Last week on Groupon, there was a deal for five Indo-Row classes at a gym in the area. What is Indo-Row? It's an hour-long workout class that takes place (get this) on a rowing machine. Those of you who have rowed are undoubtedly thinking that this is the most torturous idea you have ever heard of. And it would be if you had to spend an hour prepping for an erg test. But as a fitness class, it wasn't so bad. The longest distance that we had to do in one go was 1k, which is very reasonable. There was also a relay race 250m at the end which was exceedingly reasonable, even for me (and I haven't been on a rowing machine in years). It was fun!
I've tweaked this running program so that there is one day of cross-training a week. According to the master plan, you can have 1, 2, 3, or no days. The Indo-Row is a nice change of pace and something else to do. Plus it's rowing, so it gives you a ridiculously complete workout. I found it encouraging to realize just how much more fit I was than when I last did some serious work on a rowing machine, which would have been four years ago now (!). Or their rowing machines calculate your 500m split very generously. I'm choosing to believe that I've gotten severely better :)
Oh, and for those of you who read the marathon blog: remember how I talked about the fact that when I was 26.1 miles through, I tried to push myself to finish by reminding myself that this was no worse than a 2k erg test, then realizing that actually it was easier to finish the marathon than do a 2k erg test? In a way, I think that I was right. The very end of the 1k today was mentally very tough. You are so tired and done by that point, plus if you are not careful your technique fell apart somewhere around 200m or so. I found it amazing that even now, after all of the tough running that I've done, getting those last few pulls in was hard.
(Okay, I even cheated a bit and let it run down for the last 5m. But I am not doing that again!)
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