I lost my way

[Sasha]

I got sick, got off of the erg, got well, and haven't been able to get 'regular' since. I'm on again and off again. And I hate it. It is Soooo much easier when it is a habit.

All suggestions welcome. Please.

[fish]

Hi Sasha,

It's nice that you found your way back here.

Maybe you can concentrate on getting ready for the Holiday Challenge coming up in a few weeks.

Let us know how it is going.

Arlene

[George Dunning]

hi Sasha, hope you dont mind me intruding into the womans forum, but i can very much relate to what you are going thru, from personal experience.

i might have some ideas if i knew what sort of training you were doing before, why you erg and where, and if you have any short or medium term goals.

i am no expert but as i say have and to some extent still share the struggle. happy to discuss it here or pm me if you prefer

george

[igoeja]

Hi Sasha,

As to the post prior to me, I hope you don't mind a male voice. I've erged on and off for about 18 years, only recently finding the motivation for intense work.

- To do the less intense stuff, and to keep rowing regularly, I flip up the meter; the biggest impediment to just keeping rowing is remembrance of my performances from when I was better trained. I took the performance pressure off by not looking, and just enjoying working out to my music.

- For more intense training, which I'm doing now, I was able to find a way to start improving my times, mostly going with interval work. As I improved, the motivation followed. Also, as an 46-year old Type I diabetic, I'm at a higher risk for heart disease, so I recently had a stress test. Everything was normal, and in some ways excellent, in that my exercise performance for the test was very high. That provided another boost for me to workout even more intensely.

[loonylady]

Hi Sasha,
I'm glad to hear you're feeling better and that you came back to the forum. Maybe it would help if you start out rowing less than you were when it was a habit. If you find a good time each day and just try to row for a few minutes each day, it may soon become a habit again and you can gradually increase your time/distance. I also find it motivational to try and catch up to the person in front of me on the DIAR team. That is a definite challenge Just hang in there and good luck.

Carol

[efg]

Hi Sasha,

I'm kind of in the same boat. I went on vacation in late July, and didn't get back to regular erging until the HC started (though I did do a Learn to Row class on WATER! Very fun.) I like the idea of not looking at the meters while you are rowing. We had a major windstorm here and lost power for 3 days. I rowed in the dark. It was very relaxing (of course, there wasn't much else to do), and the meters seemed to stack up on their own without much effort on my part. I just checked by flashlight when I was done rowing and kept track of the totals. Since I couldn't see the monitor, I didn't worry about my pace or any of that. I think I lose sight of the fact that any time exercising is better than none and set goals for myself that sometimes work against me.

Emilia

[blue_heron]

I've been doing the same thing. just went through a long remodelling in the house, and have found it hard to get going again. how about you push me, I'll push you?

[mischa]

I really wish the team page had numbers on it to see where I am in the standings. That would make the team-member-comparison method of motivation easier.

I'm trying to get my room in order so I can move my rower up here. I realized after a couple of workouts that where I have it is not working for me and I need to move it.

Hmm.... I'll work on that now instead of playing Spider over and over and over again. At least if I'm going to procrastinate on homework, I'll be doing something useful.

[Ducatista]

I really wish the team page had numbers on it to see where I am in the standings. That would make the team-member-comparison method of motivation easier.

Maybe this'll help: Click on the University/Club Standings link on your logbook entry page to get a list of teams, showing each team's rank, name, type (virtual, university, health club, blah blah blah), number of members, total meters this season, and avg meters per member. Click on a team's rank (left-most column) to get the meters total for each member of that team.

The list is a great motivator for me... I joined Row Pain, Row Gain with a meter total way below the team average; four months later I'm several hundred thousand over the avg. Sweet!

[MomofJBN]

Well, that page shows the members ranked by total meters, but I think what Mischa and I would like is for that page to also have a rank # for each person. On the huge teams it is just not practical to count down to your own line to see where you stand.

[Ducatista]

On the huge teams it is just not practical to count down to your own line to see where you stand.

Ha, it never occurred to me that counting would be burdensome. I suppose if I were 164 of 165 I'd feel differently... or I'd learn to count up from the bottom.

Until your post I couldn't have told you what my rank is on my team. I track my progress relative to the team average, and to my nearest neighbors on the list. Imprecise, but still quite helpful to me.

[MomofJBN]

My husband can count down to his place on his team, but the Ducks are huge (and growing). However, I'd never thought of tracking my progress compared to the average, so that's something new to watch. (Maybe I'll start on May 1st. )