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Weblog -January 2009
I seem to have made it through the holiday season without packing on my usual couple of pounds. However, it took considerable willpower. Somehow I managed to avoid eating stacks of shortbread cookies and I have pushed my traditional chocolate bar stocking stuffer to the back of my junk drawer. It was a little less difficult to take only a “normal” portion at the two Christmas dinners that I attended.
I have achieved my short term goal of not putting on any weight and now I must turn my attention to dropping another 3 or so pounds before the end of January. I’m not sure how hard this will be.
Thinking back to how I lost six or seven pounds in the last couple of months I am not really sure how it happened. It is certainly true that I was really good about not stuffing my face in the evening hours and I was a little more reasonable about my lunches but this would not seem to be enough to actually loose several pounds. I guess my activity level was higher than normal because I didn’t have the customary lag between hard skating and hard work in the gym. Really though, I wonder whether my stress level helped me burn off some pounds. Work is always stressful in December because I am being asked to achieve the impossible. This December was worse than normal because I was supposed to do the impossible on one job while, at the same time, starting up another job.
Assuming my stress level drops a little when I start back to work next Monday it could prove to be tough to shed those last 3 pounds.
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I’ve decided against making any resolutions this year. Last year I made a few [here] and I didn’t do that well –although I did make modest progress on the first two. I did pretty well on the third one.
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This is not the first time I have watched myself wither away to almost nothing. Around 20 years ago, I decided that I was going to run a marathon. I got a book about how to train for a marathon and started doing “the program”. My weekly mileage climbed from around 20 miles to over 40 and my weight dropped from (I am guessing here) about 170 to under 160. It was weird. One day, I looked in the mirror and hardly recognized myself. My upper body had withered to nothing. Where formerly there had been bulging biceps, triceps, gluts and pecks there was just an emaciated carcass reminiscent of a starvation victim.
As an extremely “body conscious” person the transformation almost killed me. I didn’t like the persona of a long distance runner. I much preferred the body-builder image that I had of myself –even though I have never been into lifting weights. (I perhaps should explain that my genetic “endowment” is perhaps best described as “big muscles on a normal frame”).
Now, to a lesser extent, the same thing is happening again. The mechanics are a bit different but the result is the same. 20 years ago, I increased my activity level and didn’t compensate with an increase in calories. Now, I am maintaining my activity level but am reducing the calorie intake. The result is the same. I am starting to resemble a starvation victim.
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I was snooping around on the Concept 2 web site and I am a little upset. In two different places they give pace times that are supposed to get you working in one of the 4 target heart rate zones. Both places claim to be using your “best 2000m to date” in order to determine you optimal pace. But the information is different.
The worst case is the result for the second slowest pace -called “AT –aerobic threshold”. One source says to “row” at between 3:54 and 4:04 minutes per kilometer. The other says the pace should be 3:48 per kilometer. That’s a big difference.
This sort of thing can harmful to ones self confidence. You want to think that you are following the best program in order to optimize your performance in a race and then you find out that even on the same web site there is disagreement.
But there is good news. I’ve been trying to do my workouts at the low end of the range so I am a little closer to the newly discovered “best pace” than I might have been. As well, I have not been rowing too slowly in every target heart rate zone –only in one or two.
It is interesting being involved in a sport where it is so easy to control the amount of work you are doing. On skates you only have to come to a downhill stretch or skate with a strong wind and all of a sudden you just can’t keep your heart rate up. Of course, it works the other way too. On an exercise machine, the indoor rower, there are no important external variables. The computer readout tells you how hard you are working in speed, watts or calories –whatever you like. The only variables in a workout are factors such as where you are in your training phase, when your last rest day was and how you are feeling in general.
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In other news, I hit 165.8 pounds this morning –so I am basically down to race weight and only have to be concerned with maintaining my weight till the end of the month. Perhaps I will finish the box of Turtles that I have been avoiding.
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I was speculating a while ago [here] that Geocaching was not an urban activity but I decided to check this out. How wrong I was. I suppose you could say that Geocaching is a “wilderness” activity but by wilderness you would have to include all of Toronto’s ravines and the lakeshore –especially including the Spit and the Island. Last weekend I downloaded the information on five caches in my local ravine and managed to find 3 of them. And I did this without even getting into a vehicle. I simply walked out the front door and down into Taylor Creek Park. It was fun to search for the caches and I plan to look for a few more some day soon.
