Category: Ethereal Rowing

Today was the day for me, if not anyone else, to do the May 2017 C2CTC challenge which was called BW Rowing Sprint Monster.  Before doing that, I did 15K at an easy pace while listening to music from a youtube playlist called “music for erg half marathon or longer” … even though the distance I rowed was quite a bit less than a half marathon. I listened to the music in the order it is listed (did not choose to shuffle it) and by the time the 15,000 meters was done, the 9th selection was still playing.

Did not do any strength training today.  Am still putting it off until next week, but my sleep is starting to suffer from lack of the strength-training supplement to rowing.

One little nuisance thing I notice about RowPro 5 for the Mac compared to the RowPro windows version I used previously is that when I do intervals like today’s BW Rowing Sprint Monster, RowPro does not add up the distances separately for active and rest portions.  So, to get the total meters rowed during the active portion I had to use a calculator and add those 10 distance manually.

When doing the series of 10 sprint intervals, I decided to go kind of easy and do the first one about 2:00, the second one a little faster, etc all the way through all ten of them.  I chose to do it that way, because I’ve noticed problems in the past, when I’ve gone all-out from the start on comparable short interval sets.  The results in total meters aren’t great, but there were no problems afterwards.

Above are screenshots from the 15K and below are screenshots from the 10X sprint intervals.

Happy erging to you.

The rowing experience today was a first-time, brand-new indoor-rowing inspiration-getting experience for me, thanks to some rowers who uploaded first-person videos of their participation in OTW races.

I played a first-person video recording of a rowing race and rowed on the C2 at the same time.  It was a lot of fun.

The youtube video is titled “Turin silver skiffs 2012”.  It is 47 minutes 52 seconds long and it is a first person, in-the-boat view of a race that was about 10,000 meters. This link should take you directly to the particular video on youtube: Turin silver skiffs 2012

If you want to try racing against the above video, set your distance to 10K and start the video but don’t start rowing right away.  It takes a couple minutes, more or less, before the actual race starts.  When he starts rowing, you will see on his dashboard because the time will start counting up on his dashboard.  You will see his stroke rate to the right of the time and his pace below the stroke rate.

He races an out-and-back race, which is about 5K each way.  His pace is much slower and requires much more effort on his part on the first part because you can hear him breathing hard.  When he gets to the halfway point and turns around, he goes much faster and with much less effort (you won’t hear him breathing hard) after he turns around and starts rowing the return trip.

I played the video while I rowed 10K with RowPro 5 for the Mac on the C2.  The perspective was a bit of an adrenaline rush and I could see that it would be a LOT of fun, for some rowing software to be available like that, to run on X-Box or whatever and connect to Concept 2 rowing machines.  There are a lot of possibilities, including real racing with other people all having a more immersive experience of something closer to a real race than what is as of now available via RowPro.

I haven’t heard of anyone else trying this while using a Concept 2 rowing machine with or without RowPro software, though I’m sure others must have watched videos of rowing while rowing.  I know I’m being slightly redundant by saying so, but it would be really GREAT, to be able to have that perspective while doing indoor rowing and ESPECIALLY so if it would be in direct relation to what a person is actually doing on the machine.

There are quite a few other comparable rowing videos on youtube, so I think those will be my experiments for inspiration in the near future.

If you’re wondering what was done with strength-training today, the answer is nothing.  I skipped it again.  I’m starting to think I might skip a whole week, before trying the 10th week of the 10 week program, but will take it just one day at a time.

Happy new indoor rowing experiences to you.