Shattered. but in a good way.

Well, mis amigos, things are moving along nicely. Sal (sculling sal, not blogging sal) and I are moving together well and we did some good, hard sessions this weekend.

Saturday we did 2 x 1000m time trials. We were both having a bit of an off day, in her case because she didn't sleep well the night before, and in my case because i skipped breakfast, so neither one of us was at our best. Even so we did 4:36 against the stream and 4:13 with it. That was only 4 seconds slower than their senior men's 4-. We gave them some serious shit for that. 4:13 was the best time in a double she'd ever had, and was significantly better than her best time with her previous partner. Not bad, considering I'm coming off 18 months half-assed, injury-recovery training and the number of outings we've done togehter we can still count on one hand. I feel like I've finally justified my existence after the crash last Wednesday.

What's really great though is that on Saturday and Sunday I trained to exhaustion. Complete and total collapse. Got back both days and fell in to be for 2 hours. Just couldn't move.

You may wonder why I'm so happy about this. I'll tell you. Up until now I haven't been able to train to that level of exhaustion becuase I've had too much back pain to puch myself that hard. And now? NO BACK PAIN!!! No pain in the boat, at any rate.

When I get out I'm stiff, but not in pain. I can't stand up because my muscles are so fucking tight, but I don't hurt. So a bit of gentle walking, a few minutes with the massage pad, and a good long stretch and I'm good as gold and ready to go again.

I have noticed that as I get older my recovery time between training sessions is getting longer than it once was, but I guess that's natural. (Unless you're the immortal, unconquerable Herebe.)

So I've finally reached the point where I can get on with some serious training and really push myself as hard as I can. Thank fuck.