Month: August 2016

For day 7 of the Rowlympics I scheduled two online 30 minute sessions.

Rowers participated in the countries of Denmark, Egypt, Great Britain, Netherlands, Norway and the US.

I’m still exploring how HR behaves since it went a bit wacky during the sprints on Rowlympic Day 5 and then that day turned into a HR re-synchronization in the 10K that followed those sprints.

Yesterday I took it extremely easy with a pace of about 2:27 for an hour and HR stayed very constant at about 100.

So today I increased the pace slightly and for the first half hour session  had a target pace of 2:20.   Things went well during that first session with HR very constant at about 110 and so for today’s second half hour I increased the pace to an average of about 2:10 and HR continued to behave normally, including during a short period of sprinting in the final minute or two of that session.

So I’m thinking that its a possibility that the problem with HR on Rowlympic Day 5 wasn’t that I did the sprints or didn’t warm down enough, but rather that I don’t do enough sprints.  I have been mostly avoiding them until recently, but perhaps sprints in the right amount are good for “cleaning out the pipes” and “blowing out the dust etc” so to speak, analogous to how it is good for a car which is only driven sedately in the city to occasionally get out on the freeway and drive at high speeds, to “clean out the gunk”.

Here are today’s screens and reports:

Happy trails to you until we meet again.

Today was day 6 of the Concept 2 Rowlympic Challenge.

I wanted to recharge and recover from yesterday so today I rowed with such a low effort that it was almost not rowing.  The session today was one hour done online with the good company of other rowers who were located in Denmark, Egypt, Lisbon (Portugal) and the US.

Happy trails to you until we meet again.

Today’s rowing consisted of 5 sessions, one warm up and two warm downs, for 8 in all. Most of them were done online, with rowers who were in Denmark, Great Britain and Spain.

Today I decided to schedule 3 sprints into the mix.  The order in which they were done was: first, an easy 10 minute warm up.  Next were the online scheduled pieces and first of those was a 100 meter sprint, followed about 10 minutes later with a 500 meter and then a 1,000 meter sprint. During the 1,000 meter piece, my HR started going weird and registered as high as 210, so I eased off and didn’t push very hard.

After those three sprints there was a break of about 20 minutes. During that 15-20 minute break I walked around a little and did a 5 minute warm down, to try to get HR to settle back down to normal but to no avail.

Then there was an online 10K and because my HR was acting erratic, I rowed the 10K at a fairly constant, easy pace of about 2:15/500 meters, to give the heart a chance to settle down and re-synchronize to a normal rate.  It took about 5,500 meters of the 2:15 pace before HR settled down again and you can easily see that on the finish screen graph for the 10K.

After the 10K, I made another attempt at the 100 meter sprint, offline and managed to shave off a few tenths of a second.  Lastly, there was a 10 minute warm down. Images of the finish screens, session reports and a few comments in some of the captions follow:

Happy trails to you until we meet again.

During this 15-day Concept 2 Rowlympic Challenge, I’m trying to make each day of my rowing different.

If you wonder what the title, “EONs of fun…” refers to you will find out a few paragraphs down.  It is a pun on someone’s name plus the fact that when I was rowing the piece which included him, it was so much fun that it fit the definition of the English word “eon,” which means “an indefinite and very long period of time”. During that particular session, time seemed to stretch out and last longer than it actually did.

Today the rowing consisted of two main online pieces and there were rowers in 9 different countries: Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Poland and the United States. You might say it had an international element.

The first piece was 5K which I did at a vigorous but not race pace and an online 6K which I did at a somewhat more vigorous but not all-out race pace. No race-pace for me because after all… what would be the point of me trying to do any piece as fast as I can?  There is no monetary reward nor medals nor fame with any dame (Diane is not impressed, no matter how fast I row).

Though … Diane once did seem sort of impressed when I rowed as fast as I could for her in a short sprint to show her that I could get the calories/hour readout momentarily as high as about 2,500 cal/hour… and then stopped.  When I stopped all of a sudden without gradually slowing down, she raised her voice a bit and said something to the effect that I needed to WARM DOWN GRADUALLY!  So I wouldn’t have a heart attack!.  🙂

So… since I can’t impress the women or earn any money by rowing as hard as possible to the point of almost dropping off the C2 in exhaustion, I just row for fun and health, at whatever pace feels good at the moment.  Mostly, I row slow, most of the time.

There were actually 4 pieces rowed today, if the 10 minute warm up and 15 minute warm down were counted.  But who’s counting?

The session that was the MOST FUN today was the 6K.  But first was the 5K which I did with a targeted pace of 2:05/500 meters.  The result was exactly precisely 2:05/500 meters.  But even that 5K was fun, because Wilbert de Jong of Germany asked, before it started, if I’d like to row at 1:22/500 meters.  I replied that if he rowed at 1:22/500 meters, he would deserve a gold medal. When we rowed the 5K, Wilbert paced right along side me and matched my 2:05/500 meter pace…. until the last 500 meters or so when he unleashed himself and sprinted at speeds up to and including 1:22/500 meters.  Very impressive.  He truly deserved a gold medal for that.

