What Was Your Work Out Today?

5 hours of pulling weeds, mowing lawn, bagging and hauling weeds/clippings (both my yard and the elderly neighbor two houses down who is in hospital)

On my rest day, Sunday, I ended up moving logs from off a back fence to the wood pile for 40 minutes, so strength training basically.

upper body #1

Two rows, sort of?

Morning row, bow of the double, the usual near 7k distance, moderate intensity, about a quarter of the time in each of zone 2 and 3, remainder below.

At learn-to-row class tonight, I took out one of the class members in my double. This was her first time out in a real rowing shell. Most of the time she rowed while I just stabilized the boat. However, when working with someone this new, we don't go even remotely straight when they row alone, plus it was very windy tonight so we got blown around some. Every time we got too far out of the traffic pattern, I'd row for a while to get us back on course, turn the boat, or something like that. I forgot to start my Garmin, so I have no idea how far we rowed in total, let alone how much of it was me. I like working with the rowing learners this way: Very fun.

I am scuba diving in the Scillies.

Friday

I drove down. This could have gone better; I got just past Stonehenge when I realised I had forgotten to pack my BCD. I turned around; came back home and had a quick run to get rid of pent up energy.

I got to Penzance at 1.30 a.m.

Saturday

We dropped out dive kit off at 7 a.m. for the 9 a.m. ferry, getting in to the Scillies around 12. There was the faffing to do moving in to the accommodation and moving stuff to the dive boat. I went for a 6 mile walk afterwards.

Sunday

First day diving. The first dive was a reef, Dave's Crack, named after the skipper who found it. There's were stunning jewel anemones everywhere, and loads of nudibranch. There was a sleepy dogfish in the deep. 37 metres deep;37 minutes long.

The second dive was another reef, Wingletang. Again, stunning. 23 metres deep and 42 minutes.

@drmwc

I think I asked about this before. I'm guessing you dive doubles, and I think you told me you've swapped to side-mount. That's the only way I could see almost an hour at 42 meters (138 feet). I know you're not diving NITROX at those depths; are you on air or tri-mix?

I have never been below 130 feet (limits for recreational diving) nor had to do any deco. Those are my limits. I typically stay above 90 feet (28 meters) to have more bottom time and to make my breathing gas supply go longer. If there's good stuff to see down deep, I can go. Otherwise, if I stay above 80 feet, I can have a decent dive. If I'm doing repetitive diving (haven't done that lately), I'm usually on NITROX. At 32%, I don't go below 100 feet (30 meters). Some days if we're doing a dive that might be deep as our first dive, I'll fill my bottle with air. It still is a little enriched, but I have deeper limits. Of course this loads me up on nitrogen for the first dive which can affect how much diving I can do the rest of the day.

I just use a single 100 cubic foot bottle on a standard BCD.

My equipment for this was a bit basic; 2 sidemount 12 litre cylinders filled with air. The wreck is on a slope, so we weren't in the depths for long; the average depth was 19 metres.

There is a compressor on the boat; but it's just air so if we wanted nitrox or mix we'd have needed to bring a rich bottle and whip it. My stage is out of test, so I couldn't bring that (it would have cut my deco time. But my buddy had 10 minutes more than me, and he didn't have a stage.)

Stationary bike, the usual 60' + 3' CD, keeping it pretty moderate to save some energy for learn-to-row class this evening. 94W average, supposedly 16.06 miles at 14.6 mph; not quite a third of the time lower zone 3, about two-thirds zone 2, remainder below.

At learn-to-row tonight, rowed bow in the double with a different one of the learners, myself again only rowing when I needed to take us back on course. Total row was just under 3.5k, but much of the distance was her rowing while I set up the boat or dragged an oar-tip to gradually steer a bit so she could keep going longer before I needed to take over and make big corrections. Very windy again, too, so we got blown around some in addition to her not yet knowing how to row straight. 😆 She did well - not going straight is a 100% normal part of the learning process, and it was her first time out in a real rowing shell (not the barge).

I think what you call a 12 liter bottle is what I call 100 cubic feet. If I had two of them, I could imagine an hour dive at deeper depths. I still don't like to get into decompression. I have no idea how one would blend gas from a rich oxygen bottle on a boat along with compressed air. The boat I used to go on got a forward osmosis NITROX machine at some point so we were offered the option of NITROX (if certified) for a small extra fee. Worth it as long as you're not too deep.

You sound like a good candidate for getting into closed circuit. Costs as much as a fancy motorcycle, but your machine will blend the right gas for your depth, and you can often come back up without much or any nitrogen load (feeds you pretty rich as soon as it can). Not my thing, but I've known some folks who love it. Being that there's no bubbles, you can get much closer to marine life because you don't scare them as much.