Last Friday was a wonderful workout.  The joy that I got out of it carried me  through a much less enjoyable set of days and activities since.

Saturday:  Yardwork.

I was spreading mulch.  I was curious about how hard this work is, so I wore a heart rate monitor.  Here are the stats.

• Duration:  5:07:56
• Average HR: 97, Max HR 125 (so below UT2)
• Calories: 2619

So, I guess you could think of it as a long lazy bike ride.  But that’s not quite right because there is a strength component to it.  Basically shovel work, pushing a wheelbarrow and a lot of squatting, bending and raking.

It really knocked me out.  I was useless all night I was so tired.

Sunday:  Yardwork

I did the bulk of it on Saturday, but there was one more flower bed to do, and then moving the excess mulch and some other tidying up.  It was easier work and it only took about two hours.  I didn’t bother with the HR monitor.

Monday:  80 minutes of speed play

I wish I could remember more about this session, but I can’t.  From the data, it looks like it was a pretty nice session, I wish I could remember enjoying it.  Oarlock still acting up.

Tuesday:  30r22 on the erg

So, the original plan was 2 x 30′ @ r22 on the water.  I got up at 5:15, drove to the river, and as I always do, I double checked my work schedule to see when I needed  to be in the office so that I could make sure that I got back to the dock in  time.  When I looked, to my horror, I saw that I had a dentist appointment back near my house at 7:30am.  So, I drove home, took a shower, and went to the dentist instead of rowing.

It left me in a foul mood all day long.  Add in the fact that I needed to deal with unpleasant HR related work matters and by the afternoon, I was a quivering wreck.  I snuck off to the fitness center.  If everything went right, I had just enough time to do my 2×30 on the erg and make it to my next meeting.

Everything did not go right, and when I finished the first rep, I saw that I didn’t have enough time to do another 30 minutes.  This blew my momentum and instead doing 15 or 20 minutes, I just walked away.

The 30 minutes that I did were nice and hard though.  I felt much better afterward.

Workout Summary - media/20180515-1930250o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07719|32:00.0|02:04.4|205.9|20.5|156.6|170.0|11.7
W-|07708|30:00.0|01:56.8|219.6|21.9|155.7|170.0|11.7
R-|00012|02:00.0|86:46.3|000.0|00.0|170.0|170.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|07708|30:00.0|01:56.8|219.6|21.9|155.7|170.0|11.7

Wednesday: Unintentional rest day

I intended to go do my speed session in the morning, but I slept terribly.  When my alarm went off, I rolled over and slept two more hours.

I thought I might be able to go to the gym, or maybe even head down to the river in the afternoon, but work conspired to keep me busy all day long.

Thursday:  60 minutes of steady state (ish) rowing

I had two missions this morning.  The first was 60 minutes of rowing.  The other was to replace my empower oarlock.  I’ve been trying to troubleshoot the dropped power values with NK for a couple of weeks.  They finally came to the conclusion that the problem was interesting enough that they wanted the specimen in the lab.  They sent me a unit to swap it out, and a label to return the prodigal oarlock to them.

It took a lot more time than I expected because I had trouble getting through the calibration.  I would try it and it would take me through the steps and then curtly imform me that “Calibration Failed”.  Ultimately, I diagnosed the problem.  The oarlock senses angle by having a magnet assembly on the oarlock pin, and the oarlock is supposed to freely rotate above that.  What happened to me is that the length of the pin was just a hair shorter than the height of the oarlock, magnet assembly and 3 spacers.  The pin was shifting slightly when the oarlock swung.  Ultimately, I sanded about 1/16″ off one of the spacers, and then I could crank down  the pin bolt and the oarlock would swing nice and freely.  Viola, calibration passed.

Then, after wasting some more time finding a restroom, I headed out for a row.  I had just enough time for 60 minutes or rowing, but I wasn’t in the mood for speedplay today.  I decided to just work on trying to row well.

I tried.  Sometimes, I succeeded.  Often, I did not.  But it was totally absorbing.

And I ran into a tree!  I was just starting.  I left the dock, rowed into the turn.  I cut close to the north bank coming into the last bit of the turn, and I usually swing wide while I build some speed into the straight bit.  I alway look over my port shoulder because I can see the whole straight bit without turning too much.  What I missed by doing that was a huge tree that had fallen into the river on the east bank.  I saw it about 5 strokes later and checked down hard.  I managed to take all the speed off the boat and gently coasted into a tangle of the upper branches.

It took me a little bit to calm down and then I backed my way out of the mess and swung around it.

The rest of the row was quite uneventful.

Workout Summary - media/20180517-1845250o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|11172|60:37.0|02:42.8|118.6|18.4|139.4|172.0|10.0
W-|10461|53:10.0|02:32.5|126.6|18.2|140.3|172.0|10.8
R-|00718|07:27.0|05:11.5|060.9|19.6|132.4|172.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00584|02:54.0|02:28.9|126.5|16.9|097.3|115.0|11.9 - to the tree!
01|03335|15:51.0|02:22.6|132.8|18.4|141.7|151.0|11.4 - After the tree
02|02167|11:18.0|02:36.5|126.2|17.5|146.4|155.0|11.0 - up from the dam
03|00278|01:13.0|02:11.1|199.4|30.5|165.4|172.0|07.5 - fast minute
04|00284|01:29.0|02:36.5|120.4|17.4|141.7|153.0|11.0 - technique stuff
05|01439|07:15.0|02:31.1|119.4|18.4|140.9|155.0|10.8 - technique stuff
06|01504|08:18.0|02:45.6|117.3|17.7|138.3|149.0|10.3 - technique stuff
07|00870|04:52.7|02:48.2|118.2|18.2|143.5|152.0|09.8 - Back to the dock

I wanted to do some higher rate rowing just to see if the oarlock missed a beat.  I did a hard minute and it worked great. The data is not glitchy at all!

After that, I shifted gears.  I decided to do 2 minute intervals with 2 minutes of square blade rowing, 2 minutes of slow roll up and 2 minutes of r20.  This was awesome practice, especially the slow roll up.  This really allowed me to focus on the first part of the recovery and get my arms out and body angle right, and then slowly square the blades as I went from body over to the catch.  A few strokes were perfect.  Just a few.  But the feeling was extraordinary.  Finish cleanly, keep the blades off the water, cleanly square the blades in a smooth movement, and drop them in for the next stroke.  Imagine if I could do that for all my strokes!

Tomorrow:  I am still feeling pretty tapped out, so I think I will do a speedplay session instead of one of the more intense workouts.