The 6K was more fun for me because I aimed for a faster pace, about 2:02/500m with the intention of sprinting the last 500 meters.  One of the others, EON Phillipe of France, started out rowing quite a bit faster than me.  But then perhaps he got bored because there was nobody close to the pace he wanted to row, to race with him.  So he slowed down and let me catch up and then he sprinted ahead to gain about 25 meters lead.  Then he slowed down again to let me catch up again.  Then he sprinted a tiny bit but not for long and slowed down even more, to let me get a little lead.  Then he sprinted to catch up and then slowed again to let me get ahead again.  I kept rowing at a more or less constant pace of around 2:02/500m.

EON let me get about 28 meters ahead of him by the time the remaining distance was down to about 500 meters to go and then he sprinted faster than he had done at any time before in the 6K.  I had already decided that I was going to sprint for the last 500 meters, so we both sprinted to the finish line.  EON was still rowing faster than me and catching up to within a few meters, when I crossed the finish line.  It was a lot of fun and I am very thankful to EON for what he did to make it so enjoyable.

Here’s the data for today:

Happy trails to you, until we meet again.

Some indoor rowers like to race online and others do other things. I scheduled two 30 minute online sessions dedicated to the Rowlympic challenge today.  (You can read about it HERE if you don’t yet know what it is)

Several guys from several different countries joined in.  They all rowed a lot faster than I did but I was happy to just take it easy today and put in the time at a mild aerobic level.

During the first 30 minutes, not everyone of the six who signed up for that session were able to row because I mistakenly clicked the “Prepare to Start” button about 3 minutes before start time, when I had intended to click the “Send” button to send a line of text onto the”Session Chat” screen.

The first 30 minute session turned out to be easy for the other 2 guys also though it seemed that at least one of them really wanted to go a lot faster.  The session probably served as a warm up for the other 2 guys, to get them ready for the following session which everybody except me rowed at a much faster pace.

The second 30 minute session turned out to be a bit more of a race for everyone but me. In the second session, Arwed Egger won the gold, Alex Crowe won the silver and Vincent Guéret won the bronze, all considerations of weight class and age not being taken into account. And the rest of the good news is that EVERYBODY finished.  Not a single DNF in the 2nd 30 minute session.

Maybe I will race or at least work a little harder tomorrow?  Depends on how I feel… but rowing at any pace, even the easiest, it a healthy activity.

Happy trails.

Today was day 2 of the Rowlympics challenge.  I participated by doing one hour online. There was nobody in the online session who was rowing near a pace that I felt like rowing, so I focused on watching a movie and maintained a very easy pace.

Happy trails.

 

Yesterday I signed up to row an hour online this morning, for the Concept2.com “Rowlympic” challenge.  If you are interested, you can read about it at THIS LINK.

This morning I noticed that Tracy Watkins, the 3-time indoor rowing record holder with whom I rowed yesterday afternoon, had also signed up for that hour of Rowlympics.

Before she signed up, I had thought that I would take it in a lazy paced manner and row very easy at somewhere around a 2:20 pace.

But when I saw that Tracy had joined and remembered that her 30 minute session pace of “easy” turned out to be about 2:07/500m, I knew I would want to row with her again to find out what she would do for an hour.

So I stoked myself with coffee and breakfast and more coffee, to get ready for Tracy’s version of an easy hour.

Sure enough, just before the online hour of rowing started, one of the other rowers, Annette, said she was going to “row easy” and Tracy said “me too…”.  I chuckled to myself and typed, “Easy is relative…”.  Annette laughed, “hehehe” so maybe she had rowed with Tracy before too.

Tracy did not disappoint and was good company to keep me going at a non-lazy pace.

When the session finished, everyone seemed happy with the results except perhaps the 3 who were disconnected and labeled as DNF (Did Not Finish).  (But if the DNF people did the entire hour by finishing it offline and entered it in their online concept2.com logbooks, it still qualified them for this first day of the 15-day Rowlympic challenge.)

After the hour was over, I nourished and re-charged, with a dose of freshly juiced spinach and carrots (see photo below).

Happy trails.

Today’s rowing was a 30 minute online piece.  My original target pace was going to be 2:10/500m plus or minus a couple seconds/500m.

Two others joined the session, Jesper T of Denmark and Tracy W of England. Tracy said that it was late and she was going to bed after rowing so she was going to row “easy”.  At least, I thought that was what she typed. So I decided to stick with my plan to aim for about 2:10/500m and to ignore Jesper who would be faster and Tracy who I assumed would be slower.

But after we started, Tracy was rowing at around 2:08-2:10 so I decided to row with her.  The pace picked up and then there was a sprint for the last minute or so.  The result was an average pace of a bit faster than my original target pace but it was nice and its always good to have company while rowing.

After the online rowing was over, I looked to see if Tracy happened to be one of the members of RowPro Rowers virtual club.  I didn’t see her there but this article did turn up among the search results and it helps explain why what I expected when she said she wanted to row 30 minutes “easy” was a bit faster than I would have guessed.  Grandma Tracy, as she is also known, according to the article linked, has set a few indoor rowing records!  Nice!

Happy trails.

Today’s rowing was 30 minutes offline with a target pace of anywhere between 2:10 and 2:15. The resulting pace of 2:12.2/500m was in the target zone.

Happy trails.

 

Today instead of setting up another 10K I looked online in hopes of finding some company and was rewarded with finding two guys in Australia who were ready to row.

So we mutually encouraged each other to do a 30 minute piece.

Happy trails.