morning 2001-06-21 taphistlit.html
tapering and a bit of rowing history and literature
I’m tapering down training before the race Saturday, so I skipped the gym and just did a fairly light 5000 meters on the erg. The idea of tapering is to leave you with a lot of pent-up energy before a big enough, by going from a very heavy workout schedule to a lighter one a few days before. You keep doing a little bit of exercise so you don’t lose muscle tone, but not much. I’m not sure if it works quite that way for me, but at least I’m not wearing my body down more right before a race. I plan to sleep in a wee bit tomorrow, too.
Egret and I found out yesterday that we’ll be racing a double with an average age somewhere in their early 60s. They get a 21.8 second handicap! Bear in mind that the whole 1000 meter race will take us 4 minutes or less, so that’s substantial. With luck, at least we can beat them in real time, before the handicap is added. In rowing, that’s not a given, because a 60-year-old woman may be one who began rowing in college, graduated, found a partner, and has been doing so ever since. Some of the people who fit that description have incredible form and physiques.
Yes, women have been rowing for a lot longer than that; I refer you to Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night, which I should be rereading anyhow. Set in the 1930s at Oxford, it makes it clear that the characters not only know how to row properly, but learned how as undergraduates, 15 years or so earlier. Incidentally, the boats in that book seem a bit different than the ones I’m familiar with, being capable of taking extra passengers and cargo. In fact, they sound more like those in Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, though Jerome certainly didn’t have a sliding seat, while Harriet Vane may have. There are some modern touring boats, used more in Europe and Australia, that may be more similar to those older ones. They sound like a wonderful way to tour the Netherlands, with its canal system!
I was going to writer today about cosmetics, use of and splurging on, but I seem to have filled a page, so will save that musing until later.
Posted by dichroic at June 21, 2001 08:31 AM