Early in 2006 Zach convinced me to go down to the Texas Rowing Center on Town Lake and learn to row. The package included the three lessons and a six-plus-one month membership for a price that I can’t remember now but that seemed reasonable at the time. They’re all nice people down there and they have boats for all skill levels and training for the asking. My first lesson went well and I paddled out a bit and then turned around and came back. The second lesson was basically watching a safety video and then more practice on the lake in sight of the dock. So I watched the video, climbed in a boat and started doing low-speed laps between the Mopac bridge and the downstream bend. I got going faster than I should have coming back upstream on what was to be my last length of the day and dug an oar in wrong and dumped myself into the cold, March 1st “water” of the lake. It took me about twenty minutes to get the boat to shore and to climb back into it. I returned to the dock under escort; cold and miserable.
The rest of my rowing experience was colored by my swimming lesson. Every time I would get going a reasonable speed something would happen that made me think I was going in the water and I would stop and tense up and basically let the boat glide to a stop. This is not really the way to get good at the rowing and it kinda puts a damper on the workout aspect as well. I went down there at most once a week and more like once every two weeks which is also not good for training or skill. So at the end of the seventh month I decided to not renew the membership and played World of Warcraft more instead. The year and a half that I played the game has made me even pastier and flabbier than my long history of pasty and flabby.
So now a new year has dawned. I stopped playing the game which is a topic for another time and started building an end table, working on the yard more, watching new anime and actually seeing my friends again which are also things better discussed later. None of this was making me feel any better about stairs and mirrors though so my thoughts returned to rowing. I always liked the actual exercise. It’s practically no impact, uses most of the big muscle groups and is pretty good aerobically. The thought of buying another membership and making the 40 minute drive down to the lake once a week didn’t really seem to be a good solution though. There are stationary rowing machines that are used for off-season training and for chickens like me. They are available for amounts ranging from anywhere to whatever and employ a range of different resistance techniques. So, I bought one.
The company I purchased the machine from is Concept 2. They were the same make as the ones the Texas Rowing Center had and they seemed to be pretty sturdy and have useful features without a bunch of extra junk to jack the price up. I got the Model D with the base monitor. Putting it together was simple and everything fit correctly. I had to clear out a pretty big space in my bedroom to fit it but I like that in a way. If I have to dedicate a large parcel of floor to it I’d better be using it. The instructions that come with it say that over a two week period you should work up to being able to row a half an hour straight. So I figured two days at 5 min, two days at 10, etc. with two days rest somewhere in there would do it and, to my surprise, I actually managed to complete that without much trouble.
Concept2 Model D Torture Device
So far I’ve done thirty minutes for four days in a row and today (Friday) is going to be my day off. Yesterday I went ~6750m in the alloted time and I was completely whupped afterwards. There is a pretty significant wall at about twenty five minutes. I haven’t really managed to push past it yet. The last five minutes is just will power. I’m hoping one of these days I’ll get that second wind thing that everyone talks about. Maybe I’ll have to work up to forty five minutes to get that.
One of the neat things about the monitor on the machine is that it has a USB connection. I haven’t installed the software on my laptop and connected them yet mainly because I’m just working on being able to finish the session without feeling like passing out afterwards. If I’m lucky it will actually output the data stream over the USB connection while I’m rowing. That would be superb. Think of all the fun things you could do with continuous speed / power / acceleration data. I bet you could even get something like the old quake 2 engine and fill up a map with a faux lake and trees and scenery and stuff and display it on a monitor or TV in front of the user a’la Zach’s old stationary bike with magnetic particle brake feedback idea. How cool would that be? Guess what I don’t need? Another damned project. Especially one like that where I know essentially nothing about how it would actually work. I’ll just put this out here and maybe someone will give me one for Christmas. Oh, there’s an idea. Rower data stream + flugtag flyer simulator = flying trainer! Someone write all that up and e-mail it to me ok thanks.
– Eric