Even after coming back from rowing camp, I'm having real trouble getting fired up to train this year. Part of it's the weather: right now it's in the high 30s / low 40s at 5AM most mornings. (Those of you to whom that doesn't sound that cold: how often do you go out at 5AM in the dark alone on the water at those temperatures? It's not all that bad once you're working hard, but getting started is a bitch, especially when you've just woken up and your body temperature is down. And of course there's a safety factor, too.)
I think, though, that more of it is just a cyclical thing. I'm ready to scale back on the rowing for a while and get fired up about something else. Rowing takes over your life to an extent where it cuts down on what else you do - can't stay up late, too tired to go hiking or climbing on the weekends, using up mos tof our vacation on regatta trips. Some people like being driven by a single goal; one woman once told me, "I don't do anything half-assed."
Well, I do. If I can't do something well, I'm still going to do it if I enjoy. In fact, that philosophy would have kept me from getting into rowing in the first place, because I just don't have the right genes to excel - not only the height, but the slow-twitch / fast twitch muscle fiber ratio and other things. For exampleRudder feels better the more he trains, up to a fairly high point, while I just burn out more quickly, either physically or mentally. Also, I'm generally going to enjoy doing several things at a time (on in closely proximate times, anyway) more than focusing on only one, even if it means that I don't do as well in any one thing.
I've been talking about cutting back on rowing for a couple of years now, to the point that anyone who reads here regularly is tired of hearing about it. Last year I actually did it, though that would have been more successful if I hadn't found that I wasn't really enjoying the flying I did in its place. It's hard to set longterm goals, because I still hope to move out of here and don't know if we'll be anywhere we can row, but I need to decide soon, at least for the visible time horizon, whether I want to race this year and train harder or scale back. And if I do scale back, I can't just sit and read and knit, because I've worked too hard to get such fitness as I have to just let it ooze away. And of course, there are other considerations: for example, I'd like to try yoga, but most classes I've seen are at night, which means I'd never get to see Rudder, since he'd still be on a rowing schedule. And of course, work always gets in the way. Oh, well, no better time to decide on the year's goals than at the beginning of the year.
Posted by dichroic at January 18, 2006 01:13 PM