Ranger's training thread

[NavigationHazard]

You're as predictable as the phases of the moon and just as cheesy. Trying to deflect attention from your current bout of lackawanna disease? Won't work. I'm not the one making utterly preposterous performance predictions and then failing even to attempt anything. You are. Neither am I the one making utterly misinformed pronouncements in here about technique or training or physiology. You are. You you you. Neither am I the one misrepresenting whatever training I might be doing, for whatever reasons I might have for doing it. That's you too.

Fraud.

[PaulH]

You can slowly transform bad rowing into good rowing by correcting, first this, and then that, but the effect of these technical changes (i.e., increased technical effectiveness and efficiency) doesn't show up very much, or very coherently, in your race times until you get it right--entirely.

What's your evidence for this? Certainly you haven't shown it, as you haven't rowed sharpened for years, so your poor performances provide no proof.

The performances haven't been poor, given their role in my training.
yadda yadda yadda

Fascinating - so where's the evidence that you have to fix everything to make much of a difference to your times? Clearly your experience is no evidence of that, as you haven't rowed sharpened for years.

[ranger]

As for your numbers, the 55-59 2k WR is 6:18.6. My PB is 6:18.8. I think I have a better idea than you what it might take to get there.

Really?

I have three WR rows.

So I not only _should_ know.

I _do_ know.

You haven't come within 10 seconds of a WR.

So you don't have a clue.

ranger

[ranger]

Fascinating - so where's the evidence that you have to fix everything to make much of a difference to your times?

Physics, biomechanics, physiology, the history of the sport of rowing, common sense?

ranger

[ranger]

Nav--

To keep yourself honest with short intervals and to make them most effective (AN), do your 500s at 1K pb pace over 3:30 rest.

ranger

[ranger]

[removed]

[NavigationHazard]

Funny, I have three WR rows too.* And a PB within 0.2 seconds of the 55-59 MHW WR -- without a 16:30 5k or 4 x 2k at any pace. Where is your 6:18.8 or better performance? Ah yes. The day after manana manana, right about the time hell freezes over.

You can't even get how old you are right. Why should anyone take anything you say seriously? Fraud.

* 1 at 500m, 2 over 1k, all now eclipsed by better efforts.

[PaulH]

Fascinating - so where's the evidence that you have to fix everything to make much of a difference to your times?

Physics, biomechanics, physiology, the history of the sport of rowing, common sense?

ranger

Excellent - such a compact list really increases your errors per word ratio.

Physics - small changes can lead to no change, small changes or large changes. So you're wrong.

Biomechanics - small changes can lead to no change, small changes or (rarely) large changes. So you're wrong.

Physiology - small changes can lead to no change, small changes or (rarely) large changes. So you're wrong.

History - I'd hazard that every rower in the history of the sport (including you) has made incremental changes that provided incremental returns, rather than having these changes queue up and mystically realize all their potential in one go. So you're wrong.

Common sense - Best of all; everyone is familiar with scenarios where a change doesn't make any difference until another change is made. But everyone is more familiar with situations where making a change does make a difference, and then the next change makes a further difference. So you're wrong.

So, I ask again, where's the proof of what you're saying?

[ranger]

I now do a nice, relaxed 2:10 @ 23 spm OTW, 75% HRR, FM pace.

That's right on 10 MPS, and right on the stroking power I set as a goal for myself when I bought my first 1x back in 2004.

To ease into things, that might be a nice pace and rate to shoot for in some head races this fall.

Then over the next year, I can work the rate up to 30 spm and my HR to AT for 5K, holding my technique steady.

I suppose I could be wrong about this, but it appears that there are only a handful of 60s scullers who can do 2:10 pace for 5K.

That makes sense.

By present standards, except for the big guys (Oesterling, Miller, Wills, Morschauser, etc., who would be slowed down by that weight on the water), 1:50/18:20 is a pretty good 60s 5K on the erg, and 2:10 is only twenty seconds per 500m over that.

