Somebody tell me why I row again? Actually, the problem isn't so much rowing as that I haven't been rowing and then not only went out this morning but did two thousand-meter race pieces. Well, sort-of race pieces. Not quite half-assed but maybe three-quarter-assed or at least enough to leave my ass and other assorted parts feeling it. There are blisters on my fingers, it's taking me several minutes to stand up, I'm walking like an old lady, and my lungs are announcing their presence instead of placidly inflating and deflating without fuss, as they normally do. You know about the lungs if you're an athlete or were one, or if you weren't but remember gym class vividly. This is where the lungs get annoyed at being forced to work hard and, apparently, cover themselves in a productive layer of gunk which I will now be coughing up all morning. When it gets really bad you can't take a deep breath without coughing and you then have exercise-induced asthma, whose only redeeming value is that it's not as scary as real asthma. It seems to get worse the shorter and more intense the piece you do is: I once pulled 500 meters in 1:58 and was coughing for two days.
The sad thing is that the faster of my two pieces was only 5:00.2. Not only is that not a time to beat other people, but even I can do considerably faster when I'm in training. I think I was hoping that getting a bit more rest these days would somehow magically make me faster when I got back in a boat.
Posted by dichroic at April 13, 2005 11:18 AM