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I had a severe case of over training this weekend. On Friday I did a brutal workout. It was at the least intense heart range (what they call intense aerobic) –but the problem was that it was 4 times 18 minutes. This turned out to be a little too intense because I had a tough time finishing the last “set” in a reasonable time. Most of Saturday, I felt really weak (almost sick) and I honestly wondered whether I had a bad cold or the flu coming on. Finally, I realized that I was suffering from over training the day before.
Over training is pretty common in any endurance sport and I suppose that if you don’t suffer from it once in a while then you pretty well know you are not training hard enough.
For me, it is best to over train during the workweek –when I may well be too engaged in the work at hand to notice how tired I am feeling. When I am suffering from over training on a weekend I have a lot more time to feel sorry for myself.
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A little over a year ago I bought $5000 US dollars for 95 cents (Canadian) each. I felt sort of bad about it for a few days because the US dollar went down to around 90 cents (Canadian) for a short time. But, most of the time since I bought those greenbacks, I have been feeling like a hero. I’ve made one or two small purchases but, for the most part, that money has been sitting in my US account collecting a small amount of interest.
Recently it has occurred to me that it is quite possible the US dollar will not go any higher than it is right now. (Despite a degree in economics I am anything but a savvy investor. I am not an economist, I am a construction guy!). Anyway, today I decided that it is time to start taking my profits. I am buying a Concept 2 rowing machine which I will pick up at the Canadian Indoor Rowing Championships on February 1st. The price of this machine (in Canadian dollars) has gone up quite a bit in recent months and the clear reason is the exchange rate. So- I sold $1000US and received $1219CAN. Considering I got them for 95 cents I guess I am getting $1283 for the original $1000. Clearly that is a great return for a 14 month investment.
So –the Concept 2 indoor rower will not really cost me $1275 like it says on the cheque that I wrote to the Canadian Indoor Rowing Association. It will cost me about $1000.
Now, if I was really smart I would sell the rest of my US holdings –but what if the Canadian dollar goes down to 63 cents US like it did a few years ago?
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The Crash-B (world championships) qualifying times have been reworked and were published to the Concept 2 web site in the last couple of days. Disappointingly, they have lowered the standard for my age group by a massive 7 seconds (down to 6:56.5 from 7:03.7). This is an unreachable goal for me this year –with the limited amount of exposure that I have had in the world of indoor rowing.
This, re jigging of the numbers makes sense because you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that some time standards were easier to achieve. In particular, the time standard for my age category (55-59) was way out. Let’s face it, athletic performance declines in a steady, predictable way and the time standards across the age groups should increase (with the rate of speed declining) in a smooth curve.
Now that I will not be winning a free trip to Boston, I will have to rework my goals for the competition on February 1st. I think I will aim for the original goal of 7:03.7. If a miracle happens I will try to go sub-7. Most of all, I will have fun and gain experience for next year. You never know; I am bringing a machine home from the competition so I may improve a lot over the next year.
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I imagine that I will have unhindered use of my new indoor rower but in my dreams Kathy will take to my new toy like a mad woman. She will frequently kick me off the rower so she can do her own workouts. She will discover the Concept 2 web site, get an online logbook, realize that she is very competitive with other women her age, start competing against them and finally –start bugging me to centre our vacations around Concept 2 competitions in North America and Europe.
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Now that I am out of the running for a trip to Boston it is less important that I “make weight” for the competition. However, I’ve lost 10 pounds; I have registered as a lightweight, and I may as well carry through with the plan.
Since my current weight is “in the ballpark” and the competition is two weeks away, I have to concern myself with the “fine tuning.” The objective in these things is to show up to the weigh-in only very minimally under the limit.
That morning I won’t be able to eat or drink anything until after the weigh-in. If I am slightly over the limit I will have to shed the extra weight within an hour or so. According to what I am reading on the internet this is usually done by sweating off the extra weight. Another option would be clear to most people but difficult on an empty stomach. Spitting is mentioned –along with haircuts (not an option for me). I could also ask to be weighed naked (and hopefully in private).
On race day, I am already planning to stop by Tim Horton’s and purchase an extra large coffee on the way to the racing venue. It will be hard not take a few sips and it would be really hard to dump out the coffee and get onto a rowing machine to sweat off an extra half pound if I am over by that amount.
I am wondering what I have gotten myself into but really -I need to obsess over something so it might as well be something (more or less) healthy like an athletic competition.