RANKING RESULTS 2010

Indoor Rower | Individual and Race Results | 5000m | Men's | All Weight Classes | Ages 60-69 | 2010 Season

1 TJ Oesterling 61 Waikoloa HI USA 17:17.8 IND_V
2 Stu Miller 62 Falmouth ME USA 17:33.5 C2Log
Barry Wills 63 Sutton Coldfield GBR 18:09.8 IND
3 Michael Morschauser 63 Plano TX USA 18:10.1 IND
4 Hjalmar Schiotz 60 Tonsberg NOR 18:12.0 IND_V
5 Tony Forbes 60 Cheltenham GBR 18:15.9 IND
6 Martin Wood 60 Melbourne VIC AUS 18:16.4 IND
7 John Radtka 60 Reisterstown MD USA 18:22.3 IND
8 Thomas Yule 62 GBR 18:22.4 RACE
9 Dick Henry 62 Concord NH USA 18:23.2 IND
10 Henry Baker 62 Santa Barbara CA USA 18:25.7 RowPro

ranger

[ranger]

Funny, I have three WR rows too.* And a PB within 0.2 seconds of the 55-59 MHW WR -- without a 16:30 5k or 4 x 2k at any pace. Where is your 6:18.8 or better performance? Ah yes. The day after manana manana, right about the time hell freezes over.

You can't even get how old you are right. Why should anyone take anything you say seriously? Fraud.

* 1 at 500m, 2 over 1k, all now eclipsed by better efforts.

Sure.

You can sprint, and like to think that this matters, even if your training isn't balanced.

That's why you haven't come within 10 seconds of a 2K WR, and probably won't ever.

ranger

[ranger]

History - I'd hazard that every rower in the history of the sport (including you) has made incremental changes that provided incremental returns, rather than having these changes queue up and mystically realize all their potential in one go. So you're wrong.

Common sense - Best of all; everyone is familiar with scenarios where a change doesn't make any difference until another change is made. But everyone is more familiar with situations where making a change does make a difference, and then the next change makes a further difference. So you're wrong.

Fact.

In recent times (e.g., the last decade), besides me, no male WR holder, 40-70, has gotten better--at all.

So for people like me (i.e., those with WR rows), there is no evidence that anyone has ever been able to figure out even one thing that might make them better, much less a whole series of things that makes them incrementally better--better, and then better yet, and then better yet, etc.

One reason for this, I think, might be that for those who row successfully, the rowing stroke is an intricately integrated whole that is hard to change piecemeal with any success, but can only be improved by wholesale revision on an entirely new blueprint.

If you start with a successful stroke, changing only one thing hinders the function of the whole, until you change enough of the stroke that a new whole can emerge, one that is better than the old.

The difficulty of doing this might explain why, to this point, it has never been done.

I suspect that a wholesale revision in a successful rowing stroke is a bit like a golfer, tennis player, basketball player, or baseball player learning to play better with their left hand than they do with their right (or vice versa).

Rowing primarily with your legs at low drag is very different--in scores of ways--from rowing primarily with your core, back, and arms at max drag.

ranger

[macroth]

rangerette, you didn't get better either. Not one piece of evidence that you're any faster now than in 2003, and plenty of evidence to the contrary.

And since even your successive WR rows, as you call them, were performed within a few months with plenty of "sharpening" in between, at best the few seconds gained at the time were the logical result of sharpening (and everybody gains the same from sharpening, right), at worst they were merely an artifact of the variability of human performance (which is what you claim is the only difference between your 6:41.x in 2010 and RocketRoy's 6:38). Certainly not the mark of any sort of "improvement" that would set you apart from your fellow athletes.

So, just like every other older erger out there, you've been slowing down for the last 7 years. Nothing wrong with that, of course.

[macroth]

One reason for this, I think, might be that for those who row successfully, the rowing stroke is an intricately integrated whole that is hard to change piecemeal with any success, but can only be improved by wholesale revision on an entirely new blueprint.

If you start with a successful stroke, changing only one thing hinders the function of the whole, until you change enough of the stroke that a new whole can emerge, one that is better than the first.


ranger

Ever more lies and ignorance...

[ranger]

you didn't get better either.

I suspect that I am now a dozen seconds better over 2K than I was in the fall of 2003, even though I am now seven years older.

My sharpening and races this fall and winter will tell the story.

This fall and winter, for the first time, I will race fully trained and rowing well at low drag.

I have taught myself to be a switch-hitter.

And I now have more power hitting from (what was formerly) my weak side.

ranger

[hjs]

you didn't get better either.

I suspect that I am now a dozen seconds better over 2K than I was in the fall of 2003, even though I am now seven years older.

My sharpening and races this fall and winter will tell the story.

This fall and winter, for the first time, I will race fully trained and rowing well at low drag.

I have taught myself to be a switch-hitter.

And I now have more power hitting from (what was formerly) my weak side.

ranger

yes the ongoing 2003 2010 trend.........................

Months of not getting below 75 kg

blowing up 2/3 times

and finally a sub 6.50 row