Month: September 2016

Today’s rowing session was 30 minutes online.  There was one other rower, Jesper T., in Denmark, who joined it and Jesper was energetically inspirational as usual.

The plan for today’s 30 minutes was simply to maintain a constant pace at any speed that felt comfortable and which was faster than the pace of 2:01.6, my season best 30 min pace up until today.

The reason I wanted a 30 minute piece faster than 2:01.6 was because yesterday’s 10K was done comfortably at 2:01.7 which is virtually the same pace as 2:01.6 and I thought those two paces were too close to each other.

So I rowed the 30 minute session at a pace of 2:00-2:01 until the last couple minutes and then sprinted a bit to pull the average pace to below 2:00. It was a comfortable enough pace, that I might try another 30 minute session someday soon this season and see how comfortable it would be to shave another second or more off the average pace.

After that, there was a 4K warm down, to return things to equilibrium.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s session was the third 10K in three days and the second attempt in two days to make a season best time.  It was scheduled and rowed online with a fast rower in Denmark who out paced me by almost 10 seconds per 500 meters and was part of the inspiration to keep on keeping on.

Afterwards, there was a 10 minute warm down in the company of a guy in the US.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s rowing was a 10K session scheduled online.  It was joined by 7 other guys. Two were in Great Britain, two in Italy, one in Poland, one in New Zealand and one in the US.

My plan for the 10K was simply to row at a constant pace which would be a little faster than 2:03.8/500m, so as to have a new season best time.  Everybody rowed with a lot of energy and the session went well but when there were about 2,500 meters remaining, I had to get off the machine and tend to a minor emergency.

The interruption took several minutes and so when I returned to the C2 a personal best was no longer possible and I used the remaining time as warm down.

The 10K is one of my favorite distances, so I don’t mind having reason to do another one soon.

Happy trails to you.

 

My recent venture into the Concept2.com forum has been very worthwhile and in the short time since first posting a question there, I already feel that I have some new friends who are fanatics in a healthy way about indoor rowing.

But when one of the guys posed the question, “What is your training plan?” I drew my usual blank on that topic because I’ve never had one, for either the decades of running nor since beginning indoor rowing in 2004. One of them pointed me to an ongoing training thread where he and several others are sharing their daily experiences and it looks like very good reading.  Another mentioned several different plan approaches, including but not limited to the Pete Plan and Wolverine plan.

So I’m getting the idea that regular rowing and some kind of structured plan are well worth considering. There is one plan, “the high volume aerobic pace system” which Bob S. suggested might be a good name for what I’m currently doing and it sounds like a good description of how I’ve been replacing long daily runs with rowing.

Today, with no training plan except perhaps the one that Bob suggested (the high volume aerobic pace system), I decided to schedule an online 10K a couple hours in advance and see if there were any others interested.

One other guy, Jesper T in Denmark, joined the 10K.  Jesper is a very fast rower who can do a 10K at a pace faster than I recently did a 2K, so I decided to just row mellow and slow.  But during the first couple of splits, I noticed that whatever my instantaneous pace was, Jesper’s seemed to be about 10 seconds or a little more than 10 seconds faster per 500 meters.  So I decided to pick up my pace a bit, to keep the difference to less than 10 seconds per 500m.  And Jesper picked up his pace and I continued to try to keep the difference to less than 10 seconds/500m and it resulted in me rowing a lot faster than “mellow and slow”.

Jesper reached the 10K finish line about 725 meters ahead of me, with a final sprint which I more or less matched by a speed less than 10 seconds/500m slower than his sprint.

After he finished, I thought “that was fun!” and slowed way down for a few hundred meters, as a warm down.

After reaching the finish line, I noticed that I was very close to a season best 10K time and would have made a new SB if only I had kept up the pace and waited to do all warming down until after the 10K.

So that foray into the 10K today makes me want to do another 10K tomorrow and get a season best time.  Tune in tomorrow for the exciting results.

Here’s today’s data from RowPro:

Happy trails to you.

When I woke and rose before dawn today there was no doubt that I would row this morning. I had the intention of scheduling a 30 minute online session and experimenting with the still unanswered question of what is free rate pace for 30 minutes.

But when I tried to confirm the session, the Oarbits app repeatedly gave the response, “No internet connection” even though there was a perfectly good internet connection for everything else.

So I set aside scheduling the session for a bit and posted the question in a Facebook rowing area, “What is free rate pace?” The only answer I got there was a definition of rating and pace.  Which didn’t address what I’d encountered yesterday during the chats before and after yesterday’s 30r20.

Next, I went to the Concept2 forum and posted the same question in a more detailed manner because there seems to be a very definite answer to what a person’s pace should be for 30 minutes if that person is rowing at his “free rate” SPM.  I want to know if that pace would be the fastest pace the person could muster, the most leisurely or something in between those two extremes.

Waiting for an answer from someone who is more knowledgeable than me.

After posting that question in two different places, I tried once again to use the Oarbits app to schedule an online session, with the same result that the app said it didn’t have an internet connection.

So I thought that maybe, just maybe all this is a sign that I shouldn’t row today and in the meantime, the decision hasn’t yet been made as to whether … or not.

As it stands, today will be a day of rowing abstention.  If it proves to be otherwise before the day is over, this post will be edited and this paragraph will be replaced with a summary of whatever rowing was done.

*The decision to row was made after taking a long nap and then finding the answer to the question, What is free rate pace?  The answer was supplied by two forum contributors who each contributed their own version of the answer and then proceeded to have further discussion.  One of them said that there is even a formula relating to free rate pace at any given stroke rate and what a person’s pace should be for 30r20.  I found it very interesting.

