The Concept 2 Rowlympic Challenge is focused only on time spent rowing. In order to do an hour of rowing today, I scheduled an online session of 13,000 meters and paced myself so that it would last one hour.
The rowers who joined in the session were in the two countries of Egypt and Spain.
Happy trails to you until we meet again.
For an hour of rowing on day 12 of the Concept 2 Rowlympic Challenge, today’s rowing consisted of a 15 minute warmup, an online 10K and a 10 minute warm down.
There were 8 rowers who joined the 10K, in 5 countries: Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Spain and the US.
I rowed with an easy target pace of 2:15, so that the sum of the time for the 10K plus the 15 minute warm up would total 1 hour.
Happy trails to you until we meet again.
There is a new gadget in the room where I use the Concept 2 erg. It displays temperature, in degrees Fahrenheit, and humidity in %. Before today’s rowing session started, the humidity was 46%. By the time the rowing session was over I’d lost 2 or 3 pounds (1 pound = 1 pint of water). The humidity increased by 10% to help show how much of our water is transferred from body to atmosphere during exercise.
Today is the 11th day of the Concept 2 Rowlympic Challenge.
Today’s rowing was two online sessions of 6K each. The others who joined in were in the countries of Denmark, Egypt, Germany, Great Britain and Spain.
I did the first 6K at a very easy pace and did the second one a bit faster, just for fun, with three increasing levels of sprint paces during each of the last three splits of 300 meters/split.
Happy trails to you until we meet again.
For today’s time toward the Concept 2 Rowlympic Challenge, an online hour was scheduled. Four rowers in Europe signed up, plus myself and one other rower in the US. Two of the guys in Europe couldn’t make it in time to sign in, so there were only 4 participants. One of the 4 got disconnected and did not finish. Of the three of us who finished, the two in Europe raced, Ireland vs Germany and the guy in Ireland won by about a boat length.
As for me, I rowed the hour very easy so as to continue recovering from the somewhat fast 5K recently, which resulted in a very slight pain in one knee, which is a sign that I need to go easy for a little while.
Happy trails to you until we meet again.
Today’s rowing session was one hour online. The rowers who participated were in Denmark, England, Germany and the US.
For this hour my plan was to row very easy and use it as a recovery day from yesterday’s season best 5K. The only thing today that wasn’t easy was that I did about 20 power strokes near the end of the hour.
After today’s rowing was completed, the total time I’ve rowed so far during the Concept 2 Rowlympic Challenge adds up to over 10 hours, which qualifies me for a Silver Medal. (The medals are virtual, not actual medals.) Five more hours between now and the last day, to win a gold medal. Woo-hoo 🙂
Happy trails to you until we meet again.
For day 8 of the Concept2 Rowlympic Challenge, I scheduled three online 5K pieces, 30 minutes apart. The rowers who joined in were good company and were in the countries of Denmark, Egypt, and England. I was the only one in the US.
My plan was to row the first 5K as a warm-up, row the second one at something faster than 2:04/500 m in order to make it a season best for 5K and then row the third one as a warm down.
But that plan didn’t work out because after about 2K into the second one there was a small emergency which couldn’t be ignored. To say more would probably evoke the response, “that’s more information than I need,” so enough said. Because of that small emergency, after about 2K I had to stop and get off the erg for a few minutes. After I returned, I finished at a slow pace so as to save energy for the 3rd 5K which would be the attempt at a season best… if there were no more emergency interruptions.
The 3rd 5K went without interruptions. It was done with a target pace of about 2:00/500m until the last 500 meters and did a moderate sprint to the finish. It became my season’s best 5K time so it was entered into the World Rankings on Concept 2’s website.
Since the 3rd 5K didn’t turn out to be a “warm down” as originally planned, I added a 10 minute warm down afterwards.
Happy trails to you until we meet again.
For day 7 of the Rowlympics I scheduled two online 30 minute sessions.
Rowers participated in the countries of Denmark, Egypt, Great Britain, Netherlands, Norway and the US.
I’m still exploring how HR behaves since it went a bit wacky during the sprints on Rowlympic Day 5 and then that day turned into a HR re-synchronization in the 10K that followed those sprints.
Yesterday I took it extremely easy with a pace of about 2:27 for an hour and HR stayed very constant at about 100.
So today I increased the pace slightly and for the first half hour session had a target pace of 2:20. Things went well during that first session with HR very constant at about 110 and so for today’s second half hour I increased the pace to an average of about 2:10 and HR continued to behave normally, including during a short period of sprinting in the final minute or two of that session.
So I’m thinking that its a possibility that the problem with HR on Rowlympic Day 5 wasn’t that I did the sprints or didn’t warm down enough, but rather that I don’t do enough sprints. I have been mostly avoiding them until recently, but perhaps sprints in the right amount are good for “cleaning out the pipes” and “blowing out the dust etc” so to speak, analogous to how it is good for a car which is only driven sedately in the city to occasionally get out on the freeway and drive at high speeds, to “clean out the gunk”.
