200km row - advice and tips?

[Pottsy]

Hi there - I’m contemplating a 200km row for charity later in the year.

I did a 100km effort a few years ago and I’ve done multiple marathons - just wondering if any here have completed a 200km effort and if you have any tips in terms of managing eating etc.

My other question - is there a way to set the PM5 to do more than 50000m? Previously when I did the 100km I was using a machine that had an older version PM and it allowed the distance to be set to 100km.

Surely there must be a way to set the PM5 to more than 50km?

[alex9026]

May be worth posting this on the training page, there is an endurance thread on there with lots of good advice from rowers with a lot of experience in the super long stuff.

Can you set intervals with zero rest totalling 200km?

[Dangerscouse]

Hi there - I’m contemplating a 200km row for charity later in the year.

I did a 100km effort a few years ago and I’ve done multiple marathons - just wondering if any here have completed a 200km effort and if you have any tips in terms of managing eating etc.

My other question - is there a way to set the PM5 to do more than 50000m? Previously when I did the 100km I was using a machine that had an older version PM and it allowed the distance to be set to 100km.

Surely there must be a way to set the PM5 to more than 50km?

I agree with Alex about posting to the endurance erging thread.

I did a 12 hour row, which was just over 153k, so close(ish) to what you're contemplating. I found I really lost my appetite, far more than a 100k, so I was forcing down bananas etc, but I had a lot of prepared food left over at the end. Protein shakes, bananas, jelly beans etc were probably what I relied.

You can programme the old school way ie variable intervals with zero rest, but I'd recommend using Ergzone as you can programme in intervals rather than it being a single block of metres. I am assuming it works at 200k, as it definitely works at 100k.

[Citroen]

Surely there must be a way to set the PM5 to more than 50km?

There is. You can set intervals with no rest time.

[Pottsy]

Thanks mate - yeah I looked at that and figured that could be an option.

The downside to that though is that it won’t count down from 200km and give a projected finish time, or will it?

[Pottsy]

Hi there - I’m contemplating a 200km row for charity later in the year.

I did a 100km effort a few years ago and I’ve done multiple marathons (20+) just wondering if any here have completed a 200km effort and if you have any tips in terms of managing eating etc.

My other question - is there a way to set the PM5 to do more than 50000m? Previously when I did the 100km I was using a machine that had an older version PM and it allowed the distance to be set to 100km.

Surely there must be a way to set the PM5 to more than 50km? If I set it at 4 x 50km intervals with no rest, will it do a projected finish for the total distance, or just for the 50km rep that is in progress?

[harrythehamster]

Newer PM5's seems to have ability to program longer distances than just 50k, so intervals are not needed.

Just tested on my newer RowErg (bought 2023/09) to dial 200k continuous distance in with no problem. Got warning/notice saying max split distance is 60k (with !). Not sure why it showed that as PM5 had default # of splits (5) thus automatically showing 5 splits, shorter than 60k (=40k), maybe just to inform anyway.

Update: Now actually started to row to see if everything works as anticipated. Meters started to count down, yes. Estimated Finish Time (EFT) was not accurate though, showing just over 4 hours! Had to double check if i had actually dialed 200000 meters not 20000 or something else.

I was rowing at around 168 watts, 2:08–2:10 pace/500, so would have expected to see something else. Or now that i think of it, maybe there is not enough space on PM5 to show first 1 as at this pace EFT is little over 14 hours, so PM5 drops the first number out.

[Pottsy]

Thanks Harry - yeah the PM5 I have definitely won’t let me input over 50km as the longest distance.

I’ll have a play with the 4 x 50km intervals and see what it comes up with.

[iain]

The downside to that though is that it won’t count down from 200km and give a projected finish time, or will it?

Personally I see that as an advantage. Adding 50, 100 or 150k onto the distance isn't rocket science and knowing the split required for the target time will allow you to focus your pace (and 1/4 of the expected finish time if you do prefer rowing to projected finish eg after an early break in the interval). Personally the huge number that proportionally hardly budges after significant effort is one of the hardest aspects of ultra rows and I try and focus on each section at a time.

Best of luck with this.

Iain