Change of pace... so to speak

With the end of the March Madness 10K challenge, I have been giving myself a change of pace.  I've decided to take a few more rest days from rowing, and throw in some longer rows to test my endurance.  This has been an interesting challenge for me.    First, I really don't like to take rest days or to change a routine once it is established.   I think at some level I am afraid if I take a break I will lose momentum, or somehow not get back to the task.   This is an odd thing about me, but I know that it is deeply ingrained in my personality... once you start, don't stop until you are done!

Saturday I did my first 30K row.   I wanted to do something close to the full marathon just to see what it felt like to be in the seat for more than 2 hours.    This ended up being challenging on a couple levels.    First, just being in the seat that long proved to be difficult.  I had to stop briefly and stand up to stretch out.  I found a couple times that my right leg was getting numb - I believe this was from the my position on the seat.   Fresh bubble wrap will be a must for future 20K+ rows!   The second challenge to my longer rows lately has been dealing with a 9 month old dog needing to go out!   In the middle of my 30K row I had to stop to let Kira (the husky) and my other dog Cici outside... a 15 minute break I was not counting on.   Same thing happened on my last 10K row, though the break was not as long.   This is making my times look really anemic!  Clearly I'm going to need some new strategies to deal with the dogs so that I can row uninterrupted.  Either that or get myself to stop caring about what my split times look like! :-)

Kira loaded up for a walk.

 Last two rows from last week:

Description	Total Meters	Time	Pace/500m
10K (Wed)	10,000	50:38.8	2:31.9
30K (Sat)	30,000	2:37:28.5	2:37.4
Total for 2 Days	40,000
Meters to go	449,940