Rowlympic Last Day Anticlimax

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Today was Day 17 of the Rowlympic Challenge and … if you’ve been counting cacti or cactus branches in the foreground each day you should see 17 branches of various discernible sizes on this saguaro cactus.

Today was the last day of the Concept 2 Rowlympic Challenge and it came and went seemingly unnoticed.

For this last day, I scheduled 3 sessions of 2K each followed by a 15 minute warm down. I intended to race one of the 2K sessions and rank it as my season best time for the 2K.

Nobody joined the first 2K. I used it as initial warm up.

Nobody joined the second 2K. I used it as more warm up.

The third 2K was joined by one other guy, during the last 20 minutes or so before scheduled start time.

By two minutes before start time, I could see him in the main chat room but he hadn’t yet checked in to the session itself so I typed a message in the main chat room asking him if he would need more time but he didn’t respond.  I waited for a little more than one minute after scheduled start time and then started alone.

For that 2K, I thought I’d try to keep a constant pace of 1:50 until the last 500 meters and then try to pick up the pace for the last split.  But … it has been a long time since I’ve tried to row a fast 2K and 1:50 was a bit too fast to maintain so I slowed way down and finished with an average pace of 1:55 instead of something faster than 1:50/500m.

I forgot to click to save the strokes before saving that “fast” 2K and so although it was entered into the Concept 2 online World Rankings, it will show as “unverified”.  RowPro files on this latest Concept2.com website only show as being verified if the strokes are saved before the file is uploaded to your Concept2 log.

Lesson learned and if I try another 2K in the near future I will aim for a constant pace of 1:55 for the first 1,500 meters and then try to go faster during the last 500m.

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finish screen after first 2K
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session report for first 2K
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finish screen for second 2K
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Session report for second 2K
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finish screen for third 2K. You can see that my effort level kept dropping from the start and after about 1200 meters I backed off to a slower pace.
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Session report for third 2K
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Warmdown finish screen
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Warmdown session report

Happy trails to you.