Friday, November 2, 2007

The Time of Cold

I've been on a number of short 5-10 mile rides on weekends over the past month, but my riding time has definitely decreased. It doesn't mean I'm not already looking forward to next spring though! I often find myself dreaming of rides as I slip off to sleep, and I'm already doing some preparing for keeping in shape this winter. I probably won't spend much time on an indoor trainer, at least until January or February. Instead I've taken my rowing machine out of the mothballs and started cranking out workouts on the ergometer.

I think rowing can have many similarities to cycling in terms of workouts when you're actually on the water, but on the erg it couldn't be more different. Where you can easily spend three hours on a hard training ride just a half hour on the erg can leave you completely destroyed. Even during my peak rowing crew in college anything much over an hour would leave me in a state of exhaustion so complete that I've rarely been there since. I think the only time in recent memory I've felt similar was after the 100k Tour of the Vineyard I did this spring on my mountain bike.

In any case it looks to be a long cold winter, but the promise of spring already has me excited to be back on the bike.

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