Ethereal Rowing

You don’t have to work  hard and inflict any pain or discomfort on yourself, to benefit from running or rowing. As the title says, there are benefits to rowing long and slow.  For the 25+ years before I took up rowing, I would run long and slow every day there was opportunity.  I never did any running in a race.

When I switched from running to rowing, I discovered that all the long, slow running I’d done had built a good aerobic base and I could row faster than anticipated without any previous rowing experience.

But the most important thing was that the long, slow running gave great health benefits.  I’ve never had high blood pressure, like far too many people my age have to take medication for.  Long, slow running (or rowing) is really great for building up the capillaries and giving your blood a lot more space to flow through.

Today’s session was 30 minutes online in the company of a rower in Denmark and a rower in England.

The other two guys rowed fast and seemed to have a sort of race which was interesting to watch.  For a while it looked like a race, then not a race, then it seemed to be a race again.  I could have been misinterpreting it of course, and they might not have even been paying attention to each other’s paces and their separation from each other. It was fun and interesting to watch.

As for me, I rowed very slow and with a low stroke rate for the first 10 minutes.  Then did 10 power strokes every 5 minutes until that had repeated 4 times and used the last five minutes for a slow warm down.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s rowing session was scheduled online and joined by 14 rowers in Europe and the US.  Mostly Europe.  The name given to the session was “30 Restful Minutes or Row Hard If You Prefer” which resulted in a variety of paces and efforts. Rowers Alex and Vincent had an excellent race, finishing within one meter of each other.

I rowed a low stroke rate which was a restful compromise between rowing slow and either rowing hard with intervals or at a faster pace.

At a low stroke rate there’s a lot more time to rest between strokes but each pull has to be stronger than at a higher stroke rate, to maintain any given pace.

RowPro behaved well and did not crash, like it did the previous time when the session was almost full to capacity.  RowPro behaved well for me and most of the others, at least.  Two of the rowers might have had RowPro crash on them, because they did not finish.

Happy trails to you.

The 2K session was scheduled online and 4 others joined in. Because it was online, there were no crowds to cheer us on.

Since there were no cheering crowds, I played music as a cheering crowd substitute while trying for a season best in the 2K.  The choice of music was an extended version of Sandstorm by Tunnel Alliance.  It was chosen both because it is somewhat energetic but mostly because it is about 8 minutes long, which is more than enough for time for a 2K.  If you are  curious about the music you can listen to it at this Sandstorm on youtube link:  But be forewarned – it is one of the videos youtube puts ads on which you have to endure for at least a few seconds before you can click  “SKIP AD” and watch the video.

The title of today’s blog post includes the words “… and VO2 max In Play,” because for any of you who are dying to know what your VO2 max level is, you will be VERY HAPPY to know that all you need is access to a Concept 2 rowing machine, to measure it for free!

You can get a very, VERY accurate reading of your VO2 max without either the expense or bother of expensive equipment or going to a lab, simply by rowing 2K as fast as you can on a Concept 2 rowing machine and then plugging your results into the VO2 max calculator which is located on the concept2.com website. Which is what I did after racing a 2K.

Therefore, whenever you do your best rowing a 2K on the C2 erg, the possibility of knowing your current VO2 max is “in play.”

A screenshot of my VO2 max result is displayed below this paragraph:

If you’d rather have your VO2 max measured while you exercise on a treadmill, you will need special equipment and people who know how to operate that equipment, because treadmills are not standardized and calibrated like the Concept 2 ergs.

I actually did TWO 2K races today, because….I forgot to save the strokes to RowPro for the first and fastest one.  I wanted to put the 2K result in the Concept 2 World Rankings for this season, but when using RowPro and uploading the results of any session and then clicking to put it in the World Rankings, your result only shows as “verified” if you also save the strokes.  If you don’t save the strokes before uploading the file, it will show as “unverified”.

So… after doing the first 2K at a pace of 1:52.7/500m and forgetting to save the strokes, I rested for about 15 minutes and then did a second one.

Before doing a second 2K, I made a Post-It note which read “SAVE the STROKES!” and taped it to the top of the monitor.  The reminder worked. (Of course, I could simply set RowPro to ALWAYS save the strokes for every session, but that extra data amounts to a much larger file and I’m trying to keep the RowPro file size from growing unnecessarily large.)

