Monday rowing, this is the final leg of our Great Wall tour with Lo Stro Krate and Ro Wing Adventure Tours.
This week we are setting off to Huanghuacheng (65,000m).
We set off for the last time from the Forbidden City in Beijing to a glorious sunrise.
After about 7000m we reach the China Agricultural Museum.
1500m later we visit the Chaoyang Park which is built on the site of the former Prince’s Palace.
The next stop is the Guanfu Museum which is an art museum that was founded by Ma Weidu in October 1996.
Another 1500m and we reach the Civil Aviation Museum.
Our final stop for today is the Beijing Capital International Airport.
Map for Day 7:
I completed the 1/2 marathon in 1:39:56.0 and did a cool down of 1,129m in 6:17.0. My hands were somewhat sore today doing this one as a result of 6 hours of sculling and 2 hours of sweep rowing on the weekend – masters crew fine 2x (steering), leisure crew explorer 2x (steering), masters crew fine 8+ (#4 seat), leisure crew explorer 2x (steering).
The second sculling session on Saturday tore some skin on the little finger of my left hand – I was obviously gripping that handle too tightly, further evidenced by a few other pressure sores on that hand.
More episodes of Battlestar Galactica once again to pass the time.
Distance covered on the Huanghuacheng leg of the tour so far is 22,226m.
Distance total for the challenge at the end of day 7 now stands at 161,119m.
Tuesday was supposed to be calesthenics, but I decided to have another rest day as I had two more 1/2 marathons to do and I was starting to feel the effects of all the recent rowing activities.
Tuesday evening archery I ended up helping coach on the beginners course, no shooting for me this evening. I congratulated all of the archers who had taken part in the Short Metric Tournaments as we won the Handicap trophy for the third time in a row!
Wednesday rowing, we start today on the middle section of our final leg of the Great Wall at the Beijing Capital International Airport.
Today’s journey is two long hops, the first one takes in the Shunyi District where we have the Shunyi Health Bridge Wetland.
As well as the Beijing International Flower Port which is a little to the north of the wetland area.
Our second longer hop takes us to the Yuang Internaterional Ski Resort where we stay for the night take in a few slopes and some well deserved aprez ski.
Map for Day 8:
I completed the 1/2 marathon in 1:39:57.4 and did a cool down of 1,1132m in 5:59.8. My hands have largely recovered and only started to feel a little tender during the final 20-25 minutes.
Thursday rowing, this is the last day of our final leg of our Great Wall Tour with Ro Wing Adventure Tours.
We start today from where we spent the night at the Yuyang Ski Resort.
Our first destination today being the Panshan Scenic Resort.
Next up is the Jinhiahu Scenic Spot.
Now we detour slightly to the north east to visit the Shilinxia Scenic Area and the glass sightseeing platform , also known as the ‘Flying UFO’ that hangs out about 32.8m from the cliff.
Finally we reach our destination at the Huangyaguan Great Wall.
Now anyone paying attention at this point will notice that this was not our stated destination and how did we manage to reach here without rowing the required extra 30,000m? – Chinese magic? Secret OTW rowing? (well this part did happen to the tune of 34,094m on last weekend alone).
In Lo’s defence the two names are fairly similar and this is a much more interesting route from a scenery point of view, he would have really struggled finding new scenic locations on a route that parallels the two we have already done (plus I only noticed the mistake as I had almost finished writing this post and just decided to go with it anyway as otherwise I would have had to re-write yesterday’s post as well).
I could have kept quiet and just used the correct destination name and chances are nobody would have even noticed or checked the map, but decided it made for a more amusing post to ‘fess up.
The important part is that we covered the 65,00m required to reach Huanghuacheng and had some better pictures to look at.
I would like to thank Lo Strok Rate for all of the route planning on this tour.
I will now be taking a fast rickshaw back to Beijing and then fly home with Aye Fly Hi from Wing and Ah-Prer Airlines for some well deserved R&R.
Map for Day 9:
Map for the Huangyaguan Leg:
Map for the full Ro Wing Adventure Tours Great Wall Tour:
I have just noticed that this looks alarmingly like a spermatozoa!
I completed the 1/2 marathon in 1:39:45.9 and did a cool down of 1,1136m in 5:49.3. My hand was almost completely back to normal today and did not cause any discomfort.
Yet more episodes of Battlestar Galactica were watched to pass the time.
Distance covered on the Huanghuacheng leg of the tour is 66,688m.
Total distance covered for the challenge at the end of day 9 is 205,581m.
I thoroughly enjoyed this challenge along with planning the routes on Google Earth and finding suitable pictures for it (even if the planning did go a little astray on the third leg).
Friday I decide to finish off the Concept 2 SkiErg Performance Series having put it off from last Friday.
For the 2,000m piece I managed a time of 8:16.3 which was a new PB by 0:45.8 and beat my July time by 0:56.6, I was hoping for sub 8:30, so I was very happy with that improvement.
I was happy with the pace for this one, not too fast at the start and then a a slight sprint for the finish with about 100m to go.
I then did the 1,000m piece after about a 10 minute rest and managed 3:59.2 which was a new PB by 0:24.7 and beat my July time by 0:24.7 (my July time was my PB).
I went out a bit too fast on this one and started to fade quite badly around 700m but was determined to hang on to a sub 4:00 time, again extremely happy with the improvement.
The last one is 30 seconds for distance, so after another 10 minutes rest I went for it and managed 136m, which was down on my PB and July distance by 4m.
Considering that I had just done the 1K and 2K beforehand I was happy enough with this distance.
I am very pleased with my improvements over these distances/times, they are slowly approaching my RowErg ones and looking forward to the next test in November and the 14th Annual SkiErg World Sprints on 10-13 November.
Friday evening I drove up to Lancaster with my daughter to take her back to University for her second year, the journey took five and a half hours to cover the 220 miles and we arrived at 22:00.
Saturday morning I went for a walk around Lancaster before taking my daughter for a grocery shopping trip and then heading back home again, this time it only took me four and a half hours.
On returning home I then proceeded to mow the lawn which had become a little overgrown again, this took 2 hours and involved 6km of walking.
Sunday morning I replaced the waste hose on the dishwasher, the old one had been shredded by a rat and it took a week or more before we realised this, so it had been emptying out underneath the kitchen cabinets all that time – delightful!
I then went off to the leisure rowing session on the agreement that I would come back and at least start clearing the weeds from the drive in preparation for pressure washing on my return. The details of this outing are presented in the next post.
I came home after the leisure session and then spent the next couple of hours weeding the front drive in preparation for pressure washing next weekend.
During the month of September I managed a total of 100 hours of exercise, walked 124km, climbed 228 flights of stairs, skied 19km, rowed 257km on the Erg and 90km on the water.
By the end of the month my weight was 14 Stone (196lb/89kg), 3lb loss, which is back to my goal weight once again.