Category: RowPro 5 for the Mac review

It’s rowing, so of course you don’t need a snorkel!

Today’s RowPro 5 for the Mac software-generated training session was as the screen print of details below explains.  There was an additional 3K warmup done before the training session, and that is all the “extra” rowing that will be done for the rest of this week, because with that extra 3K plus all the scheduled training sessions for this week, the week’s total will add up to more than 70,000 meters and that is sufficient to continue maintaining a daily average of 10K+.

Everything about today’s rowing session is displayed in the four screenshots below…

Happy trails to you.

That’s one of the things today’s training session was supposed to help cultivate-staying power.

If you look at the graph and session report, you might notice that RowPro 5 for the Mac still has the glitch that causes it to display wrong info for the last split, if it doesn’t divide the distance with a number that makes all splits equal.

Happy trails to you.

Part of the description for today’s rowing session was “low intensity fitness and recovery.” It was 5K easy, with 500 m warm up/warm down.  Afterwards, I did another 4K easy to bring the total up to 10K.

If you look closely at the RowPro session report, you will notice that splits 20 and 25 show incorrect (impossible) data. But the totals are correct on the bottom line because they agree with what was recorded on the C2 PM.

Happy trails to you.

The title of today’s post is from part of the description for today’s RowPro training plan session.

The session was 3×500 R750 and was a total of 8,000 meters including warm up, warm down and the final active rest after the third 500 meter sprint, which was quite a bit longer than 750 meters.

After the 8K training session, I rowed an additional 2K at an easy pace, to help maintain a daily 10K+ average.

There is a small bug in the most current update of RowPro 5 for the Mac which causes an error message to be displayed when clicking to open each day’s training session (Screen shot of error message below).  I wrote to Digital Rowing about it and they promptly answered and said that it’s a glitch that they are already aware of and it is on the list of things to fix in the next release.  It is barely even as much as a nuisance, however, because it does not interfere with the training program or software working correctly after the error message window is closed.

Happy trails to you.

Today was the first day of the first time of trying a training plan generated by RowPro 5 for the Mac.  All went well.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s session was just a little bit warmer than yesterday’s because it was a little bit faster. Tomorrow is planned to be the first day of a 12 week RowPro generated training plan.  Looking forward to the day-by-day of following a plan.

So the main session today was a 10K.  It was followed by  a 100 meter online test of the latest update of RowPro 5 for the Mac and GOOD NEWS!  The update not only added the feature of a working version of the training plan generator, but the sound works now!  So when whoever is the starter clicks the START button, there is now the announcement “PREPARE TO START!” from the speakers.  And after the countdown finishes, I can also hear the announcement, “ROW!”  That’s good, because I seem to get off the starting line more promptly with the audible announcements.

After the 10K and the 100 meter online test, I went into the online chat room, where there appeared to be 3 other people who were logged in, not counting the one who was already rowing online.  I typed the question, “anybody like some company in an online row?” and waited a couple minutes for a response.  But there was no response, so I guess their computers were online but they were otherwise occupied and not sitting at the monitors.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s session was done at a slightly more constant and faster pace than the recent few sessions.  That’s because I’m thinking about trying one of RowPro’s training plans.

Today there was an update to the update on RowPro 5 for the Mac and it cured the previous problem which prevented access to the program. So I’m using the Mac version again and liking it even more.  It has a few more features added, including the capability of generating a training program for either weight-loss, maintenance, fitness (2 levels of fitness) or racing.

I’m thinking about trying a training plan for racing the 5K-6K distance.

The pace of today’s 10K was only slightly faster than yesterday’s.  By slightly faster, I mean that it only burned 12 more calories than yesterday’s 10K.

So it was a little bit of a ramping up of effort.

Happy trails to you.

The words that came to mind when I sat to write another blog post as fast as possible were “a bit of exercise” and the above image is from among the search results using those terms for creative commons licensed images. Of all the images that I glanced at, that one seemed the most ethereal.

Today’s time on the erg was another 10K.  It was done with a bit more energy than yesterday’s.  23 calories more in the same distance, to be exact.

Yesterday and today I’ve had to go back to using the older version of RowPro for Windows instead of RowPro 5 for the Mac.  That’s because when I tried to update RowPro 5 for the Mac two days ago, it resulted in an error message (see the screen shot immediately below) and would not allow me to use it.  Am still waiting to hear from Digital Rowing, as to how to remedy that problem.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s rowing was 12K plus a bit more to help make up for the past days which included either no rowing at all or less than 10K.  The chosen distance was 17,234 meters.  An odd distance, in that it is not a standard distance, the results of which can be entered into the Concept2 world rankings.

But it is also an even distance, in the sense of the mathematical definition of an even number.

The effort expended was an easy level of effort because I’m still recovering from the most recent and incomplete Pete Plan training session.

If you are one of the rare people who look closely at the session report for this rowing session, you can disregard the results for the 29th split in the columns titled “Avg Pace”, “Avg Watts” and “Cals” because RowPro 5 for the Mac (beta) screwed up again and gave incorrect results.  It actually did more than that incorrectly – I told RowPro 5 for the Mac (beta) to divide the session up into 14 splits but it disregarded my instructions and divided it into 29 splits.  Not that it matters one iota in the grand scheme of creation.

The session was done with only one break which lasted 3 minutes or less. You can see the break illustrated in the graphs of pace in the images below. It was mostly during the 16th split.

Happy trails to you.

Another 12K today.  It was not exactly flying, but it was the fastest and longest pace sustained in more than 8 days.  It felt good, but I decided not to push hard and to just take it easy and natural.

There was some discernible sweat, but not enough for even a single drop to fall onto the rowing machine. That’s a measure of easy.

Happy trails to you.