April Fools' 2020 Challenge Progress

[Grant8tnarG]

Hey All,
My wife and I are 6 days into the April Fools' challenge. I'm curious about how everyone is doing and how they are approaching it. We have not been consistently skierging so going straight through and all out 15 days in a row is not happening. I have been doing the posted Skierg "medium" workout of the day to get the meters for the past 6 days. As the meters go up, I'm considering mixing it up. Intervals one day, ski easy straight through another, possibly time trial the 10k, etc.? What are you doing?

Hope everyone is staying safe at home!

Grant

[Rumpled]

I'm doing this one on my Model C.
I bought it a year and a half ago, but due to various things have only rowed about 50k meters so far. I am primarily a cyclist and runner and rowing is to add to those.
I'm pretty much going for just the minimum distance of the day.
The first six days I just did as straight rows to give myself a baseline st each distance. I basically treated each one as a race. I have actually gone faster at 5k and 6k than the previous day.
For 7k I decided to do a 30 minute for distance and the fill in the remaining needed distance after. Pretty much blew up on the 30 min, dropping pace from the earlier 6k. Got 5554 meters at 2:42.
Probably gonna do some slower intervals on 8 and 9.
For 10k I'll do a straight row for baseline.
11 to 15 I'll probably do a mix, with one day doing a 60 minute for distance.

This will end up tripling my lifetime meters.

Kinda tough thing to look at is of the 120k minimum meters, halfway isn't reached until almost halfway of day 11 - talk about back loaded!

[ali12345]

Hi, I have been doing ok with days 1-9 but will probably stop at day 10
I'm quite a slow rower and really don't want to be going for more than an hour. Also unfortunately I have developed a huge blister on the back of my heel. I did a fair bit of rowing when I was rehabbing my knee in 2015 and have done the holiday challenge a couple of times.
Good luck to those still doing this

[mickyduck]

This is a very tough challenge for people who do not row the longer distances.. Day 13 completed and not looking forward to the next two.. the constantly ramping up of distance is mentally tough... No way Im giving up now

[Grant8tnarG]

One day left!

Day 14 was a steady grind for me and the Skierg. I turned on a podcast and zoned out. I kept to a constant SPM, Pace, and tried to keep my heart rate from creeping up too much.

The podcast was Rich Roll talking to Nick Butter. This guy just ran a marathon in every country on Earth! And, within 675 days! If he can do that, 14k and 15k should be no problem.

This is definitely a lot harder than I thought it would be. I have tried to mix it up between single distances and intervals. I did time-trials for the 6k and 10k. Easter Sunday I threw in a few all-out 100m efforts and one 500m. The 500m was done at the halfway mark and my legs were shaking for the rest of the workout. My back and core were sore this morning and I think it's from those sprints.

I had one bad hiccup today at about 12k when my phone disconnected from the pm5. That's how I normally sync to the logbook so for a few minutes I thought I was going to be starting the whole thing over. I quickly searched and learned how to move workouts from pm5 to USB to the logbook so that was a huge relief. Has anyone else had issues with their phone staying connected to the pm5? It's crazy frustrating to stop in the middle of a workout. It seems to happen randomly and more during an interval workout than straight. Although this one was a single distance workout. I think I'll be using the USB and PC utility software for a while.

I'm really looking forward to the 15k tomorrow. I'm considering 5x 3k with 3-4 min rest between or 3x 5k and go for a decent spot of the Rankings.

Good luck to everyone still in it!

[mickyduck]

Completed this morning... this was a tough challenge.. but its got me back on track to do 1Million Metre by the end of the season.. less than 30000 to go and 15 days ...

[Tomofg]

Hi All, I’ve just completed the April fools challenge on my rower, I started at 5k and worked up until I completed a half marathon today, I mainly did interval training until today when I completed the half, I must admit been hard going, how some are putting in120,000 metres a day I don’t know

[sbburris]

I finished this yesterday. It's my first C2 Challenge. It got tough towards the end. I started out doing whichever C2 Workout of the Day got me enough distance to hit the goal, but I made sure to row 5k and 10k pieces to get my first ranked times. The last 4-5 days, I attempted to knock out as many ranked timed and distances as possible to hit my goals. The 60min row for 24k was tough. I still need to hit a few of the shorter sprints before the season is over.

I basically rediscovered my rower with the quarantine and with my gym being closed. I'm finding that I'm roughly just below average in most rankings. I have only been lifting weights recently and have done very little to no cardio for months.

Getting motivated to stick with this and hope to do more challenges and improve in 2020-2021.

[sbburris]

That's 14k, not 24k.

[Nomath]

I also made it yesterday. Because I prefer to do the required distance without stops, I did 5K the first five days, then 10K the next five. I didn't see how to enter 15K as a single distance, so the last leg was done as 10K + 'just row', which involves a pause of some minutes after 10K until the display resets itself. I found that the pause was not unwelcome and that a first target of 10K is mentally less daunting. The remainder for the day is then a relatively easy target.

I saw today that the honorboard runs over 50 pages, so about 2500 finishers. I did a small sociological study amongst my compatriots from The Netherlands. This morning I counted 45 of them. There were 2 teenagers, none of them was in their twenties, 7 from the age group 30-39, 7 in the group 40-49, 19 in the age group 50-59, 6 in the age group 60-69 and 4 in the age group 70-79. No finishers older than 79 yrs.
I counted 5 Dutch women.

This shows that the April Fools' challenge does not appeal to the fit-and-young. It is more a challenge for those that don't want to give up easily.

[Rumpled]

I finished the whole thing, it was hard; but I did mostly improve as I went along.
For 8k I did 4x2k SS, all were 2:44.x pace. I was happy with the consistency.
For 9k I did 3x3k. 2:41 to 2:44, so basically similar.
I have the old wooden handle on my Model C and ordered the new style handle. I got it on the 10th and installed and did days 10 and 11 using it. I developed some blisters. Might have been the new handle, might have been that I haven't ever rowed this much. Switched back for 12-15 to my old handle.
10k was a TT for ranking. Was fairly happy with it, 2:41.7, same as my 5k. Looks like I found my current pace.
Figured I could do near 11k for an hour and ended up 11131.
For 12k I did 6x2000. Held 2:40-2:46 for each one, never pushing, just consistent AS.
For 13k I threw in a big mix. Decided to add in a bunch of pieces to rank before the end of the season in a couple of weeks. I rowed 2k and then 1k or 2k between each one. I gave my all on 1 min, 4 min, 100m, 500m, 1000m on the day. That day ended up hurting, a lot!
For 14k I did a pyramid. 1k, 1k, 2k, 1k, 2k, 3k, 2k, 1k, 1k. Holding AS as much as I could without pushing. Still hurt.
15k was a TT. That was long. I never rowed more than 5k before this challenge. Ended up besting my 5k TT rate.
Pretty beat after all of it, feels like my college swimming days. Got more blisters, but they are manageable, a few days off the erg will help.
All in all, a good challenge - kinda like a training camp. Doing all of the weekdays after work led to a very full day.