Sleep v Exercise

Top Five 10ks

Missing out on sleep has notable health risks in the long term, but lack of exercise does, too. If you have to pick one or the other, should you forgo your workout for more sack time?

Maybe not.

The researchers then tracked the health outcomes of the participants years later. Predictably, those who got paltry sleep, or those who slept too much (which in itself can also be problematic) and hardly exercised, were generally more likely to die during that period, including from issues such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. But the researchers also uncovered a surprising trend in the data: People who exercised a lot did not have an increased risk of death, even when they only slept less than six hours each night.

The study suggests that completing 150 minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity every week might negate some of the health consequences associated with sleeping too much or too little, said Jihui Zhang, the director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Medicine at the Affiliated Brain Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University and an author of the study.

I’m curious about this because I’m starting a new job near the end of April, and my current rowing ethic is inimately tied to my current schedule. I have to begin shifting to an earlier wakeup time if I’m to keep to the routine. I just got some white pants I want to fit into when the temps heat up.

Exercise May Help Counteract the Toll of Poor Sleep

More Progress Towards the Forty 10k

Here’s my top-five 10k rows:

Top Five 10ks
My Top Five 10k Rows

Fairly linear trend in the desired direction, although slow going for sure. I am sure that my decline in performance in December and January was due to my second COVID infection, from which I did not suffer any serious or long-term symptoms, but nevertheless. Happy about this!

Sunday Serial: Logitech MX Master Mouse, Tostones, and Portmanteau

Here’s this week’s list of things to check out:

  1. Logitech MX Master Mouse: I bought my first MX Master during Covid, when a solid and functional seated workspace became important. I still use my original MX Master at my desk at home, but after trying a few cheaper mice at the office, and seeing the gen 2 of this venerable mouse on sale on Amazon, I sprung for a second device. (There’s a third generation for sale now, hence the sale.) It’s really big and I thought that I wouldn’t like the first iteration, but it helped me realize that, for seated computing, a big arc in your palm is just the thing you need.
  2. Tostones: Tostones are fried green plantains. Rhonda has been making these excellent (and cheap) pork roasts for taco nights, which even Joey eats. I started making refried beans from dried beans in my pressure cooker (Rhonda, perhaps rightfully, fears the quaking pot), and they have been a big hit. Aaron pulled a green plantain out of the pantry and asked about making it. The trick with these is to fry them in warm oil after cutting the plantain into one-inch slices, and then dropping them into cold water for a few minutes. Once your pan (and oil) is hot, you smash them and fry them a second time. I used the Blackstone, so these were less oily, and I was able to smash and fry at the same time. We only had one, but would have eaten more.
  3. Portmanteau: This might actually just be a blend word, but in any event: I’ve been making sous vide egg bites every Sunday for the work week for Rhonda and me. I make ten bites, but we only have nine mason jars at this point. I put the rest of the egg mixture in a sandwich bag and sous vide it alongside the jelly jars. It has come to be called “eggbag,” and we always recognize it apart from the other bites. I always eat eggbag. Eggbag is not capitalized, outside of starting a sentence.
MX Master 2 Mouse
MX Master 2 Mouse
Tostones
Tostones
Eggbag
Eggbag Alongside Its More Formal Siblings

I passed the ServSafe Test

I took the ServSafe test for work; it was not at all a requirement of being a special education supervisor, but we opened a cafe at the local community college for our students to work in, and we (the leadership) team agreed it would be helpful for as many of us as possible to have the certification.

serv-safe
ServSafe Test Results

I will say that this test is much harder than I expected, and I wasn’t sure I’d passed it when walking out. Add to that that I had a class to attend that I forgot about and missed the first 45 minutes of the testing session.

Time to glove up!

Sly Fox Brewery

Today I found myself about a mile-and-a-half from the Sly Fox brewery’s Malvern location, so I just had to stop in. The original Sly Fox was my college haunt back in the late 90’s; it was in nearby Phoenixville, and (usually) Mike Walter, Jeff Henning, and I would find ourselves extracting a sawbuck each from the nearby Mac machine, and having three pints (at three bucks a pop) and leaving a buck for the bartender. We didn’t do the noisy sports-bar, plastic-cup-of-Natty-light, ten-cents wing thing very much, if at all, and preferred the quiet peace of the Sly Fox.

Things have changed a fair bit for the Sly Fox since those days; they now distribute their beer in cans in the region, and have multiple locations. I mentioned that I used to hang out at the Phoenixville location to the bar tender who pulled my stout this afternoon, and he knew of the original location, and filled me in on the new building across the street from the original, as well as two locations in Pittsburgh.

I can’t say the food was terribly exciting, but it was neat to step into an evolved version of my history, when the Sly Fox was one of the newest options for discerning drinkers popping up on the East Coast.

Sly Fox Stout
Sly Fox Stout
Old-Skool Beer Mat
Beer Mat
Sly Fox Keg
Sly Fox Keg
Me, at the Sly Fox
Me at the Sly Fox
Sly Fox Nachos
Sly Fox Nachos

Sunday Serial: Old Grandad Bonded Bourbon, eMClient, and Pizza

Some things to check out:

  1. Old Grandad Bonded Bourbon: Not the most exciting whisky I’ve ever had. Fairly sweet, lots of corn. Just fine in a Manhattan, though.
  2. eMClient: one of the pain points of using Windows is having a good email client option. My particular needs for work center around a useful smart folder scheme. On the Mac, it’s MailMate, hands down. This Windows client uses IMAP to access your Gmail account, but the clutch feature for me is Smart Folders. It’s not as flexible as MailMate, but is anything?
  3. Villa Fazzolari in Buena makes the best pizza around. Rhonda and I split the personal Gino Jr.’s Favorite, as we often do.


