60 yrs and up

My yoga studio is having a “ 20 in 30 Day Challenge”.

I’ve got 21 days to knock this out in.

Two classes today so am five in, may do two tomorrow to “get ahead”.

Do I want the stupid mug? No. But do I like having all the very satisfying foil stars next to my name? 😅

Since we seem to be just chatting . . .

Another coached row yesterday - these are coached once a week by the university's rowing club coach (Pete), hired by my club (the community club) to coach some sessions for us. Usually, some of his team are out on the water with us. It's useful technically.

Pete thinks he's preparing us for a local head race coming up in early October. (Head race: Rowing event that's long-ish. Boats have a staggered start, usually 10-15 seconds apart, and are timed on the course. Our head race is around 3500m, roughly 2 miles.)

I'm not planning on entering the head race, at least not unless someone seriously strong-arms me to participate so they can fill out a multi-person boat. I did some racing in my 50s, both rowing machine and on-water races, including some major ones, and I guess kind of got it out of my system. I know that I don't have the character to race singles. (I'd be all "this hurts, I'm stopping". 😆 Without a coxswain - in a folding chair behind me! - I probably would've done that in rowing machine races, too.) If I'm in a boat with someone else, I'll keep going to the finish line, give it all I've got. 😉🙄

However, as the date gets closer, Pete is including more long-ish, intense-ish practice pieces, which is kind of fun. They're very fatiguing - high intensity work is disproportionately more tiring than lower intensity work, as I'm sure you know. But it feels like it's good for me. My standard line is that I'm an old enough model to have a carbuerator, and going faster cleans that out. It's also kind of weirdly exhilarating - endorphins, maybe?

Yesterday, it was a few college students from the university club out in singles, pairs and doubles, and me with another community club member in a double. She's in her mid-40s, and was bow rower (responsible for steering, noting that we're facing away from direction of travel). She's strong. I, 69, was in stroke (responsible for keeping the strokes on a steady beat, sometimes coach-dictated strokes per minute). Yep, us and some 18-22 year old athletes.

Our more intense bit was 16 minutes, strong intensity but not necessarily race pace, with direction from the coach to do a rating increase (strokes per minute, spm) each 4 minutes, so 4' at each of 18, 20, 22, and 24 spm. Those are middling ratings. Among us old people - a.k.a. masters rowers - race pace would be more like 30ish spm (as if my technique wouldn't crumble at 30! 😆).

The college students were faster, gotta admit, especially the guys. We gained on the single sometimes, but a double should be faster than a single, and she was quite petite besides. (Tall and strong is ideal for rowers. She might be strong, dunno.) However, unlike with the college students, the coach didn't have to repeatedly tell us to fix our point (i.e., our steering so as not to hit things, so kudos to the woman in bow), and we were steadily on target with our spm, while they needed more corrections on that. I'll give us credit for that stuff: We may be older, but we might have more focus, or something. 😆

The morning looked like this: Drills, some rest/drink breaks, some pieces where we were increasing pressure, a break, the 16 minute bit, then some more drills to cool down.

The whole deal was about 8.5k. That night, I rowed the barge - like rowing your living room, I swear - for a full moon row my club held. It was a lovely night, but mostly overcast, so we saw the actual moon only briefly. That was another 6k, so there was a total of about twice the distance I usually row, between the two. At least the full moon row had post-row snacks. 😋

Here is me, in the barge, in my usual glamorous (read: ratty!) rowing attire, complete with headlamp in this case. No, that is not me doing an arm block. There's an oar handle under/behind my arm that I'm resting the arm on. You can see a bit of the wood of it behind my elbow.

Woke up crying. Had a vivid dream I was back at work, and everyone was wanting something from me, and there was the usual chaos. We were a family business, and there was the usual layer of parental stress dolloped on top

It was so real my blood pressure went up and my resting heart rate doubled.

If i didn’t beleive that making deep, necessary life changes could change my life and stress level, that dream convinced me.

I thanked the hubs over breakfast for making me leave that situation and literally move away. I don’t know how he put up with me and my work-related anxiety for so many years.

I can really see now why early morning can be the highest % of heart attacks.