Category: Ethereal Rowing

When I woke and rose before dawn today there was no doubt that I would row this morning. I had the intention of scheduling a 30 minute online session and experimenting with the still unanswered question of what is free rate pace for 30 minutes.

But when I tried to confirm the session, the Oarbits app repeatedly gave the response, “No internet connection” even though there was a perfectly good internet connection for everything else.

So I set aside scheduling the session for a bit and posted the question in a Facebook rowing area, “What is free rate pace?” The only answer I got there was a definition of rating and pace.  Which didn’t address what I’d encountered yesterday during the chats before and after yesterday’s 30r20.

Next, I went to the Concept2 forum and posted the same question in a more detailed manner because there seems to be a very definite answer to what a person’s pace should be for 30 minutes if that person is rowing at his “free rate” SPM.  I want to know if that pace would be the fastest pace the person could muster, the most leisurely or something in between those two extremes.

Waiting for an answer from someone who is more knowledgeable than me.

After posting that question in two different places, I tried once again to use the Oarbits app to schedule an online session, with the same result that the app said it didn’t have an internet connection.

So I thought that maybe, just maybe all this is a sign that I shouldn’t row today and in the meantime, the decision hasn’t yet been made as to whether … or not.

As it stands, today will be a day of rowing abstention.  If it proves to be otherwise before the day is over, this post will be edited and this paragraph will be replaced with a summary of whatever rowing was done.

*The decision to row was made after taking a long nap and then finding the answer to the question, What is free rate pace?  The answer was supplied by two forum contributors who each contributed their own version of the answer and then proceeded to have further discussion.  One of them said that there is even a formula relating to free rate pace at any given stroke rate and what a person’s pace should be for 30r20.  I found it very interesting.

Interesting enough, anyway, that it helped me decide to do a little rowing today.  The rowing consisted of a 30 minute piece and a 10 minute warmdown.  They were online but solo because I didn’t give enough advance notice for anyone else to join them.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s choice of a rowing session was the result of having read a couple articles that mentioned the particular experience and benefits of training periodically for 30 minutes at a stroke rate limited to 20 SPM during that time.

The articles were somewhat technical, mentioning slow-twitch, fast-twitch, mitochondria, lactic acid, aerobic, anaerobic and so on but the overall message seemed to be that a 30r20 has some great benefits.  It also mentioned that if it is done properly it is harder than it sounds.  And it mentioned one more thing – that it shouldn’t be done more than once a week at the most.

It sounded somewhat intriguing so that’s what I did this morning.

The 30 minute session was scheduled about one hour in advance and there was one person who noticed it and joined, Andy B. in England.

Before the session started, Andy announced that he was going to row slow because he was recovering from something strenuous which may have been a race but I’m not clear on what he said it was.  I replied, “Slow is relative,” which elicited laughter from him.  He explained that for him, slow would be 1:59/500m.  When the session was over, his pace had averaged 1:58/500m so he wasn’t as tired as he thought.

I told him, in response, that I would be trying a 30r20 for the first time but wasn’t sure what pace to aim for.  (Little did I know… at a rating of 20, the right pace sort of grabs you, instead of allowing you to choose it).

He seemed to have a lot of experience and immediately asked, what was my free rate SPM and pace.  I wasn’t and am still not sure what he meant by “free rate” but I considered and answered 28 and 2:05, picking 28 spm because it seems to be about the rating I settle into if rowing not very hard nor very easy.  The pace of 2:05 was a bit fast, I thought, but it sounded better than something slower when I was talking with someone who considers 1:59 to be slow.

To that, he replied that I should aim for a pace of 2:12 at the 20 SPM rating for 30 minutes and “go from there.”  And to that suggestion, I replied, “2:12 sounds good”.  It definitely sounded easier than 2:05 and so I was all for a pace of 2:12 at 20 spm.  But it was not to be… It took a lot of focus to keep the rating at 20.  In fact, it took so much focus that I just concentrated on keeping the rating at 20 SPM and let the pace be what it would be, which turned out to be a pace of about 2:07 for the first 15-20 minutes and slowed down a bit as the grains of sand for the last few minutes trickled through the half-hour glass.

The fewer grains of sand that remained in that half-hour glass, the slower they trickled.  When time had counted down to one minute remaining, that very last minute seemed to stretch out and last a long, long time.

I thought the theory of relativity stated something to the effect that time slows down significantly only as speed increases greatly, to nearly the speed of light.  My pace was almost motionless in comparison to the speed of light, but the passage of time significantly slowed during that last minute.

