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
Anvil or Hammer 
on June 27, 2007 on 10:33 pm
That means you spent over a half hour at 85-90% of your max heart rate!!! Hah! I certainly know not to underestimate your determination now. I bet sleeping feels great tonight.
on June 27, 2007 on 10:37 pm
I love reading this log – I’ve made so many of the same screw ups it’s sort of fun to watch as you do it too. In reality, all you did was row a heavier boat if what you mean is the damper setting was on 5 or 6 etc – the over all effort should even out and accounts somewhat for the slower stroke rate you were able to do. Either way, that’s darn nice rowing for no longer than you’ve been at it. Keep it up and the hike up Seneca should be a cake walk for you.
on June 28, 2007 on 5:18 am
Scott,
Yeah, I looked up heart rates after I wrote this and realized I was high, like high enough that they feel I could not work out at that level. I felt pretty okay for it, I mean, I was wiped right after and really wanted to sleep during the first half of my class but I seem to have come out of it ok. I hope it isn’t a warning that I’m putting myself somewhere I don’t want to be regarding heart health or maybe it’s a sign that I’m finally going where I need to be regarding heart health.
Chris,
If you can’t laugh at yourself, well, who can you laugh at. Me :-). I figure next week I’ll give 10,000 meters another go with the lighter boat, my time would have been pretty decent for me. I like these rowing workouts. My wife and I have commited to buying a rower this year.