Tag: yard work

Mulching, rowing and wimping out

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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.

Screen Shot 2017-05-08 at 11.23.35 AM

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.

5-7a

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.

5-7b

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.

5-8c

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.

1-17j

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.

 

 

Thurs: No Training, Fri: No Training, Saturday: CTC, Sunday: Yard Work

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Well, you make your choices and you own them.  This week was quarterly business review week at work, and it’s a big week to prepare our status from the prior quarter and present it to executive management.  There is also a lot of activity to get ready for our earnings call.  Anyway, this quarter it meant early starts to the work day and late nights and no time for training.

Wednesday:  I was at work until around 8pm, got home around 9

Thursday:  I had meetings starting at 9, but I had to do some prep for them so I was at my desk at 7.  No time to go rowing, or even hit the gym at work.  Meetings were back to back from 9am to 7pm.

Friday:  My meetings started at 8am, and again I had prep work to do before, so I was at my desk at 7.  I had meetings most of the morning, then more prep, then a big review from 2 to about 6pm.  I got home after 7.  And I was totally exahausted.  I don;t think I had gotten more than 5 hours sleep any night of the week so far.  I decided there was no way I could get up early to row out at Quinsig.  I conked out around 11, and slept until around 9am.  It was bliss!

Saturday:  I had a another busy day.  We had our work family day at an amusement park about an hour away from home and I needed to do some shopping for a trip to China and Japan.  But I desperately wanted to get some training in.  I decided to do the July CTC as soon as I got out of bed.

Screen Shot 2016-07-24 at 6.54.52 PM

It’s always a guessing game to do these sessions when I am not erging regularly.  This looked a lot like a Wolverine L2 session, like the waterfall (3K/2.5K/2K), and I can usually hold about a <1:50 pace for sessions like that, so I thought I would go for that as my pace.

I warmed up with rate ladder 18/20/22/24/26 over the planned 2813m distance, and then paddled a bit in the 4 minute rest.  I let the flywheel completely stop so my first rep of the CTC would be legal.

I took off at my 1:50 pace and very soon realized that it was way too aggressive.  I started to bleed off speed about half way through the rep and by the time I finished, I had let the average pace creep up to 1:51.

I knew even that was too spicy and I set out on rep #2 targeting 1:52.  Again, it was too much for me and I slowed in the middle.

The last rep, I figured i was toast.  I started off trying to hold the 1:52.6 from the last rep, but it was not working out very well.  I saw lots of 1:55s and some 1:56s in the middle, but with a bit less than 2K to go, I found a bit of energy (and pride) and started to bear down.  The split came back in line and I was seeing 1:54s and 1:53s.  Then I started seeing 1:52s.  With 1000m left, I was counting down strokes.  My avg pace was still above 1:54, but I was seeing it come down.  As Rocket Roy describes it, the “red mist” descended and I sudenly thought I might be able to equal my previous rep.  Turns out I missed it 3 tenths of a second.  I dug my way out of a really deep hole.

I did a quick cool down and then had some breakfast.

2016-07-23 10.42.06.jpg

 

The rest of the day was a blur.  Shopping, off to the picnic, back from the picnic, laundry and packing.

Sunday:  I had to leave for the airport around 11am, and I really needed to get some yard work done before I took off.  There were trees to be pruned, and a bunch of shrubs and hedges that needed trimming.  I was hoping to dispatch it quickly and do an hour on the erg, but it took nearly 3 hours and I finished with barely enough time for a shower before I had to head off to the airport.

Now I am in a plane somewhere over canada, near mackenzie bay.  I am on my way to Shanghai for some customer meetings on tuesday.  Wednesday, I fly over to our plant in Kumamoto Japan.  Our building was essentially destroyed by the recent earthquakes and the folks we have working for us there have been doing an amazing job improvising, finding space, and supporting our local customers.  I’m visiting to see the damage and review our reconstruction plans.  I fly home during the day on Friday.

In other words.  More cross training this week.

 

Sunday: 3 hours of yard work

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Finishing up the mulching.  Worked from about 9:30 to 12:30.  I was stiff at first, but loosened up with the first 30 minutes or so.  The labor was dominated by a huge flower bed on front of our house that required 24 wheelbarrows of mulch to cover.

I didn’t wear a strap, but by my rule of thumb, this was 3 hours of sub-UT2 exercise and burnt 1800 calories.

 

Saturday: 5 hours of yard work

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I was wondering how to think about yard work as a form of exercise.  What I was doing this weekend was preparing our flower beds for summer.  This entails raking the bed, edging, weeding, and then spreading mulch.  It is pretty demanding work, it works the core mostly, but arms get it pretty good too.

I decided to wear a heart rate monitor to get an idea of how much aerobic benefit there is.  I did two “sessions”.  The first was an hour and forty three minutes.  The I needed to run an errand and grab a drink.  Then I did another 3 hours and 12 minutes.

My average HR for the first session was 104bpm, so well below the threshold for UT work, but a bit more than 2x my resting HR.  And my peak HR was only 125.  Over the first hour and 43 minutes, I burnt 957 calories.  More than I expected.

The second session wiped me out.  About the same average HR at 102bpm.  A slightly higher peak at 131.  Total calories burnt over the 3 hours and 12 minutes was 1905.  By the end, I was having trouble getting up from my knees if I crouched down.

By the evening, I was basically paralyzed with stiffness in my back.

A good days work.  And now I know that yard work is basically 600 calories an hour.