Dichroic Reflections

to train to

Cross posted to Gymrats on LJ - I don't there there's much crossover in readership.

As I close in on finishing my IFR, I've begun to train harder again. We'll see how it goes, but last Monday I began training for the Marathon Rowng Championships in November (despite the name, anyone can enter). I did it last year, but had a better aerobic base by now. Still, I completed a half-marathon this morning on the erg (rowing machine) so I ought to be all right. (One coach I know claims the erg is 20% more effeort than a boat). I'll just be shooting to finish, not going for speed. Right now I'm building a lot of my distance on the erg; it lets me sleep longer (as opposed to driving to the lake, getting my boat out, carrying it down, rowing, carrying it back up, washing it, putting it away, and driving to home or work, whereas I have an erg int he spare bedroom) and it's still pretty hot here. As we get closer to the race, I'll shift more and more to the boat, to work on form over that long a time and to toughen up my hands and seat.

When you're on a machine for that long, two hours in my case, what you watch is important. I can do short pieces watching the news, or 10K pieces watching watever catoons Disney and Nick have on at 5AM. For this longer piece, we had borrowed a copy of the documentary From the Earth to the Moon, and it was perfect. (Caveat: I'm a space geek, of course, but I think it would be good for anyone with an interest in space exploration.) Parts 1 & 2 took me through all but the last 1500 of my 21097 meter piece. The whole thing is 10 hours so it will last for a lot of erg sessions.

So far, we've found that action is good, anything where you have to concentrate is bad, anything very quiet is hard to hear, and comedies aren't great because it's hard to push it while you're laughing. Things that have short exciting or inspiring sections are great because they get you to ramp it up, or you can tell yourself that you won't take a water break until a given space mission makes it back safe, or whatever. Music documentaries can work, if they're about heavy metal so you have music clips for those power 10s. Action movies that aren't too serious, like Lethal Weapon, can work well. The Harry Potter books on audio worked well for me too. Anyone got any other good movies or audiobooks to suggest for training?