Lightweight Eats

This was my first full week back at the boathouse training. We still aren't back to the same training volume as my first few weeks in May, and I'm also a lot fitter, so I've been enjoying more energy than usual.

Monday:
We got everything out of the way with one long morning practice, including some biking, about 17km of rowing with some faster 10' sections, and a 25 minute run to finish out the day.

Tuesday:
The morning practice was simple and sweet: another 17km row, all at a steady pace. I worked on a lot of technical issues, and was impressed with how fresh I still felt at the end--my stamina is improving! In the afternoon, I took a run around our local lake. The loop was about 5 miles, completed in just under 45' (including some time waiting at stop lights!).

Wednesday:
A very short day, we rowed a quick 10km in the morning. The conditions were a little bit rougher, and my row was unexciting--I worked on a few things but generally wasn't rowing very well at all.

Thursday:
Training on our own, Thursday was a running and weights work out. I started with the running--about 50 minutes total, with a few bursts of speed throughout. I'm not sure how I felt about this workout. It was fun to push the speed a little bit, but it felt very prescribed. Maybe I'm just not a fan of short sprints. My left quad also started to hurt during the running, which caused me to go easy on the leg section of the lift.

Friday:
My body was definitely feeling the effects of Thursday. My left quad felt better, but there were twinges of tightness in my right hamstring. Overall, though, felt more sore than damaged. In the morning, I headed down to the boathouse for 17km. As usual, I was the first one to launch and the last one back to the dock. The lightweight women's single is the slowest boat class, so I am always the slowest boat on the water. It can be really disheartening, especially on the days when I get back to the dock and everything has been put away and locked up. Today, I handled it pretty well, although I was pretty drained by the end of the row.

In the afternoon, I jogged down to the boathouse to warmup and met up with the rest of the team there. We had a timed run: four laps on a bridge-to-bridge course near the boathouse, just over 1.4 miles per lap. I had mapped the route at 1.2 miles, but we chose a slightly longer but less gravely route instead.  I managed to hold a pretty solid pace, finishing in 40 minutes flat. Between walking and running, I estimate I traveled around 14 miles on land today, in addition to my row. I ate accordingly!

Saturday:
This morning, we got to sleep in an extra hour or so before heading down to the boathouse to row forever. Actually, we only went 24km, and I sat in bow of our gold medal quad. It felt a lot shorter than rowing 20km in a single, and it probably took less time.


I was definitely tired at the end, but bringing Gatorade in the boat definitely helped prevent complete fatigue. However, I did go home and take a 3 hour nap!

Sunday:
I'm off to run a 5k race! There's a race around our local lake that costs $5 to enter. I raced it last summer and placed 2nd in my age category. Expect an update later!