Endurance erging - A place to discuss 42, 50, 100k upwards.

[Elizabeth]

Hi Elizabeth,

A huge congrats on that marathon, a USA record to boot.

You're not far out of the world records for HW (2:48.29.6), inside the WR for LW (2:50:31.9) in you age bracket, huge, absolutely huge achievement.

I broke the C2 American women's marathon record on Sunday with a time of 2:49:38.0.

As others have said ... Wow! Fantastic result Elizabeth about 3 mins inside the UK record and only a minute off world record pace. I can see we're going to continue to enjoy watching your successes.

I've been mulling over the gap between my time and the 2:48:29.6 world record. I made a number of sub-optimal choices, and it seems like just racing a smarter race could bridge at least some of that.

If you've watched Breaking Two and been baffled at learning that Zersenay Tadese doesn't fuel during half marathons and marathons... I can't say I'm much better. Before this, I had a banana, two mugs of black coffee, and some raw pumpkin muffin batter. (I pulled the pumpkin muffins out of the oven between my warmup and the marathon.) During, I had a 12 oz bottle of Gatorade plus some water. That's about similar to my fueling for the 35k rows - and I just have coffee before training most weekdays - but is obviously light on carbs and calories. I also didn't taper at all.

There's a part of me that wants to give it a month, regroup, and have another go with an actual taper and a smarter fueling strategy. I'm also registered for WIRC in late February and at some point should transition to training more tailored towards speed, so timing is a factor.

I am 30 lbs north of lightweight and don't think I can safely get there, so I'll focus on the heavyweight times.

[Dangerscouse]

I've been mulling over the gap between my time and the 2:48:29.6 world record. I made a number of sub-optimal choices, and it seems like just racing a smarter race could bridge at least some of that.

If you've watched Breaking Two and been baffled at learning that Zersenay Tadese doesn't fuel during half marathons and marathons... I can't say I'm much better. Before this, I had a banana, two mugs of black coffee, and some raw pumpkin muffin batter. (I pulled the pumpkin muffins out of the oven between my warmup and the marathon.) During, I had a 12 oz bottle of Gatorade plus some water. That's about similar to my fueling for the 35k rows - and I just have coffee before training most weekdays - but is obviously light on carbs and calories. I also didn't taper at all.

There's a part of me that wants to give it a month, regroup, and have another go with an actual taper and a smarter fueling strategy. I'm also registered for WIRC in late February and at some point should transition to training more tailored towards speed, so timing is a factor.

I am 30 lbs north of lightweight and don't think I can safely get there, so I'll focus on the heavyweight times.

FWIW, my previous PB before my current one was circa 2:45, and sometimes it just all comes together. Also I never taper, and my FM PB came the day after my 60 mins PB, BUT I'd say that fuelling properly could be notably helpful for you to make a difference next time.

There are so many small, and seemingly insignificant decisions that you make during a FM that all add up and can make a very big difference in the end result. How you ended the FM, imo, shows that you could have squeezed it earlier and not suffered from it, but it's oh so easy to speak with hindsight.

I know you're capable of going faster than 2:48.29. It won't be easy, but I'm very confident that it's within your grasp if you really want it.

[DavidA]

I broke the C2 American women's marathon record on Sunday with a time of 2:49:38.0.

I knew this was a really strong time and better than I expected, but didn't realize that this broke a record until I looked afterwards to see how far off I was. Overall, I'm really happy with how it went.

WOW!
Congratulations!
What a great time!

David

[fragandclear]

I broke the C2 American women's marathon record on Sunday with a time of 2:49:38.0.

A "normal" training week going into this looked something like this:
S - Long row, 28k-35k, typically more on the 35k end.
M - Speed intervals, such as 8x500/3:30r or 4x1000/5:00r. 20 minute warm-up, 10-20 minute cool-down, either followed by or interspersed with strength. (For example, one set strength, 1:00 easy row, repeat.)
T - 18k-20k total, typically a run-row brick. Ex: run 7 miles, a couple minutes transition to get Netflix on, row 7-9k.
W - Endurance intervals, such as 5x1500/5:00r, 4x2000/5:00r, 3000-2500-2000. Same warm-up, cool-down, strength as Monday, but with different lifts.
T - Repeat Tuesday.
F - 18-20k row.
S - Either off or ~20 minutes of yoga.

