Sure, you have to do a lot of hard aerobic and anaerobic work to do a 2K to the limits of your potential.
Considering this, doing three seconds better than anyone in my age and weight division last year, including the WR holder, without doing any hard aerobic and anaerobic work at all is a pretty good show.
My commitment over the last five years has been to overcoming my weaknesses, which have been technical and skeletal-motor, not physiological.
Really, after a point (e.g., a WR row), overcoming your weaknesses is the only way to improve.
Training as you always have, avoiding your weaknesses, and therefore racing the same time, or as the years go by, some slower time, again and again, doesn't make you better.
It just makes you worse.
On the other hand, if we can believe the scientists, who have determined that the minimal decline per year with age over 2K is .3 seconds, for someone who rows poorly when they are 20 years old, but trains maximally from when they are 20 years old to when they are 60 years old, learning to row well can overcome the entire decline with age over this 40 year span.
At 60, you can row like a 20-year-old.
Nice!
ranger
Rich Cureton M 72 5'11" 165 lbs. 2K pbs: 6:27.5 (hwt), 6:28 (lwt)