Hard Workout – Page 2 – Ethereal Rowing

happy-with-the-results — He’s happy with the results of his race! I was happy with the results of today’s 6K, but didn’t do any shouting, etc. I just savored the “rower’s afterglow”…

Considering I haven’t been training for anything at all, I was happy with the do-over 6K results today. It didn’t change my standing in the Concept 2 Indoor Rowing World Rankings – I’m still in 3rd place (so far) this season- but there was an improvement in time.

The above photo was found on the website for the Mission Bay Aquatic Center in San Diego, CA. If you live in the San Diego area and want to see what they have to offer, you can visit their website through THIS LINK .

For today’s 6K effort I aimed for a slower pace than yesterday’s and saved whatever was left for a harder push during the final 500 meters.

My comment yesterday about there being a possible glitch with RowPro 5 for the Mac MIGHT not be true. I will have to investigate further. For today’s 6K, I didn’t use RowPro 5 for the Mac. Instead, I booted up the Windows 7 machine … updated Windows (Windows always needs to be updated, if it hasn’t been used for a while and it had been over a month since it had been used) … and used RowPro for Windows.

After uploading today’s 6K to the Concept2.com online logbook and then entering it into the Concept 2 Indoor Rowing World Rankings… I checked to see if the Windows version of RowPro had tagged the session as being verified. It had not!

So I searched the FAQs for any relevant information on that problem and found that it has to be verified by first getting a verification code for the session from the erg’s PM. It used to be automatic, but since their website was redone, some things are different. So I looked into the PM, pressed the special button and the verification code appeared. Then I entered the 16 digit verification code into the right place on the Concept 2 log entry and … voila! It is now an officially verified 6K in the 2017 World Rankings.

The whole piece felt very good, even though a part of the subconscious mind started to grumble about the effort level a few times during the session. But the discomfort was all in my mind and it worked out well enough that I already want to do another one and see if I can improve the results. Second place is tantalizingly near!

Session screen shots follow.

AI-July-17th-2017-6K-finish — Finish screen after the 6K.

AI-July-17th-2017-6K-rpt — Session report for the happy after-glow 6K.

AI-July-17th-2017-6K-gph — Another graph for today’s 6K

AI-July-17th-2017-warmdown-finish — Finish screen for the warm down. I did a warmup, but it was only 750 meters at a super slow pace, so I’m not bothering to show anything for the warmup.

AI-July-17th-2017-warmdown-rpt- — Warm down session report.

Happy rowing and after-glowing to you.

indoor-rowing-is-a-small-world — There are quite a few people in this photo of an indoor rowing competition. But indoor rowing is a small world, compared to other sports and many people have never even heard of it. Online rowing with a Concept2 indoor rowing machine is an even smaller world and its not always easy to find anyone who wants to row with you online, when you are wanting to do so.

Today’s main piece of indoor rowing was a trial run at a 6K for ranking. I might try it again tomorrow. The original goal was to do it in a time that would move me up to near the top in the 6K rankings for my age group. The guy who was in first place had done the 6K in a time that I didn’t want to try for. The guy who was in second place had done it in a time I thought might be doable, so I rowed at that pace for the first 3,000 meters.

After the first 3,000 meters, I started thinking something to the effect, “how bad do I want this?” and decided to slow down. After I slowed, I looked at the rankings and thought that I should still be able to easily do it in a time that would beat the guy who was in third place, so I picked up the pace a little and aimed for that.

The result was that I placed 3rd (for the time being) in this season’s rankings for the 6K in my age and weight group.

If I try it again tomorrow, I’ll aim for what today’s average pace was and then see what’s left when there are only 500 meters left and see if I can beat that.

The 6K was done online with a guy who was in located in Germany. His name is Wolfram and he had originally scheduled an online 10K. Nobody else noticed and signed up to row with him in that online 10K.

I’d scheduled my online 6K to start 5 minutes after his 10K start time. It’s really nice, to have company when rowing and that might be why he didn’t row the 10K alone and instead joined me in the 6K.

For the first 1,000 meters or so, he paced me at the 1:58.8/500m that I was doing. After that first 1K, he picked up his speed to very impressive paces that I can’t even maintain for 2K and he finished with a sprint at about 1:40/500m. He varied his pace a bit and for brief times his pace was slower than mine. He might have been doing a rowing version of what runners call “fartlek”, which is a Swedish word that means “speed play.”

After the 6K was finished, he said “You saved my evening!” and that’s why I came to the conclusion, noted above, that he wanted some company when he rowed online… even if it was a much slower person such as myself.

I used the beta version of RowPro 5 for the Mac to do today’s rowing and noticed that it failed to label my 6K results as “Verified”. One of the reasons I use RowPro is to make sure my ranked results are verified. But… I’m only in third place and who knows how long that will last so… oh well.

AHh-July-16th-2017-6K-finish AHh-July-16th-2017-6K-rpt AHh-July-16th-2017-6K-gph