Pain - real or myth?

Bob S. · Post by **Bob S.** » March 16th, 2006, 12:26 pm

I posted this on the U.K. forum when the U.S. forum was down for the count, but I am taking the liberty of repeating it here. I made my first (and very likely only) full marathon attempt last Monday (3/13) and this is a report on it. This was originally written the next day.

I have always been skeptical about the association of rowing and pain. Other than the obligatory pain in the rear of my one HM and a few other pieces 60’ and over, I have never felt that there was anything painful about rowing. That includes OTW and erging; whether it was training, solitary time trials, or competition. I don’t claim to be a stranger to pain. I have had enough from other physical activity – weight lifting, solo self-contained bicycle touring, and long backpacks. But I have always regarded rowing as the one activity that was benign – relatively pain free. No doubt some would say that as a casual rower, I am just not putting out a real effort. It is true that I have never experienced
finishing with an “empty tank.” There was always enough left to take the boat back to the dock and carry it out – or to do a long cool down on an erg.

Well, now that I have completed my first all out marathon, I have had a revelation. Erging can be painful! I still had enough CV reserve left in the tank for a ten minute cool down paddle, but a couple of muscles and my skeletal structure as a whole were screaming, “Is this really necessary?” Painful? Yes – big time. Not too bad today, however. My left bicep still has some soreness, but that might be a leftover from a weight session a couple of days ago.

The marathon time? Well that was big too, unfortunately, no sub 3 hours here. To be exact, it was 3:18:52.3. Not very impressive compared to what most of the young folks do, but not too shabby for an 81 yo open heart surgery survivor. I had a goal of 3:45 (which would net a 1000 pointer on the nonathlon), but I was fairly comfortable in the first half with a projected finish of 3:22. Then it occurred to me that 3:20 was an even 200 minutes, so I dug in a little harder and went for it.

Bob S.

michaelb · Post by **michaelb** » March 16th, 2006, 12:38 pm

I can't believe you warmed down after a full marathon. That is a great row, and is much faster than my first Marathon. Did you take any breaks or get off the erg at all, or did you just row continously for 3+ hours. I can see why that would hurt.

I think if you have blown up on a 2k attempt before you will feel pain on the erg too. But I think rowing is more about fear than pain; it is the fear of blowing up that holds me back sometimes. But you have that little computer hanging there in front of you telling you second by second exactly what you are doing and how fast, or not, you are going. So there is no "out of body" or "unconscious" racing on the erg, in contrast to pretty much any other sport I can think of.

johnlvs2run · Post by **johnlvs2run** » March 16th, 2006, 1:21 pm

Nice marathon -- especially for 81 years.

NavigationHazard · Post by **NavigationHazard** » March 16th, 2006, 1:26 pm

Great row, Bob -- you're confirming why I've never done a full marathon on an erg....

hjs · Post by **hjs** » March 16th, 2006, 3:20 pm

great row Bob

about the pain. It's all about the effort you put into it. No matter what you. running, cycling, rowing. Do it easy and it is never painfull, do it fullblast

BobD · Post by **BobD** » March 16th, 2006, 3:38 pm

And recent studies have confirmed "No Pain = No Gain" which was out of style for a while.

Bob S. · Post by **Bob S.** » March 16th, 2006, 4:33 pm

michaelb wrote:I can't believe you warmed down after a full marathon. That is a great row, and is much faster than my first Marathon. Did you take any breaks or get off the erg at all, or did you just row continously for 3+ hours. I can see why that would hurt.
I think if you have blown up on a 2k attempt before you will feel pain on the erg too. But I think rowing is more about fear than pain; it is the fear of blowing up that holds me back sometimes.

I consider a period of light tapering off (cool down, warm down, whatever) to be essential after any relatively heavy effort. My warm up could have been included in piece itself, as I believe I did for my one time half marathon, but my garage was at about 47° F so I wanted to warm up wearing a jacket. I also wanted to use the fan during the piece, but not during the warm up. As I didn't want an extra break in the piece to do these things, I opted for a 15 minute warm up - 3' each at 15/18/20/18/15 spm. (My usual current wu is 21' - which includes a 22 spm and an additional 20 spm in middle.) After the 15' wu, I took about 5' – getting a slug of Florida poison, taking off the jacket, straightening out the doubly folded hand towel cushion, setting the monitor, starting the fan, and getting settled back into the seat and stretchers.

During the run, I put down the handle three times to take additional swigs of Gatoraid (followed by water to wash out the taste). I did this at 30k, 20k, and 10k to go. It cost me 20 seconds the first time, about 45 seconds on the second, and about 30 seconds for the third stop. My rate was a constant 20 spm throughout. My pulse monitor reading disappeared only a few times during that piece, but I had the wrist receiver mounted on the handle, so I was able to keep a check on it when the monitor showed blank. The recorded HR values are in the mid 120s for the first 16k, with a 2:22.x pace. In the next 8k, I brought the pace down to 2:20.x and my pulse climbed to 140. By then I had visions of sub 200’ so I cranked it up to a 2:17.x pace and recorded HR stayed in the mid 140 range. I vaguely remember seeing a few >150 readings on the wrist monitor, but nothing alarming like the 196 that I saw in practice the day before the C-B. The paces for the 7th, 12th, and 17th 2k splits clearly show the drink stop losses: 2:27.7, 2:31.7, and 2:25.0.