Here are today’s screens and reports:
Happy trails to you until we meet again.
Today was day 6 of the Concept 2 Rowlympic Challenge.
I wanted to recharge and recover from yesterday so today I rowed with such a low effort that it was almost not rowing. The session today was one hour done online with the good company of other rowers who were located in Denmark, Egypt, Lisbon (Portugal) and the US.
Happy trails to you until we meet again.
Today’s rowing consisted of 5 sessions, one warm up and two warm downs, for 8 in all. Most of them were done online, with rowers who were in Denmark, Great Britain and Spain.
Today I decided to schedule 3 sprints into the mix. The order in which they were done was: first, an easy 10 minute warm up. Next were the online scheduled pieces and first of those was a 100 meter sprint, followed about 10 minutes later with a 500 meter and then a 1,000 meter sprint. During the 1,000 meter piece, my HR started going weird and registered as high as 210, so I eased off and didn’t push very hard.
After those three sprints there was a break of about 20 minutes. During that 15-20 minute break I walked around a little and did a 5 minute warm down, to try to get HR to settle back down to normal but to no avail.
Then there was an online 10K and because my HR was acting erratic, I rowed the 10K at a fairly constant, easy pace of about 2:15/500 meters, to give the heart a chance to settle down and re-synchronize to a normal rate. It took about 5,500 meters of the 2:15 pace before HR settled down again and you can easily see that on the finish screen graph for the 10K.
After the 10K, I made another attempt at the 100 meter sprint, offline and managed to shave off a few tenths of a second. Lastly, there was a 10 minute warm down. Images of the finish screens, session reports and a few comments in some of the captions follow:
Happy trails to you until we meet again.
During this 15-day Concept 2 Rowlympic Challenge, I’m trying to make each day of my rowing different.
If you wonder what the title, “EONs of fun…” refers to you will find out a few paragraphs down. It is a pun on someone’s name plus the fact that when I was rowing the piece which included him, it was so much fun that it fit the definition of the English word “eon,” which means “an indefinite and very long period of time”. During that particular session, time seemed to stretch out and last longer than it actually did.
Today the rowing consisted of two main online pieces and there were rowers in 9 different countries: Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Poland and the United States. You might say it had an international element.
The first piece was 5K which I did at a vigorous but not race pace and an online 6K which I did at a somewhat more vigorous but not all-out race pace. No race-pace for me because after all… what would be the point of me trying to do any piece as fast as I can? There is no monetary reward nor medals nor fame with any dame (Diane is not impressed, no matter how fast I row).
Though … Diane once did seem sort of impressed when I rowed as fast as I could for her in a short sprint to show her that I could get the calories/hour readout momentarily as high as about 2,500 cal/hour… and then stopped. When I stopped all of a sudden without gradually slowing down, she raised her voice a bit and said something to the effect that I needed to WARM DOWN GRADUALLY! So I wouldn’t have a heart attack!. 🙂
So… since I can’t impress the women or earn any money by rowing as hard as possible to the point of almost dropping off the C2 in exhaustion, I just row for fun and health, at whatever pace feels good at the moment. Mostly, I row slow, most of the time.
There were actually 4 pieces rowed today, if the 10 minute warm up and 15 minute warm down were counted. But who’s counting?
The session that was the MOST FUN today was the 6K. But first was the 5K which I did with a targeted pace of 2:05/500 meters. The result was exactly precisely 2:05/500 meters. But even that 5K was fun, because Wilbert de Jong of Germany asked, before it started, if I’d like to row at 1:22/500 meters. I replied that if he rowed at 1:22/500 meters, he would deserve a gold medal. When we rowed the 5K, Wilbert paced right along side me and matched my 2:05/500 meter pace…. until the last 500 meters or so when he unleashed himself and sprinted at speeds up to and including 1:22/500 meters. Very impressive. He truly deserved a gold medal for that.
The 6K was more fun for me because I aimed for a faster pace, about 2:02/500m with the intention of sprinting the last 500 meters. One of the others, EON Phillipe of France, started out rowing quite a bit faster than me. But then perhaps he got bored because there was nobody close to the pace he wanted to row, to race with him. So he slowed down and let me catch up and then he sprinted ahead to gain about 25 meters lead. Then he slowed down again to let me catch up again. Then he sprinted a tiny bit but not for long and slowed down even more, to let me get a little lead. Then he sprinted to catch up and then slowed again to let me get ahead again. I kept rowing at a more or less constant pace of around 2:02/500m.
EON let me get about 28 meters ahead of him by the time the remaining distance was down to about 500 meters to go and then he sprinted faster than he had done at any time before in the 6K. I had already decided that I was going to sprint for the last 500 meters, so we both sprinted to the finish line. EON was still rowing faster than me and catching up to within a few meters, when I crossed the finish line. It was a lot of fun and I am very thankful to EON for what he did to make it so enjoyable.
Here’s the data for today:
Happy trails to you, until we meet again.