Forum Flyers

[jackarabit]

Ivan, do you think of the 30’ as 10x 760m for a clue to determining target pace for a 30’ row?

[Slothful1]

Good luck to David and Lindsay at the BRIC tomorrow with the other 1800 competitors. Enjoy !!

Dave and Lindsay: Y’all gwine suffer like dawgs! Make it skippy so ya don’t suffer for long.

Thanks Olivier and Jack. I went travelling after BRIC through Amsterdam and Paris, and am now back in the UK recovering from a full-fat Christmas spread with my UK family. So finally have had a chance to dip back into the forum.

I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to bump into Lindsay (or maybe I did while pacing around the arena before / after the race). In all the chaos of wrapping up work and getting ready for a long holiday away from home, I forgot to send him a PM to get a mobile number to try catch a photo together on the day.

I'm happy enough with my 7:51.0 - the goal for the day was not to finish last in the 40-49 heavy men, and 68th out of 71 ticked the box there. I did a 7:49.6 at home (with a race start on the PM) about 3 weeks before the event, and fitted in some good training after that, so should have been quicker. It wouldn't have changed my position though (I was never getting close to 7:30 on my current fitness levels), and so my priority was keeping ahead of the guy below me.

This was my first race ever, and I enjoyed the experience (maybe there's proof that I had something left in the tank in the end!). Very well-organised, and the fact that I'd gambled on the date and venue back in January meant that I had accommodation across the road from the velodrome. So getting there before my 9:15 race was straightforward. My warmup heart rate was around 30bpm above normal, so I can only assume I had some subconscious butterflies going. It stayed elevated at the start of the race, but then moved towards the normal levels after that, and peaked at a similar point to my test 3 weeks before.

I was amused initially to see the person below me on the monitor slipping quickly backwards on the relative distance, until I woke up and realised that meant that was one of the non-starters and I was actually last in the race. It helped distract me enough from the usual mental games of a 2k, until around the mid-point where I could see that I was holding a solid 5 metre lead on the next guy, and I managed to keep it around there before winding things up in the last 300 metres.

I stayed to watch the faster 40-49 heat with Graham Benton at least not beating my time by a full 2 minutes, and then had to get going back to the flat to make it back for my brother's birthday lunch near Cambridge. My wife took a video of my race, and it certainly suggests I need to look at my technique a bit more when I'm back home. The kids saw my race photo and decided I looked like a bullfrog - definitely need to work on that overcompression there (and obviously the gut that's keeping the legs apart!).



We still have another week or so of holiday here until we head home early in the new year, but I'm looking forward to seeing how far my fitness has fallen after 4 weeks of no training.

Hope everyone is having a good holiday season.

Cheers
Dave

[jackarabit]

Certainly a long jaunt to Blimey for both of you, Dave! True dedication in both prep and funds I suspect. Old hat for Lindsay of course as he is a well-baptised globetrotter. 40-49M appears to have been composed of hard men but 7:51 aint too shabby so congrats on your time. Great report. There was another FF in your flight I believe but not someone I’m familiar with on this forum.

Cheers and Happy Holidays.

[Slothful1]

I also saw that other (apparent) FF in the results, but my photo of the results board showed a different affiliation (started with a "TOT") for him so I think it was a website glitch.

Dave

[lindsayh]

Anyone else using their time off to get some meters in? I had my first HD in 2 years today, training towards get a better result on the 30 min CTC this month. The basic principle was 10x760m r'20 at R28, but it felt like my heart was about to explode after the 8th interval.
Have to face up to the fact that I've been avoiding the pain cave for far too long..How does one rate high yet keep the split sustainable for those first minutes? I prioritized the R28 over my splits and consequently overdid it on the first few pieces since I couldnt rate that high at more sustainable splits (started at 1:48).

Sadly Ivan my life is the opposite to most everyone else ->> busiest time of the year for work and once you add the Xmas and seasonal stuff it is very restrictive for training - I have managed just 6 sessions since Dec10! Horrible - normally 5/6 per week. Starting to really get to me unfortunately.

For me setting the pace for a hard interval session relies on experience so sometimes hard to get right. Best not to set off too hard I guess and leave a bit in the tank. 20" isn't very much of a rest of course so I would look at the pace of a continuous piece and start around there

[hjs]

Anyone else using their time off to get some meters in?
I had my first HD in 2 years today, training towards get a better result on the 30 min CTC this month.
The basic principle was 10x760m r'20 at R28, but it felt like my heart was about to explode after the 8th interval.
Have to face up to the fact that I've been avoiding the pain cave for far too long..
How does one rate high yet keep the split sustainable for those first minutes? I prioritized the R28 over my splits
and consequently overdid it on the first few pieces since I couldnt rate that high at more sustainable splits (started at 1:48).

