Today I slept in. Consequently, I rose a couple hours later than the previous two days. So I decided to skip the 50K session today rather than start it so late in the morning and instead did a 30 minute online session.
The inspiration from the website fatchancerow.org continued today, so I did about the same thing as yesterday – another 50K on the erg. And likewise as yesterday, I took several breaks during those 50,000 meters. The longest break was for making coffee and having a protein drink & toast for breakfast.
The feeling afterward was the same as yesterday. Nothing “extreme” like I would feel after doing a marathon of 42,195 meters at a much faster pace. Instead, the feeling afterward was as though I’d spent a day doing manual labor such as working in a field, chopping firewood for 6 hours, loading or unloading a boxcar with sacks of cement, etc. A feeling of oxymoronic pleasant soreness.
Diane would perhaps simply call it “moronic,” since she has expressed her opinion that she thinks I’m crazy, to want to row for that many hours in a day. But she only expressed that opinion regarding my craziness when I told her that ideally, someday, I’d like to try rowing on the erg for 18 hours in one day, like Meredith and Sami did each and every day for 45 days.
I don’t think one day of that is crazy, but everyone is entitled to their opinion.
Happy trails.
After watching more interviews of Meredith and Sami (the married couple mentioned yesterday who have the website fatchancerow.org ) I got a little inspired by what Sami said about how much time they each spent rowing daily and how many calories the daily rowing required.
He said that the effort expended by each of them in rowing every day for about 18 hours was the equivalent to the energy expended to run two marathons daily. He expanded on it to say that his calorie requirement daily for the 45 days of rowing was about 7,000 calories.
That got me to thinking about things like how rowing marathons in the past which burned 3,000+ calories in a little over 3 hours. Two of them at the same effort as one of those would be 6+ hours for a total of more than 6,000 and less than 7,000 calories.
But… I could row at a much slower pace than those 3+ hour marathons, to burn 7,000 calories in 18 hours.
So today I pre-set RowPro for the maximum distance it would allow for one continuous set distance: 50,000 meters. (I wanted to set it for 100,000 meters, but RowPro’s programmers seem to believe that nobody should do more than 50K in one session on the erg.) The goal was totally controlled by me and it was to do that 50K at an easy pace, no matter how slow and to get off the erg, walk around and take breaks whenever the fancy struck me.
50,000 meters is about 8K more than a marathon. I wanted to see what it felt like and consider the possibility of perhaps sometime in the not too distant future trying the experience of rowing on the Concept 2 erg for 18 hours during a 24 hour period as a way to get a tiny, tiny effort-focused sample of some of the experience Meredith and Sami had every day for 45 days.
I felt okay afterward. No pains today like there have been when I’ve done a marathon with an effort that would elevate heart rate. But even though it was a longer distance than a marathon, because I did it at such an easy pace, it burned about 500 to 700 calories less than when I’ve done a marathon at a pace that was “pushing it”.
The calories per hour rate for today’s 50K amounted to about 383 calories/hour. If that average pace was done for 18 hours, it would total up to about 6900 calories. So… today’s 50K with its breaks included was done at about the effort needed to row the Concept 2 and burn 7,000 calories in 18 hours. It’s something to think about and I may be crazy enough to try it sometime.
Happy trails.
Today’s rowing session was about an hour. The goal was to do the preset distance of 13,500 meters and to keep heart rate in the painted-on-screen target zone … except when taking a break. It was primarily a do-the-distance session.
While rowing, I watched a few youtube videos featuring interviews with one or the other of the two people pictured above. Their website is called fatchancerow.org and it focuses on their amazing journey, unsupported, rowing as a team across 2,750 miles of Pacific Ocean.
Each of them spent about 18 hours daily rowing. They each had 6 hours off to sleep, eat, etc. They tell about it on their website and in interviews they each did which are featured on youtube.
What I did today was about 1/18th of what each of them did during their trip.
What Meredith and Sami (listed in alphabetical order) did was inspiring… especially considering that they left their divorce papers, which they took along in a water-proof bag just in case, untouched during and since the trip.
I wonder what it would be like…. to row on the Concept 2 for 18 hours for just one single day? The wheels of thought are turning…
Happy trails.
Today’s words and images can be found at–>this link
Today’s content can be found at –>this link
Today’s entry can be found at –>this link
Today’s rowing session write-up can be found at –>this link
Today’s write-up can be found at –>this link
Today’s entry can be found at –>this link