What drag factor to use?
Posted: September 21st, 2007, 2:26 pm
Hi there,
I've been training for overall fitness for about 9 months now, and along the way I was introduced to Gym Jones, the guys who trained the actors and stuntmen for 300. While browsing the site I found out they do their rowing on a Concept 2, and I later discovered that there is a C2 at the gym I go to. GJ has two challenges they offered to those training for 300:
Row 500m in under 1:45 minutes
Row 5k in under 20 minutes
They seem like good goals, and I have in fact already defeated the 500m challenge by rowing it in 1:37.6 with a drag factor of ~122; my new 500m goal is to come in under 1:30. The question on my mind, though, is how much drag is good for the two different types of effort: explosive short-distance speed, and speed for endurance.
A couple weeks ago I tried to do a test run for my 5k at a drag factor of ~100, and I survived until 2.5k in 9:59 (I was dead after 2k, but there was no way I'm not going at least halfway). As a secondary part of this question, could I have gotten further with a lower drag factor, or has the C2 been designed in such a way that it always takes the same amount of work to get a given distance regardless of drag factor?
I've been training for overall fitness for about 9 months now, and along the way I was introduced to Gym Jones, the guys who trained the actors and stuntmen for 300. While browsing the site I found out they do their rowing on a Concept 2, and I later discovered that there is a C2 at the gym I go to. GJ has two challenges they offered to those training for 300:
Row 500m in under 1:45 minutes
Row 5k in under 20 minutes
They seem like good goals, and I have in fact already defeated the 500m challenge by rowing it in 1:37.6 with a drag factor of ~122; my new 500m goal is to come in under 1:30. The question on my mind, though, is how much drag is good for the two different types of effort: explosive short-distance speed, and speed for endurance.
A couple weeks ago I tried to do a test run for my 5k at a drag factor of ~100, and I survived until 2.5k in 9:59 (I was dead after 2k, but there was no way I'm not going at least halfway). As a secondary part of this question, could I have gotten further with a lower drag factor, or has the C2 been designed in such a way that it always takes the same amount of work to get a given distance regardless of drag factor?
