Ox Bow Marathon

[[old] Bayko]

Good day today at the Ox Bow Marathon at Paul Flack's house in Weston, MA. On site were Paul, John Hart, and Moi (Bayko). Joining via RowPro was Frank Knight from Maine.<br /><br />Paul was nice enough to do the Gofer duties for John and me, connecting me up to the RowPro and testing it out, helping to lug our ergs in from our cars, operating the DVD player, turning on the fan at halfway, and encouraging us throughout. Needless to say, having gotton off the erg several times to attend to our needs, Paul wasn't going for a good racing time today. He was just doing a long row while helping us. <br /><br />Though the first 39K I stuck rigidly to the pre-race plan of averaging 1:59.5 pace. John more or less matched strokes with me and Frank had originally intended to do the same. I noticed though that Frank was occasionally bolting ahead a bit with 1:57 and 1:56 strokes before easing off and coming back to match me. It seemed that maybe had was feeling frisky and having trouble holding back. Somewhere along the way he left me for good and eventually built up more than a 170m lead with a nice steady pace that was a bit faster than mine. He cruised home in 2:47:08.6 for a big new PB by about 4 minutes .<br /><br />Meanwhile at 39K Paul told me that my heart rate was still pretty low and I therefore had plenty left, so I figured "what the heck" and began to pick it up. Maybe I could at least put the fear of the lightweights into Frank and give him some excitement. My goal had been a 1:59.5 pace all the way for about 2:48:06, but by gradually picking it up over the final 3K to 1:46's by the last couple of hundred meters I cut Frank's lead to 80-something meters and had a PB myself of 2:47:26.5 . Well chuffed.<br /><br />John Hart tripled his previous longest-ever row of 14K by going beyond his "half-marathon at least" all the way to the end with a 2:48:30.3 in his debut . As a cross-country skiier who has done 50K races on back-to-back days it would seem that John has more left in him yet. Afterward he said that he didn't feel as bad as he had expected to.<br /><br />When the ergs were packed back into the cars we hit the milk and cookies. The cookies were so good that we nearly emptied the jar. The Flack children will probably not be thinking nice thoughts about ergers doing marathons at their house again.<br /><br />Rick<br />

[[old] FrankJ]

Since I was remotely attached, Rick was the only one at the Ox Bow visible to me and I had thought that half way was a good goal since I had a 95K week scheduled. Well instead I tapered a bit by taking Saturday off so that gave me an 83K week. The conditions at my house were perfect. I had the windows open and the room had cooled to 62 degrees. The sun was shining and it was very fresh air that I was breathing. At the half I was feeling really good and that convinced me to go for it. I felt kind of bad taking off on Rick but I had only promised a half marathon with him. In the end it turned out well for both of us. Kind of nice to do a 4+ minute PB and have it feel easy and enjoyable.<br /><br />One odd hurdle to overcome is that they called me with a problem at work. Fortunately with my wife, Yvette, passing messages back and forth I was able to fix it over the phone without interrupting my race.<br /><br />Frank

[[old] John Hart]

Rick, great summary and congrads on your new PR.<br /><br />I was holding a 1:58.9/500m pace until about 10k to go when I started slowing down to about a 2:02 pace resulting in a finish pace of 1:59.6. Overall I was happy that I was able to meet my goal of breaking the 2 minute pace barrier. No pain yesterday or today, other than a sore butt, but I can tell it was a good effort. It was quite different from any xc ski marathon or cycling race due to the lack of any rest/recovery options on downhills, but I don’t know if this equalizes the lack of uphills…<br /><br />I would like to thank Paul for the nice environs for the event and his encouragement which helped get me through the last 10k during which the passage of time seemed to slow down… <br /><br />Glad I had company for my first erg marathon.<br />John Hart<br />

[[old] Canoeist]

It was great to see such enthusiasm for a marathon. I was still taking antibiotics for a chest infection, so I wasn't going to push too hard. The conditions were great too. We closed off the rowing room from the rest of the house, unstuck the painted over windows so that we got some cold air blowing through, and opened the door. It was nice to get some cool spring air!<br /><br />After the row, we walked part of the Boston Marathon road race course. Rick was a good tour guide since he ran the course on many occasions. We talked to one of the employees at the Marathon running shoe store in Wellesley about good places to set up ergs. He thought that it was a novel, but great idea and wished us non-runners luck. It looks like the best place to set up the ergs is just after the Rt 9 Rt 16 intersection, but somewhere before the downhill towards the Charles River. We will have to look into it further to find a fairly large flat area where we won't be blocking people or having our view obstructed by large numbers of spectators.<br /><br />Cheers,<br /><br />Paul Flack

