Older ergers

[PaulG]

You can tell you are an older erger when:

1. What used to be your warmups are now sometimes your workout.
2. Your personal bests are now on the backside of a hill that you don’t remember climbing.
3. Your goals for this year are the season’s bests from last year.
4. You finish a hard interval workout like 5x 1k and are pleased with the average splits until you realize that used to be your average split for a
straight 5k.
5. You look forward to getting a few years older so you can enter a new age category.

Feel free to add your own.

[jackarabit]

Your stenosis has advanced to the degree that you can no longer retrieve the handle from the keeper near the foot pads let alone from the chain gate.

(R.I.P. Bob Spenger, Cal Bears crew in the late 30s, collegiate career interrupted and an Olympics appearance lost to military service, multiple IR hammer winner and 2015-16 WIRC winner in age 90+.)

[KeithT]

These are all too real!

My addition:

When it takes you days to recover form a hard workout as opposed to hours.

[Autoland]

You scour the internet seeking a pill box that can be attached to your PM5.

[mromero680]

You start to wonder if there's something wrong with your erg when you can't hit those paces anymore. Is the fan dirty? Are the cords wearing out?

[Cyclist2]

You wonder why the flywheel got so quiet, then realize it's not the flywheel.

[Ted12]

You start to wonder if there's something wrong with your erg when you can't hit those paces anymore. Is the fan dirty? Are the cords wearing out?

This

[PaulG]

When you are racing both the clock and the calendar.

You younger ergers have no idea what is waiting for you.

[Yankeerunner]

When your workout is slower than expected, and you chalk it up to 'just having a bad day.' Then the next workout is just as slow. Then the workout after that is just as slow. And the workout after that........

[gvcormac]

This isn't a quip, but a real observation.

25 years ago, by rowing and running 10km PBs were pretty close: (just) sub - 40 minutes.

Now my rowing is 41.5 minutes and my running is 55 minutes.

What happened?

[Yankeerunner]

This isn't a quip, but a real observation.

25 years ago, by rowing and running 10km PBs were pretty close: (just) sub - 40 minutes.

Now my rowing is 41.5 minutes and my running is 55 minutes.

What happened?

I've found the same thing. Makes attempting to correlate running and erging times useless beyond any individual's short time frame. My running times even from my late 30s were better than world records on the erg, and a lot of runners were far better than me. Now my running times are like yours, much slower than my own erging times. Probably due to overcoming gravity. As little as that is in running, it's more than what's necessary on the erg. I believe that in Masters track & field the jumpers (long jump, triple jump, high jump) deteriorate faster than the runners.

[Yankeerunner]

Here's one that I faced as a runner in my late 30s, then had confirmed when I took up erging some 20 years later:

You realize (sadly) that you can are no longer as fast as you were 10 years ago and never will be again, but are sure that you're as fast as you were 10 weeks, or even just 10 days, ago. BUT (sadly), you discover the hard way, by pushing it, (injury/illness/exhaustion) that you're not.

[edward.jamer]

...
4. You finish a hard interval workout like 5x 1k and are pleased with the average splits until you realize that used to be your average split for a
straight 5k.
...

Ouch. This one hits a little too close to home, and I'm only "kind of old" in my mid-40s.

[DavidA]

Here's one that I faced as a runner in my late 30s, then had confirmed when I took up erging some 20 years later:

You realize (sadly) that you can are no longer as fast as you were 10 years ago and never will be again, but are sure that you're as fast as you were 10 weeks, or even just 10 days, ago. BUT (sadly), you discover the hard way, by pushing it, (injury/illness/exhaustion) that you're not.

[T_M]

Progressively lowering the damper setting to avoid throwing your back out during a 500m TT.