Gym - Rowing: Masochism part deux

Finding it hard to believe just how painful the return to rowing was on Monday, and in denial about it, I tried again on Wednesday. I thought that perhaps I had remembered it poorly and I had inflated the amount of pain and effort in my mind.  Just to prove to myself that the pain I experienced was real, I re-tried the experiment.

On the bright side, it appears that my memory is working fine.

Near-death indoor rowing experience

When it comes to rowing, I have a little history, because I rowed in a team (let's not say "competitively", we weren't that good) back in 2003-2004.  My training speed on an indoor rowing machine was 2:00 per 500m.  I could keep this speed up for quite a long time, but typically I rowed segments of 2k and then rested.

My 2k in the gym today ended with the last pathetic stores of energy just barely allowing me to cross the finish line in under 8 minutes.  Then I sat on the machine and waited for my head to stop spinning and my heart rate to return to normal while feeling the heat come off my body in waves.  Clearly things have changed since 2004.

The Tabata Protocol

I'm all for efficiency, and there's a theory that's been doing the rounds for years that you can cram an entire cardio workout into a few short minutes.  Sound realistic to you?  Then there's a really nice rug I'd like to sell you.

Nevertheless, not one to turn down an opportunity to increase efficiency, I looked into it, and the more I looked, the more it seemed that there was some sort of medical/research consensus around the fact that HIIT (Thats High-Intensity Interval Training to you and me) actually works.  It came with warnings about how hard it was - the phrase used by researchers was "elevated levels of discomfort", which doesn't sound too bad when you say it quietly.  So I did more research, and here's what I found.

First run in Toulouse

So perhaps doing my first run in 30°C of heat was a little ambitious, but I'm very happy that I managed over six 6 km.

 

My indoor training routine before I stopped training (back in November) was to do 6 km at 12kph which gave me exactly 30 minutes of treadmilling before other gym-goers started giving me dirty looks for monopolising the machine.

 

Clearly my pace has not improved during my months of sloth.  That was perhaps to be expected.  This is also my first outdoor run in a long time, which is my excuse for returning home looking like I'd been boiled alive and then painted red for good measure.

 



Gadget motivation

Nothing motivates me to go do some sport more than an expensive investment in a piece of sports gadgetry that will be utterly useless unless I actually go and do some sport with it.  It's like the reasonable person holding the recalcitrant lazy guy to ransom by spending all his money.  I don't really have dual personalities, but that's kind of what's going on.

Since I'm somewhat obsessive-compulsive by nature, my choice is something that provides lots and lots of data on the exact source of the pain in my thighs and the degree of effort that resulted in seeing double around the second mile-marker.  Then I can play with the data for hours.  Then - so the theory goes - I shall be motivated to go get more data, which involves doing more sport, so that I can track improvements in performance to seven decimal points.

My choice of expensive gadget this time around is the Garmin Forerunner 210.  Partly because I want to measure my heart rate and recovery time because without some sense that I'm improving my health I'll give up; and also partly because... well... it was right there in a case in the shop, looking at me.

Total cost, around €200.  I could have ordered it by mail and had it cheaper, but it was right there...

 

The gadget also has a built-in GPS (hence the price) conveniently increasing the amount of available information for me to obsess over once I stop hyperventilating after exercise.