I've adjusted training some weeks for various reasons. For example, I participated in the WOD Week Challenge by taking 3 of the WODs hard and completing another 3 with heart-rate caps (plus some additional steady state work). I also had a road 10 miler race in September, and a 5k erg race earlier in October.

Between the overall weekly training mileage, the longer Sunday rows, and how many of the rows have felt, I've been thinking that I had a good PR in me but didn't have a specific time planned out to try it. I decided to go ahead on Sunday morning. My most recent marathon was from May, which wasn't helpful as far as pacing for this one, but I rowed a half-marathon in August at a 1:58.0 pace. I decided to target a 2:03.0 split, and since that was nearly three months ago and I've shown general improvements since then, gave myself permission to bring up the pace a bit if it seemed not stupid as far as RPE/HR.

After warming up for about 1k, I stopped and set 42,195 on the monitor. I mentally approached it as a 20 miler plus a 10k. In the 20 miler section, I felt comfortable bringing the pace up to 2:02. I celebrated the little distance and time milestones on the way, like seeing the meters left ticking from 4x,xxx to 3x,xxx. At 30 minutes in, I started sipping Gatorade every 15 minutes, which gave me another milestone to look forward to. With 22k left, my Netflix documentary finished, and I successfully rowed at pace while holding the handle with both hands and the remote in my right hand to switch over to music. With 12k left, the music algorithm decided that it was a great time for lullabies, and I tried much less successfully to switch the music - the remote went flying on the recovery of one of my strokes. I yelled for my husband to come help, and he got me set up with much more suitable music to go into what I knew would be the hardest part of the row.

As 10k remaining approached, I gradually picked up the pace, and then tried hard to focus when I got down to 4 digits. With something like 5000 left, I started to see some estimated completion times under 2:50:00, which really motivated me to keep going strong - and to pick it up when the estimated completion time rose above 2:50:00 after a couple of weaker strokes. When I saw 3000m remaining, I told myself that this was one of the intervals from a recent 3000-2500-2000 session, and I was able to row strong during that. I told myself similar things at 2500, 2000, and 1500, and then really tried to bring it in with 1000 remaining. The last 250 were an all-out sprint.

Time Meters Pace Watts Cal/Hr S/M HR
2:49:38.0 42,195m 2:00.6 200 986 27 157
24:26.3 6,000m 2:02.1 192 960 24 140
24:27.2 6,000m 2:02.2 191 959 25 143
24:23.2 6,000m 2:01.9 193 964 25 149
24:17.3 6,000m 2:01.4 195 972 25 152
24:21.0 6,000m 2:01.7 194 967 25 154
23:58.2 6,000m 1:59.8 203 999 27 163
23:04.0 6,000m 1:55.3 228 1085 29 180
0:40.9 195m 1:44.8 303 1344 37 181

I knew this was a really strong time and better than I expected, but didn't realize that this broke a record until I looked afterwards to see how far off I was. Overall, I'm really happy with how it went.

I got a really powerful fan at the beginning of summer, and I think that's helped considerably with some of the chafing issues that I had during the rows in May. I had very few problems with chafing/blisters/etc. with this one. I was a little cold for the first 2k but I knew that would pass, and it did.

Incredible stuff, congratulations!

[Elizabeth]

DavidA, Fragandclear - thank you!

I've been mulling over the gap between my time and the 2:48:29.6 world record. I made a number of sub-optimal choices, and it seems like just racing a smarter race could bridge at least some of that.

If you've watched Breaking Two and been baffled at learning that Zersenay Tadese doesn't fuel during half marathons and marathons... I can't say I'm much better. Before this, I had a banana, two mugs of black coffee, and some raw pumpkin muffin batter. (I pulled the pumpkin muffins out of the oven between my warmup and the marathon.) During, I had a 12 oz bottle of Gatorade plus some water. That's about similar to my fueling for the 35k rows - and I just have coffee before training most weekdays - but is obviously light on carbs and calories. I also didn't taper at all.

There's a part of me that wants to give it a month, regroup, and have another go with an actual taper and a smarter fueling strategy. I'm also registered for WIRC in late February and at some point should transition to training more tailored towards speed, so timing is a factor.

