After a 944 mile journey from Cincinnati to Craftsbury, here I am again, a year later, ready to go on another journey. I feel like I have been mostly living out of my big black Patagonia bag all summer and I am pretty excited to put my clothes back into drawers, tidy my room up, and make a permanent residence again here in Craftsbury. It's really comforting to think about settling in and staying here for a while.
I got back into my single for the first time in three weeks today. My first strokes off the dock were a little shaky, but I was able to find some relaxation pretty quickly. The meat and potatoes of my stroke are still there but there's no doubt it will take some time to get some savviness back. Most of it is just flipping on the rowing intellect again. The last few weeks I have been thinking about things other than rowing. For instance, where am I going to go for lunch? Is there a baseball game I can go to? etc. The other 49 weeks of the year, I find myself thinking very specifically about how to move the boat faster and more efficiently. Even when I'm not rowing I love watching footage of rowing: Olympics, world cups, world champs, training footage. Can't get enough of it. I feel a great common bond with the rowers of the world pursuing the most efficient rowing movement. I especially enjoy rowing announcers. I often do steady state rows as mock 2k races with announcing in my head. Obviously a 20k row can feel long, but not quite as long when it is broken down into 10 x 2k. I will sometimes chose a race or series of races that I will compete in during the steady state row. So earlier this spring I would do the Eton Dorney World Cup. Heat, semi, final. Go through my entire race place stroke for stroke, visualizing how I'm rowing, how I want to be rowing, imagining I'm at race pace, imagining where I am relative to the other scullers. I will make up margins and go through the progression of the regatta. I'll do each one a few times coming up with different scenarios. Maybe sounds kind of extravagant but its actually really fun! I find more often than not, when I am encountered with a situation in the actual race, I have already dealt with it in my race visualizations. I think this is also effective because it forces you to think about rowing at race pace while you are rowing at low intensity pressure, or steady state. A common problem is to lose your race pace stroke while rowing so many miles of steady state. I am definitely very conscious of that. If you row different at low rate than you do at race pace, thats a problem. Quite a tangent there, but its important!
I rowed for about an hour this morning and did some heavy lifting afterwards before lunch. First row/lift combo in a while and will certainly be sore in the morning. Right now we are doing straight leg deadliest, bench press, and dragging a massive tire up a hill as fast as we can! I have yet to do that...but can't wait. For now, I am trying to be smart about easing back into training without getting any sort of overuse injuries. It's definitely a slippery slope when you take some time off and want to get back quick. You want to go go go, but the body is not ready for it yet. I have had a few bouts of achilles tendonitis in the past because of that. Too much too soon, is what they say. So, I'm just trying to be consistent and smart. I understand it will take a little bit to get my technique, power, and aerobic system back to where it can be after taking a few weeks off and tapering for a good part of the summer. But that is what the fall is for, building back up the right way.
'Out on the water today I was definitely cruising at slower paddling speeds than this summer, but to be expected. I am excited to start working those down again. Again, It's time to change what I think is good. I will take all the numbers I used this year as standards, acknowledge them, and lower them. Then try to hit those. It's exciting that the pursuit of those seemingly impossible goals has begun again. We'll see how it goes..
I got back into my single for the first time in three weeks today. My first strokes off the dock were a little shaky, but I was able to find some relaxation pretty quickly. The meat and potatoes of my stroke are still there but there's no doubt it will take some time to get some savviness back. Most of it is just flipping on the rowing intellect again. The last few weeks I have been thinking about things other than rowing. For instance, where am I going to go for lunch? Is there a baseball game I can go to? etc. The other 49 weeks of the year, I find myself thinking very specifically about how to move the boat faster and more efficiently. Even when I'm not rowing I love watching footage of rowing: Olympics, world cups, world champs, training footage. Can't get enough of it. I feel a great common bond with the rowers of the world pursuing the most efficient rowing movement. I especially enjoy rowing announcers. I often do steady state rows as mock 2k races with announcing in my head. Obviously a 20k row can feel long, but not quite as long when it is broken down into 10 x 2k. I will sometimes chose a race or series of races that I will compete in during the steady state row. So earlier this spring I would do the Eton Dorney World Cup. Heat, semi, final. Go through my entire race place stroke for stroke, visualizing how I'm rowing, how I want to be rowing, imagining I'm at race pace, imagining where I am relative to the other scullers. I will make up margins and go through the progression of the regatta. I'll do each one a few times coming up with different scenarios. Maybe sounds kind of extravagant but its actually really fun! I find more often than not, when I am encountered with a situation in the actual race, I have already dealt with it in my race visualizations. I think this is also effective because it forces you to think about rowing at race pace while you are rowing at low intensity pressure, or steady state. A common problem is to lose your race pace stroke while rowing so many miles of steady state. I am definitely very conscious of that. If you row different at low rate than you do at race pace, thats a problem. Quite a tangent there, but its important!
I rowed for about an hour this morning and did some heavy lifting afterwards before lunch. First row/lift combo in a while and will certainly be sore in the morning. Right now we are doing straight leg deadliest, bench press, and dragging a massive tire up a hill as fast as we can! I have yet to do that...but can't wait. For now, I am trying to be smart about easing back into training without getting any sort of overuse injuries. It's definitely a slippery slope when you take some time off and want to get back quick. You want to go go go, but the body is not ready for it yet. I have had a few bouts of achilles tendonitis in the past because of that. Too much too soon, is what they say. So, I'm just trying to be consistent and smart. I understand it will take a little bit to get my technique, power, and aerobic system back to where it can be after taking a few weeks off and tapering for a good part of the summer. But that is what the fall is for, building back up the right way.
'Out on the water today I was definitely cruising at slower paddling speeds than this summer, but to be expected. I am excited to start working those down again. Again, It's time to change what I think is good. I will take all the numbers I used this year as standards, acknowledge them, and lower them. Then try to hit those. It's exciting that the pursuit of those seemingly impossible goals has begun again. We'll see how it goes..
Comments
Post a Comment