Speaking of good improvement: The above photos are of the first and current models of the Concept 2 indoor rower. These images were found on the website of a British health facility called Fitness Matters.
Today’s main indoor rowing was a 30 minute online session done with a target heart rate. The target was the same as it had been in the 30 minute session on September 29th. But the average pace was faster by -1.4 seconds/500 meters. The session burned 8 calories more than Sept 29th to go at that faster pace. The increase in power was +3.2 watts.
I guess that’s good improvement. But since it’s from one day to the next and I’m no expert, it might not even be statistically significant. Therefore, I will “ask” RowPro. RowPro has a feature which can be used to compare two rowing sessions that are similar (either both the same distance or time duration.)
Okay, here’s what RowPro says and it doesn’t seem much more enlightening that what is in the above two paragraphs. But it is confirmation that there was improvement since two days ago.
When RowPro compares two similar sessions, it superimposes their graphs for HR and average pace, as you can see in the above screenshot which compares today’s 30 minutes to the similar session done on September 29th.RowPro says that there was an increase in both performance and also in strength. I don’t understand why, unless there is something magical-ish about Dr. Maffetone’s 180 formula … when it is used as intended. This is both surprising and encouraging.
But even if it isn’t especially enlightening, at least you saw a demonstration, immediately above this paragraph, of the kind of results you can expect when RowPro 5 for the Mac compares two similar sessions.
The above photo is from the same website as yesterday and it shows something of their “Rowing Zone”. If you are in Poland, you might want to visit their facility.
Today’s indoor rowing was another 10K and it was done with the same average pace target, 2:08, as yesterday’s. Afterwards, I wanted to try RowPro 5 for the Mac’s comparison feature and see what it had to say about the two sessions.
But RowPro 5 for the Mac had a problem. It didn’t crash, but it wouldn’t/couldn’t access the online logbook, which it has to do in order to compare two sessions to each other.
While I did today’s indoor rowing, dinner was cooking in the form of soup. Photograph of today’s (and probably tomorrow’s) soup is shown above. It consists of beans, carrots, a large potato, broccoli, a large bell pepper, half a large onion, salt, bouillon cube, a 1/4 cup medium salsa, a few dashes of super ultra hot salsa and a can of sardines. It has a flavor that is guaranteed to wake up the taste buds and everything connected to them.
The above image is from ebay but it does show a ladder and rungs and someone having fun climbing. A rope ladder is especially fun, rung by rung, since the ladder swings and moves in immediate response to each move made by the person climbing it.
The rope ladder for sale on ebay looks like so much fun that for a few moments I considered ordering one. But it only has five rungs, so the fun would be of very short duration.
The “ladder” I’m currently climbing is a bit of fun for a similar reason, because each subsequent 5K in this series of 5,000 meter season bests is slightly faster than and directly related to the average pace of the previous 5K.
Today’s target pace for the 5K was 2:08/500 meters, which was 1/10 second faster than the overall average pace for yesterday’s 5K. That target pace was maintained through the first 4,500 meters and then the final 500 meters was done a bit faster.
The overall effort for today’s indoor rowing is still being classified as “easy” because that’s how it felt and also because of where HR was during the first 4,500 meters. The classification of “easy” or “medium” or “medium hard” etc is subjective and relative to how I remember feeling in other comparable rowing sessions of various effort levels.
The resulting overall average pace of today’s 5K was 2:06.5 so I don’t know yet if tomorrow’s target pace for the first 4,500 will be 2:06 or 2:07. If I use a pace boat generated by RowPro 5 for the Mac, the pace for the pace boat has to be an even number of seconds, so it would have to be either 2:06 or 2:07. I’ll choose one or the other or just skip the pace boat and aim for 2:06.5 exactly by trying to keep the average pace 2:06.5 where it is displayed in the field for average pace on the rowing machine’s monitor.
The most important thing about today’s rowing session is that is was not boring. It was, generally, fun.
5K finish screensession reportrowpro graphsConcept 2 online log’s way of showing the graph.warm down finish screen
Today was another session of going through the paces but not racing the current CTC challenge.
This time, I set up a separate session which resembled the July 2017 Cross Team Challenge and which had its rest intervals set up as “Recovery” instead of “Stop” because “recovery” causes RowPro 5 for the Mac to log, record and upload ALL the meters rowed, whereas “Stop” does not record any meters rowed during the rest intervals. I wanted “credit” for all meters rowed. 🙂
OTW rowing fiasco: The above two photos are from a British news article about the 2012 Boat Race which was spoiled and turned into a fiasco by a couple of unfortunate happenings, one of which involved a member of the Oxford Crew collapsing. In my opinion, Oxford would have won that race if those two incidents hadn’t happened, but God only knows for sure.
After my fiasco yesterday during the second attempt at the July 2017 CTC challenge, I decided to have what I think of as a “steadying session”. A steadying session is whatever I choose for that purpose but it’s main characteristics will exclude sudden sprints followed by sudden stops.
If I’ve been sprinting or working very hard for a relatively long time, I’ve found over the years that it’s best to keep moving at a moderate to easy pace immediately afterwards.
The crew member who collapsed during the 2012 Boat Race appears to be wearing an oxygen mask. You can see the entire article and the rest of the photos at THIS LINK
So today’s choice was to row 15K, do the first few K as warmup, gradually step up the pace throughout most of the rest of the distance, cap it with a bit of a sprint and then use the last 2 or 3K to warm down.
