Mileage

It is time to start building up the mileage in earnest, in preparation for the rowing marathon in Petaluma over Labor Day weekend. Four days of rowing, back-to-back, feels really, really good, even with the BAP all choked full of algae.

I'm mostly doing steady-state rowing, emphasizing very good technique with drills thrown in periodically. For my body, a lot of the stabilizing muscles that contribute to a well-balanced and efficient rowing shell are muscles that are very difficult to train and coordinate properly via anything other than rowing itself. When I do enough rowing, I also observe more general postural/comfort benefits throughout the rest of the day. It is highly rewarding to work on extending the duration of time that I'm able to row cleanly.

The other major limiting factor for rowing a marathon is hand toughness. There, again, the only way to prepare is to row for long enough to challenge one's hands, but not so long that one develops endless skin rips and bloody blisters. So far, so good.

I won't row tomorrow morning because I'm also back to work on circadian experiments (ugh), but in the interest of prioritizing rowing to a greater extent, my schedule this week will look like the following:

Tuesday morning: erg
Tuesday - Wednesday: lab overnight + morning timepoint
Wednesday afternoon: row (hopefully during the 2-5 pm afternoon window)
Thursday morning: row
Thursday - Friday: lab overnight + morning timepoint
Friday evening: kayak

Next Wednesday, we're heading to the field for two weeks. No rowing there, so I'll just have to jog and do some strength-training instead.