Today’s indoor rowing was a total of 13,000 meters which is 8.08 miles according to the converter. The main part, which is the only one that will be displayed in this post, was a 10K online done with 4 guys who were in England and one who was also in America, though even he was a few thousand miles away, in Connecticut.
The additional 3,000 meters was a single 3K done as a warm down.
The 10K was fun, because all the other guys were going at a much faster pace than I was and that inspired me to row a bit faster and not take any breaks.
Today’s indoor rowing started with a 3K warmup offline and finished with a moderate 6K online. The online piece was done in the company of two rowers who were in England.
Today’s activity was a little more than 4 miles of online rowing in a 30 minute session with six other people, who were located in various parts of the world.
Actually, if the 15 minute offline warmup is included, the total distance rowed today was about 6 1/4 miles.
These people are doing a half marathon the hard way = standing up. This photo was found on the Runner’s World website, where you can find an abundance of information and inspiration about their specialty, which is traversing all sorts of distances while standing up.
The above photo was on a page on the Runner’s World website which addressed the subject of having a party after a half-marathon. Doing a half marathon at race-pace is a fine excuse for a party.
The easy way to do a half marathon is to do it sitting down. That’s what I did today, with another half marathon rowing session online. This time, the company who inspired me to keep rowing the whole distance was a guy in France who joined just in the nick of time before I pressed the start button.
I’m sure that I rowed a little faster and managed to do without stopping even once, because guy in France maintained a steady pace and provided some inspiration. But today’s marathon was definitely not at a race pace and therefore it was no cause for a party, like the runners enjoyed after their HM.
finish screen for today’s half marathonThis was an easy way to burn 1,207 calories in less than an hour and 40 minutes.
The above illustrative photo was found on the website of a high school in England. It is called Middlewich High School and is located in Cheshire.
If you look carefully at the photo above, you can see that the person sitting in position to row on the Concept 2 rowing machine is sitting on a seat which is riding on a rail. The photo below this paragraph gives a less obstructed view of that rail, from the viewpoint of a person sitting on the seat, with the seat all the way back to the end of the rail.
So now you know, in case you didn’t already, what is being referenced in the title with the word, “rail”.
Today’s rowing on the rail session was a half marathon done in the company of a rower in Denmark and a Rower in Netherlands or perhaps Spain. (He has rowed from both locations and I didn’t ask him which country he was in today).
The last split (the 27th) of the report has incorrect data in the columns for Avg Pace and Avg Watts because that little problem with RowPro 5 for the Mac has not yet been debugged.
The motto on some of the shirts gives a good message: Just Row and let the benefits flow.
Today’s activity was an hour rowed online in the company of a rower who was in Germany.
My target pace was to just row easy but I was inspired by the pace of the other guy and so I picked up the rating and pace in the second half of the hour and then went a little faster in addition to that, during the last 5 – 10 minutes.
I took a short break to fiddle with the activity tracker on my watch and that break is why the pace is so slow during the 15th and 16th splitsThere was a short interruption in the middle of the hour after I noticed that I hadn’t told my watch to log the rowing session for activity credit.
An over-the-shoulder view of someone (not me) using higher tech with RowPro to race. He is not actually racing online though. He is using RowPro and racing offline against either computer-generated pace boats or rowfiles supplied by other rowers. That youtube video can be found at THIS LINK. If you watch the video, play it all the way to the end so you can appreciate the guy’s effort when you hear how hard he is breathing after the finish. That is quite normal, if a person gives maximum effort to do a 2K.
Today’s rowing consisted of two pieces. The first was the higher tech session, because it was done online. Doing a rowing session online is actually easy, but I consider it “higher tech,” because it not only involved the Concept 2 rowing machine and its own computer which is called the PM, but also it involves another computer which runs the RowPro software. That computer running RowPro connects to both the PM and to the internet. Via the internet, a connection is made to the Digital Rowing/Oarbits server in Houston. And other people who are rowing with RowPro, all over the world, can also connect to that same server in Houston at the same time as you, so you can row with them via the internet.
The first session was 30 minutes, with one other person who was located in England. It was not a race and we rowed within a few meters of each other’s boats, from start to finish.
I forgot to take a screen shot of the finish of today’s 30 minute online rowing session, but you can see the results in the yellow area of the Oarbits results screenshot.What I did different than usual in today’s online 30 minute session was to row at a very low rating. It felt good to be rowing at a very sedate pace. It was enough effort, even at the slow pace, to slowly but surely elevate HR.
The screenshot below shows some people who are all racing each other using higher tech of RowPro while their machines are all connected to one server. You can see that video at THIS LINK. That video is less than two minutes (it was a very short race) and everyone in the room who was not rowing applauds, when the race is finished.
