The above photo was found on the row2k website, at THIS LINK.
Today’s session was an easy 11K, done while trying different videos and music.
Happy and restful Sundays to you.
Month: May 2017
Rowing The Monster A Bit Faster Today
Today’s rowing was similar but not identical to yesterday’s.
The main distance piece was 10K which I tried to row in sync with a GoPro video of the University of Cincinnati Rowing Club. It worked okay for the first half of the 10K but then the video switched to a different boat with a different coxswain and that coxswain kept lollygagging her head around and spent far too much time looking skyward so all I could see was the clouds. Its hard to row in sync with the guys in the crew, when all you can see is the cloudy sky. But it was some fun for a little more than half the 10K.
The second half of the video was too frustrating for my purposes, so I’m going to remove it from my youtube playlist, which incidentally is called Cactus John Rowing Company.
The second piece today was another try at the BW Sprint Monster for c2ctc.com May 2017 challenge. This time, I did it a bit faster than yesterday. And today I used RowPro 3 for Windows (instead of RowPro 5 for the Mac) so the active and rest distances were automatically added up separately. Because that’s one way in which the older version of RowPro is more sophisticated than RowPro 5 for the Mac.
The 10K screenshots are immediately below and then are followed by the BW Sprint Monster screenshots.
Happy rowing and sprinting to you.
Rowing Sprint Monster Day
Today was the day for me, if not anyone else, to do the May 2017 C2CTC challenge which was called BW Rowing Sprint Monster. Before doing that, I did 15K at an easy pace while listening to music from a youtube playlist called “music for erg half marathon or longer” … even though the distance I rowed was quite a bit less than a half marathon. I listened to the music in the order it is listed (did not choose to shuffle it) and by the time the 15,000 meters was done, the 9th selection was still playing.
Did not do any strength training today. Am still putting it off until next week, but my sleep is starting to suffer from lack of the strength-training supplement to rowing.
One little nuisance thing I notice about RowPro 5 for the Mac compared to the RowPro windows version I used previously is that when I do intervals like today’s BW Rowing Sprint Monster, RowPro does not add up the distances separately for active and rest portions. So, to get the total meters rowed during the active portion I had to use a calculator and add those 10 distance manually.
When doing the series of 10 sprint intervals, I decided to go kind of easy and do the first one about 2:00, the second one a little faster, etc all the way through all ten of them. I chose to do it that way, because I’ve noticed problems in the past, when I’ve gone all-out from the start on comparable short interval sets. The results in total meters aren’t great, but there were no problems afterwards.
Above are screenshots from the 15K and below are screenshots from the 10X sprint intervals.
Happy erging to you.
Smiles Inspire Smiles and Rowing Inspires ….
Today’s activity once again skipped strength-training, pushing its resumption toward next week. The indoor rowing was fun, with the enhancement of some videos on youtube found in a playlist called “Rowing Simulator”. Actually, most of them were not appropriate for what I wanted or even for rowing in my opinion, but that playlist includes some that I like a lot.
I set RowPro for an 11K session and watched the videos for inspiration as to what to do and how hard to row during the session.
The first video was called “POV Rowing June 2013 – UNCUT“. It was 8 minutes in length, was at an easy pace and served well as a warmup. You can view it by clicking the link in the first sentence of this paragraph.
The next one in the list that was suitable was called “GoPro: HOCR“. It was a good workout, when I followed what they did by rowing at the same stroke rate. A VERY good workout… and before it was finished, I had to slow down because the drag factor was set too high on the Concept 2.
The last one I watched was called “LMRC Rowing 5 7 2011 Womens 8+ Coxswain POV“. It was a women’s crew and was an even better workout(!) but because the drag factor was still set too high on the Concept 2, I didn’t follow along with them 100% of the time either.
Happy rowing and racing simulating to you.
My First Video Race
The rowing experience today was a first-time, brand-new indoor-rowing inspiration-getting experience for me, thanks to some rowers who uploaded first-person videos of their participation in OTW races.
I played a first-person video recording of a rowing race and rowed on the C2 at the same time. It was a lot of fun.
The youtube video is titled “Turin silver skiffs 2012”. It is 47 minutes 52 seconds long and it is a first person, in-the-boat view of a race that was about 10,000 meters. This link should take you directly to the particular video on youtube: Turin silver skiffs 2012
If you want to try racing against the above video, set your distance to 10K and start the video but don’t start rowing right away. It takes a couple minutes, more or less, before the actual race starts. When he starts rowing, you will see on his dashboard because the time will start counting up on his dashboard. You will see his stroke rate to the right of the time and his pace below the stroke rate.
He races an out-and-back race, which is about 5K each way. His pace is much slower and requires much more effort on his part on the first part because you can hear him breathing hard. When he gets to the halfway point and turns around, he goes much faster and with much less effort (you won’t hear him breathing hard) after he turns around and starts rowing the return trip.
I played the video while I rowed 10K with RowPro 5 for the Mac on the C2. The perspective was a bit of an adrenaline rush and I could see that it would be a LOT of fun, for some rowing software to be available like that, to run on X-Box or whatever and connect to Concept 2 rowing machines. There are a lot of possibilities, including real racing with other people all having a more immersive experience of something closer to a real race than what is as of now available via RowPro.