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I noticed that my previous favourite exercise machine (the Cybex Arc Trainer) at the gym is out of order. They used to have two but they’ve been down to one for about a year. I would be really angry if I was using that machine this year. But it would be devastating if anything happened to the indoor rower in the next 2 weeks. One way or another, I would have to find another gym with a Concept 2.
I've decided to let my gym membership expire on February 2/09. I mostly use the place for cardio training in the winter and the new rower will take care of that. I won't miss the place much but there are a few guys I've met over the years that I will wonder about.
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Amy is going to settle down for a while at Airlie Beach. I gather it’s a tourist spot up in the north where the climate is tropical. She’ll be working behind the counter at some sort of coffee house close to the beach. She has a pretty loose arrangement with the owner which is OK. I don’t think she needed her commerce degree to land the position. Laura is going to work there too. They are looking for accommodations.
This is the big picture of what Amy and Laura have done so far: fly into Sydney, fly to Melbourne, take the coast road to Adelaide, fly to a place south of Brisbane and go up the coast as far as Airlie Beach. Of course there were lots of side trips along the way.
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Somehow, mostly by accident I suppose, I ended up at home over the lunch hour. As a result, I was able to watch the important part of Barack Obama’s inauguration as 44th President of the United States. His speech will go down in history if (and only if) he is successful in “reinventing” the US. I really hope he manages to do it.
I can’t understand how Obama can speak so eloquently, for so long, without referring to any notes. Possibly, he had a teleprompter –but if he did it was not clear to me.
To sum up the message of Obama’s address, the US is in distress in many ways –not just economically. But the problems are not insurmountable and with hard work and goodwill the problems will be overcome and America will experience a new era of prosperity, ecological responsibility and leadership in the world.
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Kaylee called the other day and mentioned that her goldfish had disappeared from its fishbowl. Kaylee and her roommate have had “Goldie” in their dorm room since frosh week. The girls searched all around on the floor in case Goldie had jumped out of the bowl but he wasn’t there.
Slowly Kathy has been getting the details. Apparently a boy from their dorm snuck in while the girls were sleeping, stole the fish and then swallowed it whole. There may have been drinking involved. At this point I am not sure if Kaylee has found the culprit and whether there will be any compensation.
Kathy is wondering why the girls would not be locking their door at night. So am I.
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Perhaps I have written too often about my weight lately but when you are starving yourself it is hard not to think about it all the time. A couple of things have occurred to me.
The program that I am following (to row the best possible 2000m that I can on Feb 1/09) finishes with a 2 week long taper. I’ve been looking forward to this period because I know from other sports that I will feel like superman by the day of the competition. But there is a slight problem. As I cut back my workload I will also have to cut back on my calorie intake to compensate for the “lack of activity”. Darn!
Another thing I am wondering about is the exact cutoff (for lightweight men). Almost everything on the Concept 2 Website and Online Logbook is metric. Distances are measured in metres and everyone enters their weight in kilograms. Energy expenditure is measured in calories and rate of energy use is measured watts. These are all metric measures.
But, when it comes to the lightweight cutoff the website states that it is 165lbs/75 kilos as if they are the very same. In fact, 75 kilos is almost 165.4 pounds. This makes a difference. Zero point four pounds represent my water loss (in sweat) in perhaps 20 minutes of hard work on the rowing machine. Or in terms of body fat it would be two and a half hours of work on the rowing machine. In terms of goodies it would be around 6 O’Henry Bars or 22 Turtles. Anyway, I sent an email to the Event website to get a clarification.
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There is an interesting thing that I was reading on the internet with regard to “making weight”. In the last day or two before a weigh-in it is not the calories in the food you are eating that matters –it is the weight of the food! (Of course, if you are trying to make weight then you are not drinking much and you are not eating food with a high water content.
I think I might be eating a lot of popcorn next week.
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Another piece of advice that made sense to me was to drink lots of coffee. The idea is that the caffeine will keep your metabolism at a higher level. This works especially well for me since I drink my coffee black. As an added bonus I am burning a few extra calories as I frequently run across the road to the “Johnnie on the Spot”. (Flomax only goes so far).
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On the radio, they were saying that, in a year or so, there will be an over the counter pill that will improve memory. That would be great for me but I would never remember to take the pill.
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It is 5 years tomorrow since I started this weblog. It’s been fun. Thank you to the hundreds of faithful readers who visit this site so often.
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I booked two plane tickets for a trip to Tucson, Arizona in March Break. I hope things work out better than they did last year [see here].
