Today’s title is relating to the fact that recently I gained another “training partner.” The Training Partner feature is something optional that anybody who has an online logbook on concept2.com can do.
All it means is that people who are training partners have readily accessible shortcuts to view each other’s logbook entries. That shortcut is the Training Partner tab within their logbook.
It can be a source of encouragement to see that others are rowing and logging workouts. It can also sometimes be a source of inspiration for something to do or to try with regard to using the Concept2 machines.
Currently I have nine training partners. I click on the Training Partner tab every day to at least get a glance at the list of most recent workouts done by those training partners. Sometimes I will look at that list before I do a workout and then click on one or more sessions logged by a training partner because I’m looking for inspiration as to what to do that day.
Today’s main inspiration was from a couple of training partners who had scheduled a 30 minute online rowing session for 09:00 local time this morning. Another guy, who is located in Italy, also turned up at the last minute. So there were 4 of us who rowed together in the same session and motivated each other to keep going to the finish line.
The online rowing session was named “30 minute handicap 5K chase.” The idea was that the slowest person would announce his intended pace and the time it would take him to row 5K at that pace. In today’s case the slowest rower intended to row at 2:42/500 meters which would amount to 27 minutes for 5K. The others would decide how fast they wanted to row and figure the time it would take them at their paces to row 5K. Then they would each subtract that time from 27 minutes and the difference would be how long they would wait after the start before they started rowing to catch up to the first rower. Today, the other two guys were going to row at a pace of about 2:09/500 meters which would amount to 21 minutes and 30 seconds to row 5K, so they each waited at the start line for 5 minutes and 30 seconds after the session started. They caught up to the first guy at about 5,000 meters and had a few minutes to spare before the 30 minute total time was up.
As for me, I started out immediately, but super-slow for the first minute. Then a little bit faster for the second minute. After two minutes, the first guy was over 100 meters ahead of me so I picked up my pace a little bit until I drew to within about 25 meters of the first guy. I matched his pace and remained 25 meters behind him until the other two guys caught up to me, then I sprinted for less than a minute to catch up to the first guy and remained even with him until the finish line.
It was simultaneously invigorating, relaxing and fun.
Only screenshots of the report and graphs for the 30 minute online session are shown here. There were a few other offline workouts today. Data and graphs for all of them can be seen via this link to my online logbook. To see a session’s data & graphs click the corresponding “+” sign in the “Action” column for the particular session.
Happy rowing to you!