It’s been a wild emotional and physical ride, mi amigos. And while doing some track and field inspired work was a good break for mind, body and soul, the fact remains that while technically “available” the facilities in my back yard are lacking in both barbells and welcome.

But, thankfully, we’ve signed up as a family at the YMCA. The facilities are basic but clean and welcoming. It’s not clear if I’m able to deadlift on the premise, but it’s also true I’m not going to be competing anytime soon.

I’m not even sure how much I weigh (although one guesses it’s lighter than before, judging by the way clothes are fitting).

October I’ll be playing flag football for the Seminary team. Practices are on Friday afternoons, and the competition (The Luther Bowl) is on Saturday October 27.

The rowing will be very simple: 60 minutes at a lowish intensity steady state. Get in, get the meters, get out. The lifting will be pretty simple too. Lower intensity, moderate to high volume, wide variety of exercises - squatting and benching for sure, but also lat pull downs, cable rows, pull-ups, dumbbell rows, dumbbell presses, split squats, lunges, hyperextensions, arm work and ab work. The theme is a General fitness, aiming to prepare for more intense rowing.

I’m focusing on rowing for several reasons: I enjoy it, it’s reasonably low impact, and it’s easy to quantify in a non-stupid way.

Since it doesn’t look like powerlifting is in the cards for the foreseeable future, I want to knock off a few Rowing goals.

60 minutes: >15000m (i.e. a 2:00/500m pace) 10k : 39:30 (1:58.5/500m) 5k: under 18:30. (1:51/500m) 2k: under 7 minutes (1:45/500m) 500m: under 1 minute, 30 seconds.

November I’ll start to get more specific toward these goals. By far the easiest one to improve is the 60 minute row - as your capacity builds, your average pace gets faster. You also become more efficient at the task of rowing, which has downstream effects on the shorter distances. That’s where we’ll start.

One thing that I’ve been doing is a small home workout watching sports on the weekend.

Basically, it’s 20-30 seconds work and 30-40 seconds rest for a half hour, rotating a wide variety of calishtenics exercises. It’s great for recovery and looks a lot like the general strength and ab work featured here:

https://www.flotrack.org/video/6193758-workout-wednesday-circuit-with-harvards-gabby-thomas

as an aside - simpler versions of most of the other movements shown in that video are ideal for a “general fitness” go to - I’ll write more about that another time.

As I have no plans on rowing competitively, once I achieve these goals, I’ll go back to doing more “general” work like this.