Not As Bad As I'd Feared

After spending most of the day fighting the Windows FTP library to (not yet entirely successfully) get it to do things asynchronously, I decided to take a break and kickstart the winter’s exercise regime - the rowing machine was hauled out and I did my first stint on it since March.

With the nights now drawing in, this week will be the last opportunity for an evening game of footie on Parker’s Piece, so I’ll have an empty “exercise slot” on a Thursday until next April.

With the frenzied rowing of winter 2002/2003 almost interrupting the resumption of the football season; and given I’d upped my winter football to twice a week; I didn’t bother with any targets for my rowing last winter, thinking I’d just do the odd session here and there. I only managed just over a dozen rows for the six months.

The plan for this winter is to have a goal, but nothing too onerous. I’ll still be playing five-a-side indoor on Mondays, and footie outdoors on Tuesdays, so I just want to keep up the thrice weekly exercise.

The challenge for this winter (September ‘til April) is to row on average 5000m per week, and to bring my 5000m row time to below 20 minutes.

That’s slightly harder than one 5km row each week, as I’m measuring from the start of September (putting me at least three rows down) and I’ll miss at least one Thursday over Christmas. But quite achieveable.

Today’s time for 5000m was 20m38.9s; well within the 20m50s target I’d set myself as it turns out, but during the row it wasn’t looking quite so obvious, and my stomach and arms were complaining lots by the end! I expect it’ll all come back to me fairly quickly, and given my personal best for 5km is 20m00.8s I doubt I’ll have much trouble beating 20m dead in the next six months - it’ll just be nice to break that barrier.