So… it is possible for people to race each other using RowPro while they are all in the same room, but it can also be done with each rower and his/her machine in different rooms anywhere in the world.
The second session today was the Lower Tech of the two, because it only involved using the rowing machine and its PM. For the second session, the PM was set for a custom 3-interval session which consisted of 500 meters with 30 seconds rest, 1,000 meters with 30 seconds rest and 500 meters as the last interval. The second session was done for this month’s challenge on the C2CTC website. The goal was to row the first 500m interval at a rating of 22, the second 1K interval at 26 and the last 500m interval at 30.
This is somebody (not me) who is rowing the “lower tech” way, using only the Concept 2 rowing machine and its PM.A photo of the PM screen showing the results of my C2CTC challenge attempt today. I focused exclusively on rating (strokes per minute) because there was a penalty for doing even 1 SPM more or less than the specified rating for each interval. As a result, the ratings were perfect and the speed was kinda slow.
There was also a strength training session today. If you want to see the results, they are going to be posted, along with the strength-training plan, in the page of this blog that can be found via the tab named “Current Plan”.
When I searched for images related to today’s inspirational video of the Turin Silver Skiffs 2012, this image showing literal silver skiffs was among the results. It is jewelry from a British website site called Fay Page. The photo is found on a page showing solid silver rowing boats which are made in Scilly, which is a place in England, NOT in Italy (where Turin is located). You would have to ask the people who design the search engine’s artificial “intelligence” why this jewelry is logically related to the Turin Silver Skiffs sculling race.
The inspiration for today’s workout was a youtube video which I’ve resorted to a few times before but which I’ve not gotten tired of yet. It is called Turin silver skiffs 2012 and the actual rowing in the video is around 10K. The guy who is wearing the GoPro camera and doing the actual rowing is a young British rower.
Before starting the video and rowing along with it, I chose a custom RowPro session of 11K distance. Then I started the video. The actual race doesn’t start until a couple minutes into the video, but I started about 40 seconds ahead of the actual race start, since I would be rowing about 1,000 meters further. The guy who is rowing has to row against the current and much slower than me for the first half of the race course. Then he turns around and rows with the current and has a pace much faster than mine for the second half. I chose paces which resulted in me finishing the 11K at about the same time as he finished 10K.
When people race together online using RowPro and the digitalrowing.com Oarbits server, they usually follow the race with a 9 minute warm down but 4 minutes seemed more than enough to warm down after today’s 11K which was done at less than a race pace.
A minor software glitch showed up when RowPro generated the main session report. It’s visible on the line for the 16th split.
Though today would have normally been a day for strength-training, I skipped it today and will try to make a spreadsheet for the results of the new strength-training program, before doing the next session, so they can be displayed in this blog.
A screenshot from the video called The Rowing Life, which was 4 minutes 24 seconds long.
The grammar of the title of this post leaves something to be desired but it works. Today’s exercise activity was rowing only. And while I was rowing, I went to youtube and found a short video titled The Rowing Life and watched it. When it was over, youtube automatically started another one which its algorithms decided to be similar and so I watched one after the other, all rowing videos. The last one that was playing when the 11K finished was titled Full Day of Eating + Training | Student Rower, by a guy who seems to have posted quite a few videos on the topic of being a student rower.
The 11,000 meters was mostly easy with a little sprinting near the end. It was followed by a 4 minute piece, as additional warm down.
This is a view of the stroke rower in the boat I raced against for 2K. They were surprisingly fast! (or am I surprisingly slow??) and they finished about 100 meters ahead of me, so I will have to do that again and row a bit faster.
Today’s exercise time was divided into four pieces as follows: (1) 4,528 total meters rowed while warming up for and resting in between doing sets of pushups. (2) 8,000 meters mostly easy while watching a few videos of crews racing the 2K. I rowed faster for about 1,000 meters of that time, when syncing with the rating of one of the crews. (3) 2,000 meters at a vigorous but not all-out pace, when racing against a video of a crew of lightweight 8+ who were themselves racing a 2K. They finished about 100 meters ahead of me, after which I slowed down for the final 100 meters. (4) a warm down of 520 meters very easy.
The one piece that was 2K in length is the one referenced in the title of this post and it will also be the only one shown in the screenshots, because it was the most interesting one. That 2K burned 131 calories and it would have been a few more, if I hadn’t slowed down when the crew I was racing finished about 100 meters ahead of me. All totaled, today’s rowing burned 814 calories and went a rowing distance of 15,048 meters.
Today’s strength training results were somewhat ambiguous but I’m happy with them.
