Always check your equipment

I’ll say it again, ALWAYS check your equipment.

Lemme tell you a story.

It was in the mid 90s today and rougly 115% – 120% humidity. I stumbled in to the slightly cooler gym. Time to take another shot at 10,000 meters. I got to rowing andmy battery on my mp3 player promptly died, great. So I closed my eyes and just focused on feeling my body on each stroke. They got pretty strong, I was hanging out around 2:05 / 500 meters at about 23 SPM. A definite improvement, but it felt like a lot of work. I checked my heartrate monitor and was in the 170s.

The meters ticked by ever slower. My pace was strong but abou every 500 meters or so I would question if I could keep this up for 10,000 meters. 5,000 meters ticked by right shy of 20 minutes. It was a good time but it didn’t feel like I remembered the first 5,000 meters I ever did feeling, it was much harder which didn’t seem right at all. At that point, all I really could do was watchthe meters tick by.

With 2,500 meters to go I was questioning my sanity in a major way. I was also questioning my constitution. Then I began to question my equipment. I never looked at the flue, did it look half closed from here? I kinda did but I’m just making excuses, I’m sure it’s open, no one around here even uses these things, let along makes it harder. At about 38 minutes and 8,800 meters I quit, I just quit. I give. My desire to complete what was so at hand and that I had done before was overridden by the discomfort and exhaustion.

Sweat soaked, boiling hot and dog tired, I climbed off the rower. Oh look, the flue was closed 50%. That might explain a thing or two.

ALWAYS check your equipment.

EDIT: Average HR 171, max 181

I did nothing

I took yesterday off, from everything. I decided last week that I wanted a day off from work, just cuz. So I scheduled one. I had plans to do some yoga, hit some kettlebells that kind of stuff. Instead, I was a lump. I did get some other projects tinkered on, bought some books, got a hair cut, picked up some of my crap. But I got naught done in the realm of workout. I don’t feel too bad about it either.

This morning I opted for 12K of 20 of each:
2 hand swings
1 hand swings
snatches
standing press

I’ve also been trying to work on a preworkout routine. I’m using some of the basic yoga stretches, a little downward dog, up dog, some other stuff I can’t remember the name of. I’ve had a real desire to do a little yoga lately but haven’t cleared the full hour to do the DVD I have, still the little bits seem to help, especially in the morning.