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| This is a phone screen view of the RowPro Oarbits app. Everything is done in GMT instead of local time, to simplify things for everyone around the world in different time zones. Today's marathon was scheduled for 14:00 GMT which was 0700 a.m. local time |
The marathon remained scheduled instead of being canceled, because 2 Europeans signed up for the online marathon today. That helped me decide to DO the marathon instead of doing what I really wanted which was almost anything but a marathon.
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| Two other guys joined! |
When start time arrived, only one of the other two guys had checked in, Mr Rodriguez who is in France. The official Oarbits protocol is for participants to check in 10 minutes before start time, but we decided to wait a bit longer for the third guy.
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| We waited 3 minutes for the missing rower to check in. |
We waited 3 minutes past start time for Mr. Lohmeyer to check in and then we started without him.
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| In this screenshot you can tell that the start button has been clicked because the countdown timer has counted down from 15 to 5 seconds at the moment the screen was recorded. |
Something happened with Mr Rodriguez's connection and his avatar disappeared from the session after he'd done about 10K. So I did the remainder alone. I might not have done it at all, except for him showing up, so I'm glad he was there for at least the start and the first 10K.
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| DNF means Did Not Finish. |
When I checked Oarbits later, I saw that Mr Lohmeyer did show up, but he was later than we had waited. He made another marathon session which he started at 1414 GMT, 14 minutes after the official and 11 minutes after the actual 1403 GMT start time for the marathon started by Mr. Rodriquez and me.
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| Mr. Lohmeyer had to do his marathon solo, but he did it in very good time. |
As expected, the first half of the marathon was perfectly okay. The 3rd quarter started to get a little uncomfortable. I took two quick breaks during the first half, to change from wet to dry sweatbands and drink a pint of water.
I also slowed several times during the first 3/4 of the marathon, rowing with one hand while mopping face and head with a towel, to minimize sweat dripping onto the machine and floor.
By the time I was into the very last quarter of the marathon, after around 32,000 meters, that little comfort-loving voice in my head suddenly became extremely loud. And... since I by that time I was rowing by myself with nobody else online to inspire me AND there is no prize money for doing the marathon, no matter how quickly it is finished... I heeded that voice and took a longer break. During that break I started some music playing and change into a 3rd sweatband. And after resuming, I did the final quarter at a much more leisurely pace than the already gentle pace at which I'd been rowing the first 3 quarters.
To find out how much water would be needed to re-hydrate, I weighed myself before and after the marathon. I lost 8 pounds, which means about 8 pints of water. Most of it went toward humidifying the very dry air, some was retained in my clothes, and the remainder which hadn't been mopped with a towel dripped onto the floor and the C2.
So yes after losing 8 pounds of water I was a bit thirsty. Of the 8 pints (128 ounces) of water lost during the marathon, I've already replenished all but 24 ounces. The last 12 ounces of re-hydrating fluid shall be a beer. After all, this marathon WAS called The Last Chance
Saloon Marathon.
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| A little beer tastes very good when dehydrated. |
But most of the re-hydration was done with plain water, like the woman pictured below who is re-hydrating with plain water. (There were images of men drinking water, but women are easier on the eyes.)
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| Water is the main thing you need, to re-hydrate. |
Here's the data pertinent to today's marathon:
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| A view of today's finish screen. |
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| Today's RowPro session report for the marathon |
After the marathon and while drinking water to re-hydrate, I got cold. The room was 71 degrees F (21.7 degrees Celsius), so the cool room, dry air, plus a sweaty body and lots of cold water got me to be very chilly. To remedy the chill, I went outside, where the temperature was 97 degrees F (36.1 degrees Celsius), got into the truck and closed the door. Since the truck was out in the sun, it was probably about 120 or warmer inside (48.9 degrees Celsius). Nice and warm.
While sitting in the truck warming up, I listened to part of a baseball game on the radio. Also, I became curious if my iPhone had a built-in temperature sensor which would tell exactly what the temperature was inside the truck. So I searched the topic and found out that NO, the iPhone
doesn't have a temperature sensor and also found that the highest recommended operating temperature for the iPhone, according to one source, is 95 degrees F. So I turned off the phone while basking in the heat of the truck.
I didn't stay there very long, only until I was warmed up.... because I forgot to take water to drink while in the truck.
After coming back into the house, I put the toasty-warm iPhone into the refrigerator so it could cool off to less than 96 degrees F before operating it again.
Happy trails.
