Training Musings and Training Philosophies Thread: Q&A

[tewbz]

i think someone might break 5:30 but thats proboly the fastest anyone will get, thats if anyone ever breaks waddels record

[hjs]

So if we're doing all this training, and we're doing it right I have a question. What is the fastest 2k there will ever be? It has to plateau at some point, our bodies and even the most elite cannot handle a certain amount of power over that distance.

Will anyone break 5:00? Or even 5:20? Is 5:36 about the fastest any rower will ever pull?

5.00 is 1.15 on the 500. You have to be quit a man to that on the 500. The best ever is 1.10.x On the 1000m nobody comes close, so forget about the 2k.
Erging is relative simple, if you have a very gifted athlete such as waddel, who is very well trained and fit, you come close to max. Look at lot's of track and field events, those are also largy dominated by raw talent. There is not much improvement anymore, the borders of moderns humans are not far away.

[tewbz]

So if we're doing all this training, and we're doing it right I have a question. What is the fastest 2k there will ever be? It has to plateau at some point, our bodies and even the most elite cannot handle a certain amount of power over that distance.

Will anyone break 5:00? Or even 5:20? Is 5:36 about the fastest any rower will ever pull?

5.00 is 1.15 on the 500. You have to be quit a man to that on the 500. The best ever is 1.10.x On the 1000m nobody comes close, so forget about the 2k.
Erging is relative simple, if you have a very gifted athlete such as waddel, who is very well trained and fit, you come close to max. Look at lot's of track and field events, those are also largy dominated by raw talent. There is not much improvement anymore, the borders of moderns humans are not far away.

yes but then the current athletes will get to old to compete hurt themselvle, etc.
and maybe the next group will not be as fast so over time the whole speed of everyone goes down then back up.

[bloomp]

Well with man-child Felix Bach already pulling low 5:50s... I think someone will at least challenge Waddell's record.

[Bob S.]

There is not much improvement anymore, the borders of moderns humans are not far away.

Well, there is always chemistry and surgery, but it doesn't seem likely that anyone would bother with those for erging.

Bob S.

[tewbz]

Well with man-child Felix Bach already pulling low 5:50s... I think someone will at least challenge Waddell's record.

how old is he now?

[bloomp]

18!

[tewbz]

now thats scary! ide be happy to be 1:00 slower then him right now

[bloomp]

Well Waddell set his WR when he was a lot older (at least 30) and Bach is only 4.8s off the current 13-18 WR. Had he had a better racing condition (not breaking the first erg and having to restart), he very well could have done better. Nobody even pushed him at CRASH-B's - he raced with lightweight junior girls and the next fastest heavy U18 time was 25 seconds slower.

[tewbz]

Well Waddell set his WR when he was a lot older (at least 30) and Bach is only 4.8s off the current 13-18 WR. Had he had a better racing condition (not breaking the first erg and having to restart), he very well could have done better. Nobody even pushed him at CRASH-B's - he raced with lightweight junior girls and the next fastest heavy U18 time was 25 seconds slower.

how did he break his erg?...

[bloomp]

He pulled way too hard in the first 100-150 and broke the handle...

[ArmandoChavezUNC]

I'm pretty sure he broke the chain, not the handle - but I may be wrong.

Anyway, as I said in a post that I deleted afterward (didn't mean to), I don't think Bach will break Waddell's record.

2000 5:47.0 18 Karsten Brodowsky H M DEU 2004 Indoor rowing race
2000 5:38.3 24 Rob Waddell H M NZL 1999 Indoor rowing race
2000 5:36.6 32 Rob Waddell H M NZL 2008 Indoor rowing race

He pulled 4 seconds slower than Brodowsky did in 2004 at the same age. Also, look at how little difference there is between Waddell's times in a span of EIGHT years. When your times are that fast, a second improvement takes a tremendous amount of work. That being said, as I had previously commented, I do not think Bach will break 6:40, much less Waddell's record. I don't foresee anyone beating Waddell for some time.

[tewbz]

your right it was his chain but wow you should see the video he finished 600 meters ahead of the closest girl

[NavigationHazard]

If memory serves, Waddell's 1998 and 2000 Crash-B times (5:39.5) were done as his second race of the day. Back then there were heats. Crash-b.org unfortunately has vaporized the historical results and has yet to rematerialize them, so I can't check what he did in the heats. If memory serves it was 5:45ish.

Almost certainly Waddell could have gone faster in one or both of those races had it not been for the heats, and the travel time from NZ to Boston. True, he didn't. However IMO his performances when in his mid-20s do lend credence to the proposition that the record could be closer to 5:30 than it is.

As for Bach, he's obviously prodigiously gifted physically and I wish him all the best. However there's no reason to think that he'll necessarily end up beating Waddell's (one-off) 5:36.6 from 2008. All sorts of things could intervene: job, injury, illness, life.... Besides, if Karsten Brodowski has anything to say about it the record won't be Rob's too very much longer....

[hjs]

So if we're doing all this training, and we're doing it right I have a question. What is the fastest 2k there will ever be? It has to plateau at some point, our bodies and even the most elite cannot handle a certain amount of power over that distance.

Will anyone break 5:00? Or even 5:20? Is 5:36 about the fastest any rower will ever pull?

5.00 is 1.15 on the 500. You have to be quit a man to that on the 500. The best ever is 1.10.x On the 1000m nobody comes close, so forget about the 2k.
Erging is relative simple, if you have a very gifted athlete such as waddel, who is very well trained and fit, you come close to max. Look at lot's of track and field events, those are also largy dominated by raw talent. There is not much improvement anymore, the borders of moderns humans are not far away.

yes but then the current athletes will get to old to compete hurt themselvle, etc.
and maybe the next group will not be as fast so over time the whole speed of everyone goes down then back up.

There will always be next generations and overall they will be evenly talented, to get the wr you more or less have to be a freak of nature.

What the best rowers really can do on the erg we don,t know really. After all a top otw rower want's to perform otw not on a machine, but almost evry year the fastest erger is close to 5.40, only a few man have gone below that. And if you pull below 5.50 you are quite a man.
But I think if someone is able to break the 2k record he will try that, that's simply human nature, if you are the best you want to show that.