[[old] FrankJ]

Rick,<br /><br />I'm curious how our marathon rowing styles compare. What was your stroke rate and meters/stroke? I averaged 23 SR and 11.0 DPS.<br /><br />I don't do a full stroke either. If your familiar with Xeno's terminology it's about a 2/3 stroke. My elbows are just a shade past my knees at the catch. It's kind of something that I developed when I had whooping cough. I used to try to row as fast as I could without letting my heart rate exceed 115 which would lead to a coughing fit. Anyway it turns out to be a really efficient stroke length and rate for me.<br /><br />Frank

[[old] Bayko]

Frank, <br /><br />I kept a steady 26-27spm throughout the 39K that I was averaging 1:59.5.<br /><br />The past four weeks as I brought my times down from 2:52:58 to 2:49:09 I had maintained S10MPS, which had been fine until the last half-hour or so of the 2:49. It was enough of a strain at that point that I figured that it was time to strap back in and trade a little rate for pace in order to keep improving the time. It worked. Had I not kicked it in during the last 3K on Sunday I probably could have made the whole marathon in a PB 2:48:06 without exceeding my UT1 heartrate of 146. The previous week I had gone past UT1 and did the last half-hour in the AT zone of 147-153 even though the pace was slower by 0.8sec/500m.<br /><br />I think that I take a pretty full stroke. At least at the finish, where I sometimes bruise the left side of my chest from bringing in the handle hard. Not sure that I quite get to vertical shins at the catch. It feels like I do, but when I've seen the webcast replays of CRASH-B's it looks to me as if I come up short. Paul also made the comment (which Rick Martin had also made at Brockton) that I seem to break my arms early. I've read that that takes some of the power out of the leg drive. So I may have some improvement in my times if I can work on that error and correct it.<br /><br />This is an improvement over two and three years ago when I was doing 2:48-2:49 marathons at 28-29spm. It gives me hope that I might still have a faster marathon yet this season if I up the rate a bit more. Even though I've done a better job at keeping some weight on compared to last autumn, I'm still only 148 lbs of relatively weak musculature. But I have a cardiovascular system that is well-honed.<br /><br />Rick<br /><br />BTW, my butt is a whole lot better off than a couple of years ago too. I did the whole marathon without seat-padding. For my first few years of erging I would be in severe discomfort after 30 minutes on the machine.

[[old] Canoeist]

Breaking the arms early not only takes some of the punch out of the leg drive, but also tires the arm muscles so they can not contribute as much at the end of the stroke.<br /><br />Rick had incredible concentration throughout the row. Looking at his graphs on RowPro, his breaks were spaced at very regular intervals and each only took a two strokes. Also, looking at his heart rate graph, there are no unusual blips that would indicate where the bordello scene appeared on the TV. <br /><br />Rick's HR graph seems to show that he could cut his time further by picking up the pace by a second or two for the last hour. He was much too rested with 3K to go!<br /><br />Cheers,<br /><br />Paul Flack

[[old] Bayko]

Heh, heh. I watched the movie again Monday before returning it to the library and during that scene my heartrate wasn't the only thing that went up. Especially interesting was when the langouriously lying lady's unclad body morphed into a nature scene of hills. It is usually just the opposite for me. When my eyes see hills, my mind envisions.......(I know. Bad boy, bad boy.)<br /><br />Hint to other erg marathoners. If using the movie Brotherhood of the Wolf, be sure to get the extended version which is 3 hours and 4 minutes. My library accidently delivered the regular edition which ran out after only 2 hours and 15 minutes.<br /><br />Rick

[[old] whp4]

<!--QuoteBegin-Bayko+Mar 24 2005, 03:45 PM--><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'><b>QUOTE(Bayko @ Mar 24 2005, 03:45 PM)</b></div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'><!--QuoteEBegin--><br />Hint to other erg marathoners.  If using the movie Brotherhood of the Wolf, be sure to get the extended version which is 3 hours and 4 minutes.  My library accidently delivered the regular edition which ran out after only 2 hours and 15 minutes.<br /><br />Rick <br /> </td></tr></table><br /><br />Hey, Rick, that shouldn't be a problem - just start off at your 500m pace, and hold it for a little longer (well, okay, just over 84x as long) and you'll have that 2:15 marathon in the bag! Even your son might be impressed