The second 2K was done at a pace of 1:53.3.  Bummer! A little slower, because I consciously eased back on the effort, so the second 2K wouldn’t feel any more strenuous than the first one.  It was good enough to set a new 2K seasonal record for me. So I ranked the second, slower 2K instead of the first, faster one.

It looks like I was a bit too lazy and slacked off too much on the second 2K when trying to make it feel the same as the first one, because HR was lower at the end of the second 2K.  It should have been the same or higher as at the end of the first one, if it was equally strenuous.  At least, that’s my layperson opinion on something a doctor or physiologist would be more of an expert on.

So here are the finish screens and session reports:

Happy trails to you.

 

 

 

I say “RowPro worked okay today” because yesterday it crashed…

Today’s rowing session was 30 minutes scheduled online as a single session.  It was joined by five other energetic rowers, making a total of a half-dozen including myself.

If you ever want to see the listing of scheduled online rowing sessions using a browser, you can see them at http://www.digitalrowing.com/Oarbits/livefeed.htm and the results can be seen at http://www.digitalrowing.com/Oarbits/livefeed.htm If those two links look the same, that’s because they are. After you get to that page, you click one of the three highlighted links near the top – either “Live Feed” or “Scheduled Sessions” or “Results,” depending on what you want to see.

Here is a screenshot of today’s results of the session I rowed, using the above link:

Although I said that RowPro worked okay today, I’m not 100% certain about that.  The heart readout wasn’t what it should have been and instead, it was either a blank display showing no heart rate on the PM or it was way too high.  So… before the end of the session, I removed the strap rather than continue to look at the nonsensical readout.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s rowing session was 30 minutes scheduled online.  In contrast to yesterday’s solo online session, today’s session was very popular and was joined by 12 others.  One of the others had computer problems which she solved by re-booting her computer and which resulted in her being listed twice, once under each of her two different RowPro accounts, in the session.  Another guy lost connection that resulted in a DNF for him. Three of the rowers, including myself, were in the United States and all the others were in Europe:  Denmark, Germany, Great Britain and Italy. There may have been one or two other countries represented, because two of the rowers didn’t show any country abbreviation.

The session went well until the moment I had finished and then RowPro crashed.  You can see a crash screen that resulted, below.  Microsoft Windows “investigated” the problem but didn’t find a solution.  A discrepancy was immediately visible to me because the RowPro finish screen was listing “JH” as finishing in first place and me in second place and it didn’t show that anyone else had finished.  But it was a timed event, not a set distance event and so everyone finished at the same time and I was definitely NOT in second place.  The online result display (second screenshot below) shows the actual finish standing and I was 8th, not 2nd:

Because RowPro crashed, it did not save a session report.  Well… it DID save a session report… but the session report had only zeroes for data.

But the Concept 2 machine’s PM (personal monitor) worked okay and it saved the results, which I photographed and which you can see below the next image.  The next image shows the manual data entry screen for RowPro, which I had to use in order to log the results and then upload them to Concept2.com

Happy trails to you.

 

Today’s rowing session was scheduled online but I rowed it alone.  One other person had signed up for it but didn’t show. Since I was rowing alone, I watched a boring video while rowing.

The target pace for today’s rowing was a constant effort at about 2:15/500m.

Trivia: a pace of 2:15/500 meters on the Concept 2 rowing machine is about 145 watts, which is about 1/5 horsepower.  (One horsepower is 745 watts).

Happy trails to you.

For today’s active rest day from rowing, I did a 30 minute session online in the virtual company of two rowers who were in Denmark.

For the first 15 minutes I rowed at a normal rating in the 20+ spm area.  For the last 15 minutes I rowed at a low rating in the mid teens spm.

Happy trails to you.

Today was another row-easy rest day.  The rowing session was 30 minutes, scheduled online.  One other rower joined and he was in Denmark.

Originally I had intended to row at a pace of between 2:30-2:40/500m but the other rower was rowing a much faster pace and it was slightly contagious.  So I watched his pace and adjusted mine so that the difference between his and mine was less than 30 seconds/500m. His average pace at the finish was about 1:51 and mine was about 2:22.

Happy trails.

Today’s rest from rowing consisted of 30 minutes online at a pace of about 2:33.  Two other rowers in England joined and they each did the session at a pace of about 1:55.  Energetic fellows.

Happy trails to you.