23 September 2007

up a creek

we are very excited about the new member of our furniture family: the concept 2 rower. yes, we finally made the shift from the £8 (delivered) boot sale stationary bike to, well, the machine to end all machines. I'm still startled when I walk by the room. the thing is this huge alien creature akin to some large extended insect (preying mantis?) squatting in our 3rd bedroom-cum-walk-in-closet. quite a change from our old set up:


the workout is great, and it's exciting (I know--I'm a geek) to figure out a new technique, having never rowed before in my life. after rowing sans instruction once (of course), we watched the little video hosted by the Australian 4-man olympic rowing team, realised we were doing nigh everything wrong, tried again, and it's pretty durn cool. the computer is a full-on computer. does more than my Apple IIe did (not to dis my IIe. That was an amazing machine. and to be fair, the rower can't print out banners on a dot-matrix printer with PrintShop, nor can it organise your life through Hypercard. ah nostalgia.) but it can track all my rows, tell me the force of my strokes, how fast I'm going, what my 'split times' are (yes, new vocab part of the attraction!), show me rowing with a 'pace boat' next to me, allow me to row in competition with others on-line by uploading my results, and a whole lot of other things. I plan to be super-buff in next to no time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

this machine is why i was once in shape in the middle of the winter in Minneapolis -- it is the best cardio workout period, and technique is very important, as most people in the gym don't do it right.

fronesis said...

Yes, for now we've pretty much been focusing ONLY on technique. But what's cool about the rower is all the stuff that surrounds it: the computer, the programs, the online community, etc.

p.s. I think I missed your call the other night. Will try you this week (first week of term, life a bit crazy)...