You problem is not hd ing Enough

Don,t get the whole session to be honoust, 20 seconds is nothing, you can,t even wipe away sweat.

28 is pretty high, using that rate and at the same time a decent stroke needs a good fitness. In this case you simply could paddle a rep, get rest and continue....

[ivan141]

The idea behind the interval session was to train at a higher rate while getting a feel for the implications of that for a 30 minute piece, the problem was I couldnt suppress my power output until it dropped off due to tiring. I would usually aim for a slower split and am naturally more comfortable at rates up to 26 spm max.
Henry has a point, I've been too easy on myself and therefore not comfortable at higher rates and not going through the hurt that comes with really pushing things further.
I'm sure I can do a hell of a lot better than the 1:59 I posted earlier..

[jackarabit]

Thanks for the gloss, Ivan. I’m older and a lot weaker and slower than you fellows but I believe there’s an unavoidable biomechanical deviation in form at 26-27spm that is a common experience of most fitness rowers. In my case, notably difficult to carry a big fat finished stroke with both leg and back contribution full on above 26 spm. The back-dominant sprint stroke maybe is harder to regulate or throttle. I regulate it by the method you describe: catastrophic loss of pace.

[ivan141]

Most of the older guys around here put me to shame on the erg, I just saw a new sub-7 entry in the CTC with a 1:49 split (34 spm) in the 60+ category, holy cow.
I'm targetting around 30 spm because that's where I want to be on the water. Should be easier to pull off in a boat than on a static erg, but I'm having trouble keeping up both for longer distances. If you read a lot of the recommendations for this months CTC you read rate a little higher quite often, so that's why I set the goal at 28 spm... It should be possible, but it wont work for me if I do the first 2k at a 1:48. Maybe a slower start until aerobic mode kicks in might be the trick.

[hjs]

Most of the older guys around here put me to shame on the erg, I just saw a new sub-7 entry in the CTC with a 1:49 split (34 spm) in the 60+ category, holy cow.
I'm targetting around 30 spm because that's where I want to be on the water. Should be easier to pull off in a boat than on a static erg, but I'm having trouble keeping up both for longer distances. If you read a lot of the recommendations for this months CTC you read rate a little higher quite often, so that's why I set the goal at 28 spm... It should be possible, but it wont work for me if I do the first 2k at a 1:48. Maybe a slower start until aerobic mode kicks in might be the trick.

Rating otw and on the erg are not alike. If you target 30 otw, you can get away with a lower spm on the erg. Overrating does not work well, makes you slower.

Re age, rowing is relative age friendly, compared to other sports the real slowdown comes later.

Last year a 54 year old pulled a 1.13 500m, lowpull 1.02 pace......

[Rod]

I just saw a new sub-7 entry in the CTC with a 1:49 split (34 spm) in the 60+ category, holy cow.

Plus I'm a Lightweight and only a shortarse 5'8''(1.73m) too!

[debinapril]

Happy New Year Forum Flyers.

After an absence of a few months I put in an entry for the CTC. 30 mins seemed a nice sensible session to do and one that normally I would have rowed several times in a month but when I looked back I hadn’t done one in December! I haven’t found the CTC particularly motivating preferring steady low rate sessions to strange interval sessions. On that note I see January is 20 mins at 20 spm - just up my street. So I will definitely put in a score for that one.
I will be joining the C2 January challenge - ‘The Burn’ or 10,000 cals which I did manage last year. A bit of a haul as it took me over 160K to do it. I trust I’m a bit fitter/faster this year and it won’t be as far. We will see.

All the very best for the new year!

Debbie.

[jackarabit]

Strong effort Deb! You clearly haven’t lost any fitness by sitting out the weird interval challenges.

[ivan141]

I couldn't fit in a final go at the 30' as I had hoped.. was renovating the bathroom the past week and SWMBO threw me one of those looks when I made a move towards the erg that implied the bathroom had urgent precedence

Had a go at the 20x20 challenge instead.. heavy lifting session, it's difficult to find the correct avg power for this one, 20 minutes at rate 20 wont tire you out quickly but it's challenging to keep pulling hard.. could empty the tank in the final minute so there is something to be gained here with practice.

[lindsayh]

great to see Debbie and Georgina back to help float 5 boats for December.
And Debbie has an entry for the 20/20 already - on fire
That is a good strong piece Ivan and well worth repeating for training I reckon too.
will have a few goes too I hope