Training is Going Smoothly. Sadly Admin isn't...

Sorry for the long break between posts. I wanted to wait until I had a date set to write a post, but that's a whole tale in itself. Anyway here's my first update on how things are going.

First the positives; training is actually going smoothly, though I've adjusted my plan due to a delay in when I'll be rowing. There are some disadvantages to living in Portsmouth by myself; mainly not knowing anyone. However, a major plus point is that I have lots of time to train. For the last couple of weeks I've been going to the gym after work, which has been ok - though I can't do really long stints on the erg because it's pretty busy. So from Monday I'm going to go to the gym before work. This will let me do a couple of hours on the erg (hopefully about 25km each day this week), which will be an improvement from the 15 or so I've been managing so far.

Anyway despite this minor issue I feel like I'm making progress. The biggest thing I need to do is keep my discipline a bit better; if I'm not being careful I start steadily increasing stroke rate and dropping my split. This is fine when I'm only doing these short rows, but will cause real trouble when I start rowing a bit further. Otherwise I'm finding the sessions pretty easy and can row without getting too bored. I can also feel physical improvements, so I'm happy with training.

My gym has enough users; it's just empty of managers

Now the admin. The gym are being real trouble with organising a date. They've agreed that I can row there, which is great, but they are just refusing to set a time. The main problem seems to be that their gym managers only work 9-5, when I'm at work. You're probably thinking this isn't an issue; after all phones and email exist to help with these sort of communication issues. Yet they seem determined not to give out a phone number and refuse to answer emails.

I think the answer's going to be me taking a bit of time off to go to the gym during the day. Then (I'm hoping) I'll be able to nail them down.

Finally, thanks to all of you who have donated to Link Leisure on my just giving page (http://www.justgiving.com/100km-row). It really helps the charity a lot. If you want to find out a bit more about Link Leisure, and why it's particularly salient to me, then check out my first post.

Thanks all,
James