I am 30 lbs north of lightweight and don't think I can safely get there, so I'll focus on the heavyweight times.

FWIW, my previous PB before my current one was circa 2:45, and sometimes it just all comes together. Also I never taper, and my FM PB came the day after my 60 mins PB, BUT I'd say that fuelling properly could be notably helpful for you to make a difference next time.

There are so many small, and seemingly insignificant decisions that you make during a FM that all add up and can make a very big difference in the end result. How you ended the FM, imo, shows that you could have squeezed it earlier and not suffered from it, but it's oh so easy to speak with hindsight.

I know you're capable of going faster than 2:48.29. It won't be easy, but I'm very confident that it's within your grasp if you really want it.

I think you're right, and that I owe it to myself to try to go for it. Practically, how soon do you think is optimal between hard attempts? I spent this last week doing steady state plus the two qualifiers for the WRIC Versa competition, and I'm trying to figure out where to go from here. I'm registered for the 2k and 500m for WRIC in late February, so at some point I'll want to transition to more fast speed work.

If I had thought more ahead of time, I would have used today's 35k row as an opportunity to improve fueling, but it was basically a repeat of last week, but with 1L water plus a Cliff bar instead of the Gatorade. It was significantly hotter and more humid today than last weekend. Practically speaking, I'd like to minimize any disruptions to rowing at speed during my next marathon attempt. I didn't need to go to the bathroom last weekend (good for minimizing lost time) but lost just over 2 lbs in sweat - is that too much? I assume that I'll need a combination of a sports drink plus snacks to hit recommended carb goals.

[Dangerscouse]

I think you're right, and that I owe it to myself to try to go for it. Practically, how soon do you think is optimal between hard attempts? I spent this last week doing steady state plus the two qualifiers for the WRIC Versa competition, and I'm trying to figure out where to go from here. I'm registered for the 2k and 500m for WRIC in late February, so at some point I'll want to transition to more fast speed work.

If I had thought more ahead of time, I would have used today's 35k row as an opportunity to improve fueling, but it was basically a repeat of last week, but with 1L water plus a Cliff bar instead of the Gatorade. It was significantly hotter and more humid today than last weekend. Practically speaking, I'd like to minimize any disruptions to rowing at speed during my next marathon attempt. I didn't need to go to the bathroom last weekend (good for minimizing lost time) but lost just over 2 lbs in sweat - is that too much? I assume that I'll need a combination of a sports drink plus snacks to hit recommended carb goals.

Science will tell you it's quite a long time between hard efforts, but ime it's not that simple. I even tried to do a 100k four days after the 60 mins & FM, but I had to HD at 82k as I bonked really badly.

I think that I sort of knew that it was possible for another hard session, but hindsight isn't very reliable for this type of memory. I'd give a rough guide, that you need to use your intuition and trust your gut feeling. How did the 35k feel today? When I was really comfortable with 30-32k I knew it was definitely something to consider doing it.

I don't think 2lbs of weight is too much. Personally I regularly lost up to four kgs, and didn't seem to suffer from it. I am used to the heat to some extent, as I've done hot dynamic Pilates once a week for 10 years, and I sweat A LOT.

I do find a 32k session can be done on a strong coffee and a banana, but I'm not sure about any further just on that as I never risked it. I didn't seem to feel under fueled though.

Personally I really liked 50/50 fruit juice with some sugar and salt instead of sports drinks, along with banana, jelly beans, a protein shake and water. Sometimes marshmallows and salted cashews too. As I sweat a lot, I can possibly drink more than most, and I don't ever need to stop for a toilet break for anything under 50k

[Elizabeth]

I felt like I killed it on the Versa qualification piece I did on Friday, but then today was a slog even at 2:13/500m. I don't know how much of that is being a too close to the marathon and Friday's hard effort, and how much was the weather.

I was about to say that can't believe you attempted 100k that close to the other hard attempts, but then remembered I did nearly the same with the marathon/century challenge in May.

[GlennUk]

I've been mulling over the gap between my time and the 2:48:29.6 world record. I made a number of sub-optimal choices, and it seems like just racing a smarter race could bridge at least some of that.