Gino Jr.’s Favorite Pizza

eMClient
eMClient

eMClient

Knife Reappointment

This is a silly little thing, but I get a kick out of it. This is a small pocket I knife I inherited after my father-in-law died. It was eminently amendable to sharpening, but the tip of the blade had broken off.

I busted out a two-sided whetstone I got at Ace Hardware some years ago and filed the blade down into a point. No bladesmith am I, but it’s really usable now.

pocket knife

Pocket Knife Point

Pocket Knife

Cardio Fitness/VO2 Max Update (Apple Watch)

Last August, I wrote in “Another Good Trend” that my cardio fitness levels, as reported by my Apple Watch through the Health app, had gone from “below average” to “above average.” Cardio fitness is Apple’s term for VO2 max. From the Health app:

This is a measurement of your VO, max, which is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can consume during exercise. Also called cardiorespiratory fitness, this is a useful measurement for everyone from the very fit to those managing illness.

A higher VOz max indicates a higher level of cardio fitness and endurance.

Oddly, all of the rowing I do doesn’t lead to Cardio Fitness reports. But walking does. Rhonda and I took the dogs for a 30-minute walk again today and I found a pleasant update when I checked my stats: I moved into the “high” category.

Cardio Fitness

Sunday Serial: Royal Spice Indian, Antis Reservaantis Reserva Mendoza, and Funny Coworkers

1. We’re lucky now to have an Indian restaurant nearby (two, in fact). Pictured below is their excellent Chole Bhatura appetizer, which Rhonda and I split.

2. We had a nice Mendoza from Moore Bros with our Indian. Very good.

3. Funny coworkers: I’ve often remarked that I get much of my social exposure at work. Outside of work stress, I’ve never found my colleagues to be anything but funny and admirable people to work with. One of my coworkers hung this sign up at the new worksite we’ve been opening this week after I quipped this hated boss phrase about having the student workers keep at it.

Chole Bhatura at Royal Spice in Millville, NJ

Mendoza

Many hands make light the work

Today’s 10K Rowing Workout: A New Personal Record

I had no expectations going in to today’s 10K; I was on the fence about whether I should even attempt one, considering last night’s over-indulgence in delicious locally grown wines.


Top 5 10K Rowing Workouts

Yet I found myself crouching into every last meter, realizing early on that I was at least close to matching last November’s pre-COVID 10K personal record. I felt good; the pace was below 30 strokes per minute, and I was able, with focus, to keep things at 2:02 or lower for most strokes. My heart rate stayed in the lower 160s till the end of the piece. I felt good and in control throughout the row.


Today’s 10K PR

I ended up shaving about 20 seconds off of November’s PR. That’s not a lot of time, cosmically speaking, but 20 seconds is a long time when you’re pretending to win a boat race.


November 2023’s 10K PR

To be fair, I have lowered my drag setting a bit.

Sunday Serial: Bluesky, Happy Scale, and Sharrot Winery

Here’s this week’s of things to check out:

  1. Bluesky: This Twitter alternative moved from private to public this past week. So far, I like it very much, and a looking forward to native Mac clients. Follow me at @alexnonn.bsky.social
  2. Happy Scale: This is a cool app that reads your Apple Health body weight data and presents you with some graphically novel presentations of said data. It’s a subscription but very cheap.
  3. Sharrot Winery: Rhonda and I took Thursday off to check out a new (to us) winery in nearby Hammonton, Sharrot Winery. We split a bottle of their excellent rosé, and three plates: a burrata plate, mac and cheese, and a pepperoni flatbread. Everything was great, including the service and atmosphere. Can’t wait to go back.

Happy Scale

Bluesky

Bluesky

Happy Scale

Happy Scale

Sharrot Winery

Rosé

Mac and Cheese

Burrata

Flatbread

Sharrot Winery

10K Rowing Update and LSD

I took the time Sundays often afford to row a 10k this afternoon. As I lamented in my last 10k update, I didn’t match or best my current PR. There was one noteworthy stat, though: my stroke rate.

Here are the splits table from my PR from November 2023:

My Current PR Splits

My Current 10k PR

I averaged 30 strokes per minute on this piece.

And here are the splits from today’s 10k:

Today's 10k Splits

Today’s 10k

My last split got up to 28 strokes per minute, but check out my average: 25.

I’ve been looking to reduce my stroke rate to allow me to more comfortably row longer pieces. It reminds me a bit of weightlifting, when I would deload to fix an error with my form.

A quick word on comparisons: It’s fine to compete with yourself. But the progress and knowledge of others is worth consideration, too. Case in point: I used to cycle, and rode solo all them time (I’m an only child and most of the things I prefer are solitary pursuits). I did chance upon a local club ride, though, and I learned a lot from riding with better, more experienced riders, and it changed my skill level after just one ride.

OK, enough about cycling.

In that spirit, however, I took to Concept2’s excellent Logbook (which doesn’t require a separate subscription, thank you very much!) to compare myself to other rowers. Filtering 10k pieces by males in my age group 40-49, I found the following record holder’s stats:

10k PR for my Age Range

Impressive. This guy was pulling with way more power than I can muster, but with a stroke rate just a digit above my 25.

Long slow distance.


PS: I am comparing myself to heavyweights. I weighed in as a lightweight this morning, though. Here’s the same age group’s lightweight record holder:

Current Lightweight 10k

30 strokes a minute. Heaps of power.