Dichroic Reflections

better news

Finally, my erging is coming back to me. I took two weeks off after the marathon, but from what erging has felt like since then, you'd think I'd taken two years off. I managed a half-marathon my first day back on the erg, but after that, it was always like pulling a weighted sled over bumpy ground to scrape out every kilometer. I was just going at an easy pace, too, not really trying to push it.

That may have been a part of the problem, actually. When you go faster on an erg, you've gotten the flywheel moving so there's less inertia to move with. Another problem is that our air has been incredibly crappy lately - so bad that Brooke even posted a picture. That not-a-cold thing I had last week was most likely allergies in reaction, and I'm still having to pause ferquently to blow my nose, especially in the first thousand meters or so. (Sniffling it back for too long gives me a headache or worse.)

Rudder's suggestion was to try some of the interval workouts I'd done for marathon training, or variants of them. I figured it couldn't hurt, and adding some changes in does break up the workout. I wasn't sure I could keep much pressure up for too long, though. So on Sunday I did a variant of one we use to practice racing starts in sprint season: 2 sets of 6 power tens (ten strokes as hard as possible) with three minutes rowing easy after each one, and a five minute rest between the sets (and a 1K warmup before). On Monday I did one of the marathon workouts that had a comparatively short intense part: 1K to warm up, then 3 sets of 1000 at a medium-hard pace, 2K easy. And on Tuesday, by gum, I finally felt like a rower again. I did 7500m in less than the times I'd taken for 7000m a few days before, with far fewer pauses. Yesterday I was a little short on time so just did 6500, but again it was a lot smoother. And today I had a little extra time, so I did 8K, without any real pauses in the last 7000. Whew. Feels good not to be slogging quite so much. TOmorrow I'll do another interval workout of some sort, and maybe even try for a half-marathon on Saturday, which would take out a lot of my remaining distance.

I'm off work for the rest of the year as soon as I leave tomorrow, so I'll have more time to do longer pieces. But Rudder and I have decided to go up to Vegas for a few days before Xmas, and I'd like to be done by then.

In even better news, Rudder talked to his father a couple days ago and apparently his grandmother's decline was all about the drugs she was on; since they've withdrawn a lot of them, she's able to eat on her own and even say a few words. (Apparently she ripped out the feeding tube herself. Ouch.) Of couse, she'll still never recover; senile dementia doesn't reverse itself. But it's a relief not to have to think of her being taken off a feeding tube. I support her wish to go and not be sustained beyond the point of hopelessness (not that a grand-daughter-in-law's opinion would be the crucial one) but that wouldn't have made it easy to watch or even hear about.

Posted by dichroic at December 15, 2005 12:30 PM