If you've watched Breaking Two and been baffled at learning that Zersenay Tadese doesn't fuel during half marathons and marathons... I can't say I'm much better. Before this, I had a banana, two mugs of black coffee, and some raw pumpkin muffin batter. (I pulled the pumpkin muffins out of the oven between my warmup and the marathon.) During, I had a 12 oz bottle of Gatorade plus some water. That's about similar to my fueling for the 35k rows - and I just have coffee before training most weekdays - but is obviously light on carbs and calories. I also didn't taper at all.

There's a part of me that wants to give it a month, regroup, and have another go with an actual taper and a smarter fueling strategy. I'm also registered for WIRC in late February and at some point should transition to training more tailored towards speed, so timing is a factor.

I am 30 lbs north of lightweight and don't think I can safely get there, so I'll focus on the heavyweight times.

FWIW i don't think that eating during a FM is necessary, assuming your prep is good beforehand. Im not entirely sure just how much energy one can take on board practically in such a short period of time, and that it would make much of a difference to performance. Happy to be convinced otherwise.

With respect to drinking, there is no doubt in my mind that conditions where you erg combined with your personal fluid management (aka how much your body sweats) will influence the necessity and extent of fluid intake required.

On my 116k i drank c.3litres of 11.5hours, temps were low, fan was on some of the time.

For my marathon, i doubt i drank half a litre, if that. Turned my fan off as I was getting cold!!!

Thee is a trade off of course, not enough energy/liquid and one can slow down, on the other hand it takes time to take on food and fuel, how you manage that and whether it affects you timing/rhythm or no are have to be factored in. I have found i cannot drink large amounts of fluid, taking mouthful or two, takes me about 10 seconds. If I did that over the course of a 3hr marathon that could equate to 1-2mins, would i slow down as much as tha if i didn't drink much?

[Dangerscouse]

FWIW i don't think that eating during a FM is necessary, assuming your prep is good beforehand. Im not entirely sure just how much energy one can take on board practically in such a short period of time, and that it would make much of a difference to performance. Happy to be convinced otherwise.


I have found i cannot drink large amounts of fluid, taking mouthful or two, takes me about 10 seconds. If I did that over the course of a 3hr marathon that could equate to 1-2mins, would i slow down as much as tha if i didn't drink much?

Good point. I haven't tried to row an FM without carbs during the row, but I have no evidence to prove I need to do it.

As for drinking, I row one handed with the drinks all lined up next to me, so I only have an issue for one or two strokes, and then I pull a few harder strokes to get back on course.

I doubt you would slow down that much, as long as you don't bonk of course.

[Elizabeth]

Good discussion. I don't think that much fueling is necessary for most distances, and I typically don't do much (clearly), but there's the separate matter of how much fueling is optimal. And when pushing limits, optimal starts to matter more. I can take a swig of fluid with a few slower, awkward, one-handed strokes, or completely stop for a few seconds and then try to get back up to speed. So there's definitely a time cost, but if it allows me to keep going hard, it may be worth the cost. Conventional wisdom is that it's worth it for running marathons.

There's the separate issue that I inevitably end up Googling "how to eat before a race" before any late morning or afternoon races. I need to teach myself how to eat before and during hard rowing.

[Tsnor]

Good discussion. I don't think that much fueling is necessary for most distances, and I typically don't do much (clearly), but there's the separate matter of how much fueling is optimal. And when pushing limits, optimal starts to matter more. I can take a swig of fluid with a few slower, awkward, one-handed strokes, or completely stop for a few seconds and then try to get back up to speed. So there's definitely a time cost, but if it allows me to keep going hard, it may be worth the cost. Conventional wisdom is that it's worth it for running marathons.

There's the separate issue that I inevitably end up Googling "how to eat before a race" before any late morning or afternoon races. I need to teach myself how to eat before and during hard rowing.

Look at fueling for running and cycling. There is a max amount you can absorb, more is worse than none. Look at the prepackaged gels. https://youtu.be/2InF6nuTXzk is a good starting point.
no joke --> And when pushing limits, optimal starts to matter more.