Andy B. was very encouraging after the session was over and said “you did bloody well…” (that part is an exact quote) and added something to the effect that he thought I could row a lot quicker (than the 2:05 pace I had randomly chosen earlier) at my “free rate.”

Afterwards I tried doing a search for rowing terms and “free rate,” but I couldn’t find anything that explained what Andy meant.  Whatever it is, exactly, that he meant… I take it as something positive.

So it was a happy ending.

Happy trails to you.

 

Today’s rowing session was one hour scheduled online by a rower in Denmark.  There was a total of 5 rowers in the session: Annette W in Denmark, Clément in France, Arwed E. in Germany, Anne B. in the US and myself in a parallel universe.

A sixty minute session isn’t something I do very frequently lately so I thought I’d use the relatively rare opportunity to aim for SB.  (SB is online rowers’ lingo for season best)

My target pace was 2:07 or anything better that was comfortable.  Gotta be comfortable. It was accomplished, but I got off to a slow start because the streaming connection between my iPhone and the TV dropped at the start of the session and I had to stop rowing to reconnect it.  Then it dropped and the music stopped a second time and I had to stop rowing a second time.

The music continued without faltering after being restored  the second time. To make up for the lost time during the two interruptions, I rowed at a pace faster than 2:07 until the average pace dropped below 2:07.  Then, I decided that since it hadn’t been any strain to get the average pace down to 2:07, I’d row at a pace that would drop it to below 2:06.

During the last two minutes, it seemed appropriate to add a little sprint for good measure.

After the hour session, there was a 2K warm down.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s session was scheduled online but it was posted only about 18 minutes in advance and there were no rowers who noticed it and joined within those few minutes.

So I rowed alone.  Of course, none of us are ever alone but I’m speaking with regards to other people in the virtual rowing session.  There were no other people participating in this morning’s 30 minute session.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s rowing was 30 minutes online followed by a 2K warmdown.  There was a total of 5 rowers who checked in and began the session.  One rower lost connection before the end.  All of them were in Europe, except for me.

I rowed at about 2:30 pace, low rating in the teens for the first 10 minutes then sprinted for 2 minutes, had  3 minutes active rest followed by another 2 minute sprint, then 3 more minutes active rest followed by a 1 minute sprint with the remaining time at an easy pace with a normal rating in the 20s.

Everyone was cheery and chatty after the 30 minutes.  One of the rowers said, “You are a pirate of the Caribbean!” afterwards and then explained that she had been telling herself stories while she rowed, without elaborating on the stories.

Four of the rowers, including myself, joined in a 2K warmdown afterwards.

Happy trails to you.

Clément in Paris scheduled a 10K online today at 16:00 GMT.  He named it “Paris 10K,” and gave it the description “ALL welcome to the Paris 10K row – Slow fat burning pace for me around 2:30.”

16:00 GMT was the time I wanted to row, so I joined.  Altogether there were 5 who joined: one in Denmark, one in France (Clément of Paris), two in England and myself in a parallel universe on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Two of them said that they would only row for about 20 minutes to serve as a warm up for sprints that were scheduled to begin at 16:30 GMT. And that’s what those two did.

Of the remaining three, Sam B. of England didn’t announce in advance what he was going to do.  Sam zipped along to finish 10K in the very impressive time of 35:32 which was an average pace of 1:46.6/500m.

Clément stuck to his fat-burning pace plan and rowed between 2:25-2:30/500m for all but the last few hundred meters and was about 100 meters behind me until the last few hundred meters when the fun began.

I rowed at a low rating of between 15 and 19 for the entire 10K except for the first 400 meters which were slightly higher at 21 spm.

When a few hundred meters remained, Clément increased his pace and started catching up to me.  I maintained my pace, watching the distance shrink from about 100 meters to zero when his boat and avatar arrived alongside mine and then I watched to see if he would slow down to match my pace or pass and turn it into a race.

He made a race, so I sprinted the last few meters and we finished very near each other.  It was a fun finish to an otherwise leisurely Paris 10K.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s rowing was a compromise between rowing and abstaining.  Abstaining, because one of my goals this season is to row a daily average equal to or as much as 10% more meters/day than last season.  But I’ve been exceeding that, so I must exercise restraint to bring my daily average back down to its upper limit of 9,469 meters/day for this season.

The quickest way to bring the daily average down is by not rowing at all. But that’s not appealing.  So today I setup an online Quick Row and aimed for a pace of about 3:00/500 meters, which amounted to about 5K which succeeded in reducing the daily average a little.

