Cold in March

The past weekend was glorious in that the temperatures got up into the upper 50° range. Ever the optimist I turned on the water to the outside shower. Saturday night I “curb shopped” a chrome shower caddy. My old one was pretty well rusted out. You never know when something you need will turn up!

Sunday afternoon was perfect to cut out the dead ferns and clean out the raggedy flower beds. We all met at the boat house at 4:00 for a row. We had enough rowers signed up to take out two eights. I have been coxing the past few sessions; it was heaven to be rowing again. Hunter coxed/coached us. We did drills down to the steel mill, spun the sweep and rowed back all eight. We have not done that in a long time. We played around bumping the rates up and down. The crew was pretty lopsided. I was the only guy rowing starboard, while Melissa was the only woman rowing port! It was a good workout!

I went directly to Gary’s for a dinner invite. It was a fast change into my Utilikilt in the parking lot. He fixed up a wonderful salad, chowder, and bread. Em and Jim from Birmingham were there along with Paul and Terry from Gordo. I had them all going telling stories of my latest San Francisco trip.

Utilikilt in San Francisco.

Winter will not leave. Rowing was canceled this morning out due to the cold temperatures and the rain. Rain I can take when the temperatures are fairly warm, but you get in the 30° range and things can get bad.

I was headed out to the “Y” for my workout shortly after 10:00 a.m. The mail had been delivered early and on the porch was my heart rate monitor watch! YAY!!!!

I had to unpack it and try and figure out how it worked. I’d done some research on line as to optimal heart ranges for different levels of activity. My goal is to work as much in the anaerobic range as I can. According to my calculations that is between 155-166 beats a minute for my age and fitness level.

There is a strap that goes around the chest with the monitor which broadcasts to a watch type contraption. I did a vigorous walk to the “Y” keeping track of my heart rate which stayed in the 111 beats range.

The Concept 2 was the perfect test. There is a March Challenge to row 5,000 meters a day. By erging at least that distance you are eligible for drawings every day. It is just a motivational gimmick to keep you in training!

After doing some warm-ups it was time for the test. I set the readout for 5,000 meters and took off. A few months back I broke the 20 minute mark for the 5,000 meter distance. Monday I did that in a little over 21 minutes. Today I worked intervals of giving it Hell for at least a minute every five minutes and cutting back in between. I put the watch on the machine so I could see the readouts.

Going all out had my heart rate in the 156-160 range. There were a few times it was above 166. That is not sustainable for any time for me yet. Having all these “bells and whistles” makes working out all the more fun!

I did not start out to beat time today, so I was kind of annoyed at myself when I realized in the second half of my workout I could have broken the 20 minute mark had I busted butt harder in the first half. As it was, I finished at 20.25.04 not too shabby…..

Today has been gray and clammy. The cats both have full bellies and are curled up asleep on the bed.

Before starting on this entry I was checking back to research the weather for this time of year as recorded on my journal. This past winter has definitely been the wettest and coldest in the history of my blog here going back to 2001. I ended up reading months of entries killing a few hours.