[aussie nick]

when I ran my marathons, I found the gels really useful given they were so light and portable and 'eat before you're hungry' as the best concurrent advice for them. My strat was one at 15k, another soon after 25k and then another one at 32-35k when racing. Although they got progressively more difficult to consume given their clawing sweetness and more of the third one found asphalt than my stomach

[Elizabeth]

Tsnor, you always have the best videos.

My challenge with eating stems from side cramp issues when running after eating the wrong thing, plus vomiting after a couple of races. So I definitely understand that less is better than too much. Simply not eating until afterwards "solves" a lot of that, but starts to break down at certain distances.

I would imagine that Clif Bloks or the sport jellies may be easier to deal with one-handed than gels. I'm going to swing by the local running store tomorrow to pick up some options to play with.

Nick, I usually have such a sweet tooth but it gets so cloying during endurance events. I can deal with that though.

[GlennUk]

Look at fueling for running and cycling. There is a max amount you can absorb, more is worse than none. Look at the prepackaged gels. https://youtu.be/2InF6nuTXzk is a good starting point.
no joke --> And when pushing limits, optimal starts to matter more.

The Eddie Fletcher 100k plan includes some content re what can taken up, how and in what quantifies depending on duration of event, the rate of uptake depends on the nature of th energy e.g. glucose, fructose or mixture.

Suggest events over 2.5hrs have significant energy demands and that 'refuelling' is essential.

Personally i found trying to eat/drink the quantities necessary based on the plan was prohibitive for me, i.e. i could just no drink the quantities suggested. Although post my long row, it worked out i had drink just over 3 litrs in 11.5hrs, i ended with a deficit of c.300ml of fluid or 0.3% body mass, which suggests that the amount necessary at least in terms of fluid, varies signfciantly person to person.

Had i drunk the amount of fluid recommended if in doubt of requirements, i would have consumed c.8.8 - 11.5litrs of fluid, which would have given me a huge surplus.

I didn't weight myself before/after the marathon, but reckon i consumed about 0.5litres and cannot be absolutely certain i was not fluid deficient.

I suspect that if one is erging a marathon and its taking just over thec.2.5hr threshold when ones glycogen stores are depleted, that drinking with glucose/fructose can probably make up the additional energy requirements, as opposed to eating solids.

Clearly everyone will have their own strategies

Perhaps this will stop me improving to a level beyond where i have reached to date (current Marathon WW rank 13 of 40 inc unverified) i have no doubt i can go faster, given that whilst at closer to 62 than 61, i am still seeing improvement sin terms of endurance week by week (or at least i was before taking a break and working on sprint training).

[GlennUk]

Good discussion. I don't think that much fueling is necessary for most distances, and I typically don't do much (clearly), but there's the separate matter of how much fueling is optimal. And when pushing limits, optimal starts to matter more. I can take a swig of fluid with a few slower, awkward, one-handed strokes, or completely stop for a few seconds and then try to get back up to speed. So there's definitely a time cost, but if it allows me to keep going hard, it may be worth the cost. Conventional wisdom is that it's worth it for running marathons.

Agree when trying to optimise ones potential that getting it right is key, however on the observations that what's right for you, is probably more to do with experimenting on yourself.

As i said in my earlier post there was a huge difference in the recommended fluid uptake and what i actually needed to drink, in terms of the EF plan. At least with regards to fluid levels, i was very close to optimal for my fluid loss.

Energy balance wise, it would be fair to say that i rowed my 116k to finish rather than to try to set some kind of time. It was an odd distance and i had never done anything like that so my energy requirements would arguably not need to have been optimised.

When i do my next 100k/Marathon attempt, the approach will be different, but both fluid and nutrition demands will be based on 'experiments' on myself, using the EF plan as a starting point.

There's the separate issue that I inevitably end up Googling "how to eat before a race" before any late morning or afternoon races. I need to teach myself how to eat before and during hard rowing.

The learning to eat/druk during the race i found 'interesting', lots of advice about elevated drinkers, even camel backs, in the end i had a series of bottles similar to those cyclists use, all open sitting on a table next to me.

Food wise, i usd cereal bars broken into bite sized pieces on a plate, and a c ouple of bananas. Cereal bars are nice but do take some 'chewing' next time i might find something that doesn't require a toothpick after eating them!!!