As I mentioned in the initial message, my original goal was 3 hours and 45 minutes, but, in retrospect, I think that it would have been harder to stay at it for another 25 minutes, even at a slower pace, than it was to finish up as early as possible. I had plenty left in the CV tank, but this old rack of bones has plenty of aches and pains without even doing any exercise.

At this point I should thank Xeno for his advice when I asked him about training for the marathon. He told me that I was ready for it without any further training; that I should use a folded towel for the seat pain; and that I should take in some sugar and electrolyte drinks along the way. It worked. Although the drink stops took up about 1 1/2 minutes total, I did feel some surges of energy a few minutes after each one and I believe that they more than made up for the time losses.

Bob S.

Ben Rea · Post by **Ben Rea** » March 16th, 2006, 9:29 pm

81 years old, thats amazing...you my hero.

tennstrike · Post by **tennstrike** » March 17th, 2006, 10:09 am

Let me add my own "That's really inspirational." to everyone else's comments. If I ever get sub-7, I'll try a marathon. Someone should invent an easy way to drink while rowing so you don't have to stop, though. Two tubes, one with Gatorade and the other with water.

Thanks for the post.

Bob S. · Post by **Bob S.** » March 17th, 2006, 12:46 pm

NavigationHazard wrote:Great row, Bob -- you're confirming why I've never done a full marathon on an erg....

Jon,
I once swore up and down that I would never waste my time doing a marathon. My change in attitude started with a conversation at Boston with Karen. She convinced me that I should sign up for the nonathlon. I did that, entered my existing times, and was pleased to learn that it clearly pointed out any substandard entrees. This gave me the motivation to work on those (5k, 6k, and 30'). Once I did that, I came to the conclusion that I couldn't just stop there - I had to fill in that one last large gap - the zero for the marathon. When Xeno told me that I didn't really need to train for it there was no further good reason to put it off. My big concerns had been boredom and seat pain. The seat pain was certainly there, but no where near as bad as I have had on my bicycle tours. The boredom was also much less than I had expected. The PM3 helped a lot there - it kept my attention quite well.

regards,

Bob

Ben Rea · Post by **Ben Rea** » March 19th, 2006, 11:15 am

i just want to bring up something that came from bob's message there. he said the PM3 kept him entertained, i totally agree. Here aree some ideas if you are doing a marathon or some other long piece.

- try to keep your avg. split at the same number or lower, and if you positive split, you have to do a power ten. although i dont suggest doing that too many times, it is a fun way to drop your split and still have fun

- This one also invloves a power ten. look at your spm and try to keep it the same number for as long as possible, if it changes, you do a hard ten strokes.

you may find these kind of rediculous but once you get on the erg and notice you have to do 42 thousand meters, you will give it a shot

- if you have your PM3 on the "watts" screen with the little graph, you could try to get the exact same watts so the whole graph is just a flat line, meaning you held the same watts for that long.

just some idea, done them all myself

Bob S. · Post by **Bob S.** » March 19th, 2006, 11:23 am

Ben Rea wrote:i just want to bring up something that came from bob's message there. he said the PM3 kept him entertained, i totally agree. Here aree some ideas if you are doing a marathon or some other long piece.
just some idea, done them all myself :D

Good ideas, Ben. Thanks for passing them along. I just wish that C2 could incorporate a remote into the handle so the we could change the units without stopping. That was on my wish list for the PM4.

Bob S.

PaulS · Post by **PaulS** » March 19th, 2006, 11:37 am

Bob S. wrote:
Ben Rea wrote:i just want to bring up something that came from bob's message there. he said the PM3 kept him entertained, i totally agree. Here aree some ideas if you are doing a marathon or some other long piece.
just some idea, done them all myself
Good ideas, Ben. Thanks for passing them along. I just wish that C2 could incorporate a remote into the handle so the we could change the units without stopping. That was on my wish list for the PM4.

Bob S.

Or C2 could implement a "scrolling display" feature, where the desired displays to scroll through were selected as well as the number of strokes for each to be displayed while scrolling through.

For example, I'd like to see the Force profile for most of the time (8 strokes) then the Watts bar graph for 1 stroke and the full display with projected finish for 1 stroke. That would make it very easy to see how steady a pace was being maintained, as well as if a small push might get to a desireable projected finish.

Ben Rea · Post by **Ben Rea** » March 19th, 2006, 12:07 pm

yea, something in the handle would be nice, when do you suppose the pm4 will come out? assuming they make one...

Hal Morgan · Post by **Hal Morgan** » March 23rd, 2006, 12:31 am

I am always in some kind of pain. When I was young folks said you are going to hate that when you get old. God I love it. I earned all my pain. I even get paid by the VA for being in pain.

When it comes down to it, is it a pain you can live with?

Never, ever, jump off the roof with a bed sheet parachute.

Never ever ___________ well you fill in the blank.

And when all else fails groan a hoooyah.