SONY DSCSo to give my nether regions a break I decided to do a totally different brick at the gym today, row/ride.  Bill, a friend of mine from the running club swears by rowers.  He can knock out 15,000 meter sessions on a rower like nothing.  I, on the other hand, have not been on a rower since the 90’s so I really had no idea what to expect.  I decided it to model it after my normal treadmill segment, 20 minutes.

Rowing is a much different activity from running obviously.  The movement builds endurance and power at the same time and in a more complete way than running ever can.  It took me a little while to figure out what pace I could reasonably maintain 20 minutes at. The dial on the side fan vent was set to 10, I assume this somehow correlates to resistance level.

Early on I was considering cutting down my time to 10 minutes as it was feeling quite uncomfortable.  I rode through the discomfort and made it to the 20 minute mark.  The rower really hit every major muscle group.  During my 20 minutes I covered roughly 4350 meters with a stroke rate of around 30 per minute.  I have no idea how good or bad that is since I have nothing to compare it to.

It was a good mix up of the routine and made the 10 minutes on the bike afterward a bit more difficult because of the increased demand rowing puts on the pedaling muscles in your legs.

Today’s Workout

Row/Ride brick

20 minutes Concept 2 rower – 4335 meter covered – 33 stroke per minute pace

10 minutes stationary bike – level 6 – 2.45 miles covered