Kathy’s sister Janet and niece Jennifer will join us for the trip. I will start to plan the itinerary now.
Someday I will go on one of those all inclusive holidays that are so popular. For now, however, I can’t face up to the stupid prices that people pay to sit around at a resort during March Break.
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It’s only a few more days until I will row my guts out for 7 +/- minutes. With the reduction in workload (due to the tapering) I am starting to feel stronger. This has a big psychological impact as well. Since I really have no experience in this specific sport I have to borrow from what I have learned in my not so short life to help me decide how to tackle the event.
The Concept 2 website is a good one (but not without some contradictions). One clear statement they make is that you should do a 2000 at 7 to 9 seconds faster (per 500 metres) than your best 5000 meter pace. Right now, I figure I would be able to do a 5000 at a 1:54 pace so that would mean I should do the 2000 at 1:45 to 1:47. As I seem to do better at the shorter distances I would like to think I would be able to match the 9 second differential.
But a 1:45 pace would amount to exactly 7 minutes flat for the 2000 metres. It sure would be nice to go sub 7! I gather this is a big deal in indoor rowing.
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When you row a Concept 2 indoor rowing machine you can monitor your energy expenditure in any one of 3 ways –calories, watts or pace. Pace is the one that I like –even though, for some strange reason, the pace readout is your pace per 500 metres. Pace per 1000 metres would make a lot more sense.
Now that I’m in pretty decent shape my pace for warm-ups is 2:10 to 2:15 (per 500m). Intense cardio is around 2:00. I hit my anaerobic threshold at around 1:54. I hope to do my 2000 metre race at 1:45. The hardest I can pull is around 1:35 –but only for a few strokes.
If I can hold a 1:45.9 pace I will beat last year's Crash-B qualifying time. Anything better that 1:45 and I will join the Sub-7 club. 1:44.1 would get me into this year’s Crash-Bs. It will all depend on the second half of the race. Kathy thinks I should attempt to do a negative split (row the second 1000 metres faster than the first) but I am not really convinced this would be the best strategy for me. That is where experience would be helpful.
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End of the Month "Fitness" Report
Tomorrow is the "big day" for my indoor rowing adventure. I have been rowing for 4 months now and am a little over the 750,000 metre mark. Eleven weeks ago I picked up a 16 week training program (to row a fast 2000 metres) –but I had to start half way through week 5.
The training program was very intensive in the first couple of weeks in January but the taper started in the middle of the month and I feel reasonably confident now. It would be hard to believe that I won’t set a PB, since my last 2000 metre effort was 2 months ago. Even if I don’t manage a new best time I won’t be embarrassed. I’ve decided to try to hold a 1:45 pace for as long as I can. It will be my best chance to join the sub 7 club.
My weight is right around 165 and I will not have to dehydrate myself to “make weight.” However, I will have to weigh in before I eat or drink anything tomorrow morning. The weigh-in is at 7:30am and I race at 9 –so there is enough time for some orange juice, coffee and a couple of granola bars.
I am thinking about inline skating a little more because of our Arizona trip in March. (This winter has been way too cold and snowy to even think about skating outside). I am not sure how my left knee is going to react to the stress of inline skating. I would say that success is an “iffy” proposition at this point. I am sure I will be OK in the long run but I am not sure I will be able to charge into hard training right away. The March trip will be a good experiment. I still haven’t tested my damage left skate either.
My journey began in Toronto at the Boardwalk in the Eastern Beaches. This is a special place for me because, although I did not grow up in Toronto, my grandfather lived in the Beach and I visited the Eastern Beaches as a young child. Now, much later in life, I do a lot of inline skating there. 
I finally reached the capital of New York State, Albany, on December 22/08. I had to walk almost a kilometer to get a look at the State Capital Building. From Albany it was downstream all the way down the Hudson to New York City. It was simply wonderful sculling down the Hudson River with the island of Manhattan on my right side. I reached the south end of the island which contains the financial district and all the big buildings that make up the famous New York City skyline, on January 26/09. I didn’t do any rowing on Jan 25 so I had an extra day to snoop around New York. 
It took a workout and a half to scull through Upper New York Bay and get to the south edge of Long Island. I was facing my first open ocean experience. Basically, there is no Inland Waterway from the end of New York Bay until you get to the Manasquan Gap. Once you make it to the Manasquan Gap you deek into the inland waterway and don’t emerge into the ocean again until you get to Delaware Bay –a very large body of water indeed. 