I haven’t heard of anyone else trying this while using a Concept 2 rowing machine with or without RowPro software, though I’m sure others must have watched videos of rowing while rowing. I know I’m being slightly redundant by saying so, but it would be really GREAT, to be able to have that perspective while doing indoor rowing and ESPECIALLY so if it would be in direct relation to what a person is actually doing on the machine.
There are quite a few other comparable rowing videos on youtube, so I think those will be my experiments for inspiration in the near future.
If you’re wondering what was done with strength-training today, the answer is nothing. I skipped it again. I’m starting to think I might skip a whole week, before trying the 10th week of the 10 week program, but will take it just one day at a time.
Happy new indoor rowing experiences to you.
She Won This Race
Today’s rowing session was interrupted by interruptions and so I ended up far behind the lady in her pace boat. It’s okay to let the pace boat win once in a while. It was still a worthwhile session, of 11 kilometers distance, easy but invigorating pacing. The strength training that was supposed to be done yesterday was not done today either. Maybe tomorrow?
The above photo is one of the random images that was found when I searched for images using the search terms “she won this race”. I don’t know who the rower is, but it looks like she’s rowing with a good effort.
Happy invigoration to you.
Didn’t Do What She Did
Today’s rowing session was done with a female pace boat but I didn’t do what she did. In other words, I rowed to the beat of my own drummer. I let her get ahead, then caught up and passed and did that a few times. It was invigorating.
Today was also supposed to be a strength-training/pushups day, the 10th week of the 10 week plan. But I skipped it and might do it tomorrow instead. Or the next day… Supposedly, I’m supposed to be able to do 100 pushups consecutively without stopping, after the 10 weeks, but so far my maximum consecutive has been 14, so I have doubts that the “7 Weeks To 100 Pushups” plan is going to live up to its promise.
On the bright side, 14 consecutive pushups is a huge increase over the maximum of 3 that I was able to do before starting this plan.
Today RowPro 5 for the Mac didn’t do what it is supposed to do with regard to saving the rowfile so that it could be uploaded to my concept2.com logbook from RowPro. After finishing the session, it was nowhere to be found in the online log listing. So I did a manual entry to log the distance.
Happy doing-your-own-thing rowing, to you.
Happy Mothers Day 2017
The above photo was found on a website/blog called Fit and Fabulous After Forty and was chosen for today because today is Mother’s Day! and its an appropriate-for-the-day picture of a mother and a child rowing side by side on Concept 2 rowing machines.
The photo came up when I searched images for the terms mother rowing and is located in an article where the author writes about her experience of participating in a marathon row. It can be found at THIS LINK.
Today’s rowing session for me was 30 minutes online in a group of 7 people including myself.
One of the other rowers asked if anyone planned to row exactly 7,000 meters in 30 minutes and I volunteered to do that pace, which was 2:08.5/500m.
I maintained an average pace of 2:08.5 for the first 28 minutes, but he rowed a bit faster. So when the time counted down to 2 minutes remaining, I sprinted a bit.
Happy rowing, however short or long you stay on the machine.
Do What She Does, Sort Of
The above photo was found on the row2K website at THIS LINK. She can do a nice handstand, while someone else keeps the boat balanced… I wonder what kind of a 2K time she can do?
Today’s indoor rowing session was 11,000 meters with a pace boat. The pace boat had a pace of 2:21 and rating of 24 and its rower was a female with a Finland flag. The latter (female pace boat rower with a Finland flag) is because I discovered that RowPro 5 for the Mac can be set up with customized pace boats and a choice of options for the pace boat rower. So I chose the color of clothes for the pace boat rower and also gave her brown hair and rather pale skin, because I assume that people in Finland don’t get an over abundance of sunshine.
As far as keeping pace with today’s pace boat went, I only “sort of” kept pace, because I was watching a distracting video, some of which was in a foreign language which required me to pay attention to its closed-captioned translation into English.
Happy pacing to you.
Rowing Helps Fit Bottomed Girls
The above indoor rowing photo was found on a general fitness website with ladies in mind. It is called Fit Bottomed Girls and is found at this link: fitbottomedgirls.com. The page which the above photo was linked to was on a page about indoor rowing found at THIS LINK which is titled “Indoor Rowing: What You Need to Know – and a Workout to Try”. The “workout to try” seems to be a set of intervals patterned as 6x400r200. That amounts to about 1.5 miles of sprinting and 3/4 miles of resting in between and after each of the half dozen 400 meter sprints. Sounds like fun, so maybe I’ll try it sometime. If I remember….
But … the next set of intervals I will do is this month’s C2CTC challenge, which is 10×0:30r60 which also sounds like a lot of fun. It’s results will be posted here sometime before this month is over.
Today’s activities were a duad. You might not know what that word means, but if you don’t you can look it up like I did, when I discovered it is an actual word(!) in the Words With Friends game that I play with Diane. Too bad, I never got an opportunity to make that word… Diane used that space when it was her turn the next time, so I had to look elsewhere on the board for whatever word I settled for.
The duad was two activities: strength-training via pushups and also rowing 15K in bits and pieces as combination warmup/down for pushups and in between doing each pushups set. Had to interrupt the whole thing in the middle, to take Diane for an eye exam which required dilation of the limpid pools of her lovely blue eyes. That’s why the 15th split of the 15K is over two hours – that’s when I performed the job of chauffeur.
Today’s strength training/pushups results all fit on the bottom line labeled F (for Friday) of the screenshot below:
Happy bottom fitness attainment to you.