Holiday challenges

My gym in Boulder had a holiday rowing challenge.  Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, athletes put in 100km on the rowing machines.  Being in Fargo, I had no problem with doing a majority of my exercise indoors.  As a result, I became very familiar with the rowing machines at the NDSU student wellness center gym.

I finished the challenge a couple days early.  Two of the toughest sessions were 5km time trials.  While a 5km on the bike might only take about 6 minutes, 5km on the rower takes about 18 minutes and involves quite a bit more suffering.  My final 5km effort involved changing the damper (resistance) setting on the rower every 500m and going to a lighter and lighter damper setting over the course of the effort, while maintaining a consistent pace.

After the rowing challenge ended, I decided to take up a new challenge as I wait for warm weather to return to the frozen tundra of the north.  My next idea was to run 100km between Christmas and Martin Luther King Jr Day.  I was able to knock off a few kilometers in California while visiting my folks for Christmas, and have been continuing to chug along here in Fargo.  Most of the running has been outside in <20F weather, while some has been on the indoor track at the NDSU wellness center.  In a few cases, the "run" has been little more than slogging along in sub-5F temperatures.

Below is a plot of my progress toward completing the running challenge (the blue line), along with a plot of the progress required if I were to run the exact same distance every day from Christmas until the MLK holiday (the red line).  As long as the blue line stays above the red line, I am on pace to finish this challenge too.

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