Interesting enough, anyway, that it helped me decide to do a little rowing today.  The rowing consisted of a 30 minute piece and a 10 minute warmdown.  They were online but solo because I didn’t give enough advance notice for anyone else to join them.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s choice of a rowing session was the result of having read a couple articles that mentioned the particular experience and benefits of training periodically for 30 minutes at a stroke rate limited to 20 SPM during that time.

The articles were somewhat technical, mentioning slow-twitch, fast-twitch, mitochondria, lactic acid, aerobic, anaerobic and so on but the overall message seemed to be that a 30r20 has some great benefits.  It also mentioned that if it is done properly it is harder than it sounds.  And it mentioned one more thing – that it shouldn’t be done more than once a week at the most.

It sounded somewhat intriguing so that’s what I did this morning.

The 30 minute session was scheduled about one hour in advance and there was one person who noticed it and joined, Andy B. in England.

Before the session started, Andy announced that he was going to row slow because he was recovering from something strenuous which may have been a race but I’m not clear on what he said it was.  I replied, “Slow is relative,” which elicited laughter from him.  He explained that for him, slow would be 1:59/500m.  When the session was over, his pace had averaged 1:58/500m so he wasn’t as tired as he thought.

I told him, in response, that I would be trying a 30r20 for the first time but wasn’t sure what pace to aim for.  (Little did I know… at a rating of 20, the right pace sort of grabs you, instead of allowing you to choose it).

He seemed to have a lot of experience and immediately asked, what was my free rate SPM and pace.  I wasn’t and am still not sure what he meant by “free rate” but I considered and answered 28 and 2:05, picking 28 spm because it seems to be about the rating I settle into if rowing not very hard nor very easy.  The pace of 2:05 was a bit fast, I thought, but it sounded better than something slower when I was talking with someone who considers 1:59 to be slow.

To that, he replied that I should aim for a pace of 2:12 at the 20 SPM rating for 30 minutes and “go from there.”  And to that suggestion, I replied, “2:12 sounds good”.  It definitely sounded easier than 2:05 and so I was all for a pace of 2:12 at 20 spm.  But it was not to be… It took a lot of focus to keep the rating at 20.  In fact, it took so much focus that I just concentrated on keeping the rating at 20 SPM and let the pace be what it would be, which turned out to be a pace of about 2:07 for the first 15-20 minutes and slowed down a bit as the grains of sand for the last few minutes trickled through the half-hour glass.

The fewer grains of sand that remained in that half-hour glass, the slower they trickled.  When time had counted down to one minute remaining, that very last minute seemed to stretch out and last a long, long time.

I thought the theory of relativity stated something to the effect that time slows down significantly only as speed increases greatly, to nearly the speed of light.  My pace was almost motionless in comparison to the speed of light, but the passage of time significantly slowed during that last minute.

Andy B. was very encouraging after the session was over and said “you did bloody well…” (that part is an exact quote) and added something to the effect that he thought I could row a lot quicker (than the 2:05 pace I had randomly chosen earlier) at my “free rate.”

Afterwards I tried doing a search for rowing terms and “free rate,” but I couldn’t find anything that explained what Andy meant.  Whatever it is, exactly, that he meant… I take it as something positive.

So it was a happy ending.

Happy trails to you.

 

Today’s rowing session was one hour scheduled online by a rower in Denmark.  There was a total of 5 rowers in the session: Annette W in Denmark, Clément in France, Arwed E. in Germany, Anne B. in the US and myself in a parallel universe.

A sixty minute session isn’t something I do very frequently lately so I thought I’d use the relatively rare opportunity to aim for SB.  (SB is online rowers’ lingo for season best)

My target pace was 2:07 or anything better that was comfortable.  Gotta be comfortable. It was accomplished, but I got off to a slow start because the streaming connection between my iPhone and the TV dropped at the start of the session and I had to stop rowing to reconnect it.  Then it dropped and the music stopped a second time and I had to stop rowing a second time.

The music continued without faltering after being restored  the second time. To make up for the lost time during the two interruptions, I rowed at a pace faster than 2:07 until the average pace dropped below 2:07.  Then, I decided that since it hadn’t been any strain to get the average pace down to 2:07, I’d row at a pace that would drop it to below 2:06.

During the last two minutes, it seemed appropriate to add a little sprint for good measure.

After the hour session, there was a 2K warm down.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s session was scheduled online but it was posted only about 18 minutes in advance and there were no rowers who noticed it and joined within those few minutes.

So I rowed alone.  Of course, none of us are ever alone but I’m speaking with regards to other people in the virtual rowing session.  There were no other people participating in this morning’s 30 minute session.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s rowing was 30 minutes online followed by a 2K warmdown.  There was a total of 5 rowers who checked in and began the session.  One rower lost connection before the end.  All of them were in Europe, except for me.

I rowed at about 2:30 pace, low rating in the teens for the first 10 minutes then sprinted for 2 minutes, had  3 minutes active rest followed by another 2 minute sprint, then 3 more minutes active rest followed by a 1 minute sprint with the remaining time at an easy pace with a normal rating in the 20s.

Everyone was cheery and chatty after the 30 minutes.  One of the rowers said, “You are a pirate of the Caribbean!” afterwards and then explained that she had been telling herself stories while she rowed, without elaborating on the stories.

Four of the rowers, including myself, joined in a 2K warmdown afterwards.

Happy trails to you.