Today is the second to last day of the Concept 2 Dog Days of Summer Challenge and I fulfilled the challenge within a few minutes of the start of rowing today.
The session today was scheduled online and up until the last 20 minutes or so before start time I thought I’d be rowing alone but then the session was joined by Mike F.H., of Great Britain.
The session was 30 minutes and it was to be warm up for the first 5 minutes, then five sets of 90 second intervals with each separated from the next by 1 minute of active rest and all the remaining time of the 30 minutes was to be a warm down pace.
Before we began rowing, Mike indicated that he wanted to row along with me while I did the intervals, by asking “What’s your flat-out pace?”
I had originally been thinking that I’d row alone and my original plan had been to Row the first 4 ninety second intervals at a pace of 1:55 and then do the last one as fast as I could (“flat out” as Mike would say) at a pace of 1:45 or better.
But when Mike asked that question, I figured he was probably a lot younger than me and would think 1:55 was way to slow, so I responded, “About 1:45 or perhaps a little better,” without seriously considering that I probably couldn’t hold that pace for 5 intervals in a row with only 1 minute rest after each one. But I was determined to try…
Mike responded that he thought he would prefer 1:50 for the intervals and I quickly replied that 1:50 was okay with me. He then said, “You don’t need to slow down on my account,” but I assured him that I thought I’d actually prefer 1:50/500m because I’d been “doing a lot of intervals this week.”
When I told Diane of that conversation with Mike about what pace to row the intervals and how I changed my mind and decided to try to row a bit faster than originally planned, she responded with a laugh and said something to the effect, “Why are men that way!?”
So we did the first 5 minutes at a 2:15/500m warm up pace and then did each 90 second sprint at 1:50 and did each one minute active rest at 2:15. By the time we’d done all 5, I’d managed to hold the sprint pace to about 1:50 in each of them but felt it was close to my limit. There were almost 15 minutes left of the session by then and I did the remaining warmdown at a pace of 2:15 which is a faster pace than I would have warmed down if I’d been alone. So that’s more evidence that not only is company online enjoyable, but it is an extra incentive to push a little harder than one might do alone.
Mike rowed the remaining warmdown at 2:05, which was more indication to me that he is probably quite a bit younger.
It was fun and I felt good afterwards. Tomorrow it will be 30 minutes with 12×1 min sprints and 1 min rest between each. And then I think I might rest on Monday by rowing 30 minutes or longer at a very slow pace. Of course… it depends a little bit on what any others who join the session on Monday might want to do…
If you wonder what the dogs are doing in the images below…. these are the Dog Days of Summer…
Happy trails to you.