I also intended to modify the setup within RowPro 5 for the Mac, for the CTC challenge “advanced custom setup” of the variable intervals set up for the July 2017 challeng, so that the rests are Stops instead of Recovery. Because I discovered that if the rests are labeled as Recovery then RowPro 5 for the Mac not only records the distance rowed, if any, during recovery rests, but it lumps all the recovery distance in together with the grand total of distance for the active intervals, instead of separately totally active and rest distance, like the more refined and finished versions of RowPro for Windows do. For the CTC challenge, the total distance of only the active portion is needed for challenge entry… and it would be good to have a session report which displays only the distance of the active portion, for “proof” to other challenge participants.
I’ve been told that if the rest times between active intervals are labeled as “Stop” then RowPro 5 for the Mac ignores and does not add up any distance rowed during the rest times.
During today’s rowing session, I neither listened to music nor to a lecture and simply focused on the rowing with most of my mind while letting the rest of the mind wander without getting too far away.
The plan to row a single 15,000 meter session today was discarded, however, after I finished modifying the variable intervals programming within RowPro 5 for the Mac for the July 2017 CTC challenge.
Instead, I decided to slowly and easily row the new variable intervals setup, which had all the rest intervals changed from R (recovery) to S (stop), to see if it would give a total distance result of the Active intervals only, without adding the distance done while resting to the same total.
So I rowed that whole thing and found the same thing as yesterday – it added the distance rowed during the rest intervals to the total for the active intervals. I fiddled around with it a bit more and so as to avoid boring you with the details, I’ll skip the details and tell you that I discovered that once a custom interval setup in RowPro 5 for the Mac is edited and the edited version is downloaded into RowPro 5 for the Mac… the only way to be sure to get the newly edited result into RowPro 5 for the Mac is to close/shut down/exit RowPro 5 for the Mac and then again open/start/enter RowPro 5 for the Mac.
I rowed the whole, edited version again and found that it worked as someone had told me. That someone was Annette Wammen, of Denmark. She said that it would not add any distance done while the S (stop) time was counting down in the Stop intervals.
Altogether, the total distance rowed today added up to 13,832 meters.
Here are the relevant screenshots for today’s rowing:
When it becomes hard to breathe, everything slow down, no matter how much coffee…
Today, for the first time, I managed to set up a variable intervals session with RowPro 5 for the Mac. It involved quite a few attempts to set it up and save the session and a couple restarts of the Mac computer. The final approach that worked was to only enter two lines of the session into the “custom row studio” and then save it, download it into the custom rows, highlight it in custom rows and edit it to add two more lines. Kept repeating that process until all 14 lines were in the custom variable interval setup. As I’ve said more than once before, RowPro 5 for the Mac is a “beta” version and still has a few problems to be ironed out.
Then I tried rowing it. I thought I’d try a different approach from the first attempt (at this c2ctc.com challenge for July 2017 ) and go slower on all the intervals except the very last one, with a target pace of 1:52 for all but the last interval. If I succeeded, it would be faster than the first attempt in which I started out too fast for the first few intervals and had to slow down more than I should have after those first few intervals.
That approach worked well until heart rate became too erratic to display. When that happens, the HR display and HR graph goes to zero. It also becomes somewhat harder to breathe. The mind was willing but the body just barely made it through the middle interval of 1,000 meters and I was feeling a bit lightheaded at the end. There was a 4 minute rest after the 1,000 meters but it wasn’t enough time and I had to give up during the next interval of 750 meters because I couldn’t maintain the target pace of 1:52 due to the fact that it was too hard to breathe.
That’s the first time that’s happened. Usually, it’s my mind that complains first, and tries to get my body to slow down. This time, my body couldn’t get enough air and my mind had to decide to quit trying to go fast.
There are still about 8 days left in the month, so maybe I’ll try again in about a week. And abstain from coffee that day.
I categorized this workout as “boring,” because it’s not fun when things don’t work like they should. A better adjective for today’s workout might be “annoying”.
How much coffee is too much?
I think the catalyst for the irregular heart rate was too much coffee. I had 5 or 6 cups of coffee this morning, instead of the usual one single cup which I’d limited myself to for a while with success.
Here are the most pertinent screen shots for today’s rowing:
Heart rate was erratic from the 6th split to the finish. When it was regular enough to display during that time, it was way too high for the moderate effort.
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.
Finish screen after the 6K.Session report for the happy after-glow 6K.Another graph for today’s 6KFinish 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.Warm down session report.
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.
Happy rowing and speed play, if you are so inclined.
On-the-water rowing always appears more ethereal than the look of the indoor rowing which is the only kind I do. The ethereal part of indoor rowing is the landscape, waterways and inner lighting of your mind.
Today’s indoor rowing was done 100% online except for a brief preliminary warmup.
The above photo, for those who are interested, was found on row2k.com on THIS PAGE. It is a photo of OTW rowing somewhere in Oklahoma.
The first piece was a 20 minute session scheduled by a guy in England who called it “20 minutes easy” but when I asked him what his easy was, it was 2:00 which I consider hard. He decided to row at 2:05 and I did too. About halfway through the session, RowPro 5 for the Mac had a case of graphics freeze, so I could no longer see what the other guy was doing. But otherwise, the session seemed to be still in progress, so I watched the PM (personal monitor) on the rowing machine instead of the computer screen and aimed for an average pace of the 2:05 that we’d agreed to.
As far as the other guy was concerned, it worked out fine because apparently I kept pace with him fairly well and we finished within a boat length of each other.
The second piece was a 6K that I scheduled. I called it “6K Super Easy” hoping that whoever joined would have a preconceived notion of a pace that wasn’t too fast. The guy who joined said he was fine with a pace of from 2:10 to 2:15, so we did that and finished with an average pace of about 2:10.
Happy rowing at your own definition of easy or whatever you like.
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.
