Matthew’s Blog

x15UH1 8wu 10wd (2:30 rest)HR 138 1250kcal@45% Higher Ranking on 10km as well! knocked 5 min off last score.
Happy Birthday to ME!!!

I am sure that over the course of my rowing in college and post college I have rowed well over a million meters, perhaps even two.  However since I started tracking and recording my rowing online on my own machine I have passed the 500,000m  mark today.  YAY.   In addition I have only 9,241m to go to reach my 200,000m Holiday Challenge

Day 22 of the Holiday Rowing Challenge with a need to burn off some energy after a very strange day breaks the 150,000 mark.  Now standing at 152,428 with 8 days remaining. 

Word of note: 
I had a massage with an excellent massage therapist today who really gets at the source of tension – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.    I have been at a bit of low energy today which I attributed to the rapid approach of the Solstice 6 more days of dark before it lights up again.   I have noticed that the past three years the 10 days on either side of the Solstice are particularly rough for me.   The light boxes are helping.  The massage helps.  The exercise really does help.  Shovelling snow outside helps.  AND my energy was way down.    Well, she noticed and worked me over pretty hard.   

We were talking about how some of her clients will get sick immediately following and up to a few days after a deep massage.  How all the toxins have now been released and are circulating in the system and need flushing.   Drink LOTS of WATER.   Well I have been.  

I don’t usually get ill following a massage – sleepy sometimes, but not ill.     Within an hour after her departure I felt like a kid home from school curled up on the couch with body aches.   Head hurt, body hurt, mind was numb.  Stayed that way for an hour or two, maybe it was four.  Drank LOTS of Water!  Ate good healthy food.   Drank lots of water.   Then at 10:30 when I think I am ready for bed I realize that I am wide awake and don’t feel ill any more.    In fact,  I have excess energy!      It has past.   The malaise is gone! I want to DO something.   Well I actually did something – a little rowing.   As a bonus I passed my 3/4 mark 150,000m to boot!   WOW!

 Muscle tired, sleepy tired now.   Ready for a great night’s sleep.

New learnings:
1) That some massages will actually make you feel worse and then feel better
2) ALWAYS,  ALWAYS, ALWAYS drink LOTS of water  (I don’t know where it all went but my body certainly needed it- craved it)
3) Why not exercise at midnight when you are full of energy – toss and turn in bed, or be productive; take a nice shower and slide into bed happy and physically exhausted – out like a light.
4) This seasonal dilemma is more complicated than I thought – or less and I have change my regular complicated thinking to see it as simple.  Light, exercise, outdoors, eat right, socialize.

Today marks the first goal of the Concept 2 Holiday Rowing Challenge Achieved!  YAY!  100,000meters between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. 

2005 Holiday Challenge Goal#1 100,000m Achieved Day 16-14 days remain
2005 Holiday Challenge Goal#2 105,189/200,000 Day 16- 14 days remain  94,811 meters togo!

To track my progress check out my rowing blog http://matthewsrowingchallenge.blogspot.com/

While visiting my brother’s family in the Bay Area last month I happened upon a new instrument.   We had taken an afternoon trip to see the new de Young Museum.  As we left the museum my ears perked up beyond the lovely spanish guitar at the entrance to the side garden where an otherworldly musical sound was being made.  It sounded like a cross between a steel drum and a new age synthesizer but neither were to be found.   Drifting on the melody we found a pair of players with what looked like flying saucers in their laps.  I was later to learn that they are called HANGs.   They are seven toned instruments with a bump in the middle that when wrapped resonates a deep low note to the other seven.  Matt Venuti was one of the players and he offered links to his website.  However, I had do quite a bit of digging to find anything more about this new instrument called a HANG.    The best source I found was another blogger named Michael Kaulkin.  Apparently he was at the DeYoung a week before and was able to track down a Canadian distributor’s website.  Unfortunately the popularity of this new instrument has caused the manufacturer to shut down and redo their operations in Switzerland.  It looks like there will not be any for sale until March of 2006.