Late Night in the Great Hall

Sometimes training doesn’t arrive at the perfect time.

Sometimes it’s late, the day has already taken most of what it wanted, and the only sensible option is to get into the shed and get the metres done.

Tonight was one of those.

40:00

9,621m

2:04.7 /500m

~r22

879 strokes

Nothing heroic. Nothing especially fast.

Just another forty minutes on the slides, trying to keep the movement smooth and the rhythm honest.

The first ten minutes were the quickest at around 2:03.4–2:03.5, then I settled into a very steady run of roughly 2:05 pace for most of the session before finishing the last five at 2:04.4.

That’s probably the bit I’m happiest with.

No big fade. No rate chasing. Just a controlled row at a sensible pace.

The Garmin HRM, meanwhile, continues its campaign of misinformation.

After believable readings of 130 and 137 bpm, it gradually decided I was apparently rowing at 2:05 pace with a heart rate of 83, 69, 61 and eventually 58 bpm.

So, once again, the heart-rate graph belongs in the fiction section until the replacement strap arrives.

There was one other number worth noting.

The Great Hall was sitting at roughly:

18°C

79% humidity

Not particularly hot.

But definitely muggy.

Which explains why the session turned into such a sweat fest.

At that level of humidity, there isn’t much chance of staying dry, and by the end the rail, the footplates and pretty much everything else looked like they’d been dragged through the North Sea.

Still, the ship moved.

The rhythm held.

And another forty minutes went into the bank.

Not every session needs to be a battle.

Sometimes it’s enough to head into the Great Hall late at night, put the oars in the water, and keep the ship moving.