quit after 30 minutes.

Saturday – 12/28: 16 x 250 / 2′ L1

Time to shake things up. A bit of sprinting. And a session with no prior precedent so no chance to fail against inflated expectations.

Start with the obligatory fletcher warmup.

Then the fun part. Doing this on slides was very interesting. I allowed the flywheel to stop for each of the reps to do a standing start. And I worked on trying to take a few strokes to get to full. It was good to work on keeping my layback minimized and keeping the rate high and stroke light. Some of the reps, I slowed down a fair amount after the first ten strokes. Buy the end, I was spent!