It was an opportune time to take it easy because even though I feel fine, there should be some consideration to the fact that I raced a little bit on Sept 17th and therefore some recovery behavior should be in order.

And remember: a generous amount of training slow is an important ingredient if you want to race fast.

Today’s session stuff:

Happy trails to you.

 

After you participate in a race, you don’t need to travel to the moon to find a tranquility base.  The aftermath of a race is a feeling and experience unique to each individual and in a sort of inverse ratio to how close that person managed to approach to his or her limits.

My feelings after yesterday’s race were of a satisfyingly ethereal quality, even though I did not push up to whatever my limits are.

For today’s rowing, I scheduled a 30 minute “paddle” session.  Three other rowers joined.  One rowed at about 2:01/500m right up until the finish, when his RowPro either disconnected or crashed.  The other two rowed at about 1:59/500m and gave each other incentive to keep up that pace.  I relaxed in Tranquility Base with a pace of about 2:25/500m.

There is no screenshot of today’s rowing, but there is a session report:

Happy trails to you.

 

Today was the happily anticipated Fitness Matters 5K online race day!  But since most people who entered the races are in Europe, most people were in the 10:00 GMT heat.  That was 3:00 am local time and not my first choice of times.

I joined the 22:00 GMT heat, which was in the afternoon at 3:00 pm local time.

If you added up all the people in both Europe and the US who joined the races, there weren’t very many.  Probably not even a dozen, all totalled, between both heats of the 5K and the 500 m.  But this was the first year for the Fitness Matters Devon ONLINE race in addition to their annual venue race and there wasn’t much publicity in advance.  In fact, there was no publicity for it whatsoever that I saw on the Concept 2 website.  Which might explain why not many people in the US who use the C2 website knew about it.

The only reason I learned about these races is because I frequently look at descriptions of scheduled online rowing sessions on the Oarbits area of the Digital Rowing site and noticed mention in one of the descriptions.  That mention included a URL on the Fitness Matters website, where I went to sign up.

There was only one other US rower that I saw who participated, Annabel M..  But she participated in the 500 meter race, not the 5K.  And like me, she was the ONLY one in the 22:00 GMT heat she joined.

The race was fun,  disregarding the fact that it was rather LONELY, to make an understatement, compared to most races.

The good news is that I came in first place.  The bad news is, I finished in absolute last place.  So Jesus’ words, “… the last shall be first and the first last…” also applies to a person in a race with only one participant.

Just before the race began I started some music and it was fairly good company to take my mind off the 14 empty lanes in the race.

My race plan was based on my memory of what the fastest recent 5K I had previously rowed this season had felt like.  It felt good.  No strain, no pain and ample sweat.  So, though that 5K was done in a time of 19:53 and I’ve done it faster … I decided to just aim for a time of 19:50 and thereby get a season best time.

I resorted to the Concept 2 Pace Calculator to find what pace I’d need to row, to finish the 5K in 19:50 and it came out to a pace of 1:59/500m.

So from the start, I intended to aim for an average pace of 1:59/500m and then perhaps push harder in the last 500 meters.

I got off to a bit of a slow start because I always seem to be slower off the start, without the voice loudly saying “ROW” even though I was staring at the PM screen looking for the word ROW.  But when ROW appears, it is like my mind hesitates and says, “wait.. wait for the voice!”  When the voice was working, I always avoided a false start, which is a bit of an anathema in races, by only pulling at the sound of the voice.

In the first 200 meters, my instantaneous pace went up as high as somewhere between 1:45 and 1:50 but I eased that down immediately and tried to settle in at 1:59.  But 1:59 just felt too easy, so I thought I’d aim for 1:58 instead and that’s what I did for pretty much the entire distance, with the exception that in the early part of the 5K it seemed that it was taking too long for the displayed average pace to get down to 1:58, so I picked up the pace to 1:55 for a bit until the displayed average pace looked more the way I liked it, and then brought the effort back to hold a pace of about 1:58.

I waited until the last 500 meters and then experimented to pick up the pace to as much of a sprint as I thought I could maintain for 500 meters without needing to back off on the effort.

All in all it was a lot of fun.  It was also comfortable and I think I could do it quite a bit faster without inflicting much pain.  But I’d rather try to find my best pace by approaching it from the slow side than from the too-fast side because starting out too fast and then having to back way off is a big disappointment, race or no race.

Here are the screens, reports and charts:

Happy trails to you.