ramped up the distance and intensity a little more today with a 40r20

10,006m in 40 mins 1.59.9/500m, s/r 20, drag 113, ave hr 154, max hr 166

no warm up so eased into it and did a negative split. the plan was always to hit exactly 10k...I made it a little harder on myself by losing both air pods at about 22mins and wasting 15ish seconds scrabbling around on the floor to find and re-insert them

really happy with the session though...a nice confidence booster. every 5 mins I accelerated and did 10 strokes at around 1.45 pace and that felt fine.
the foot pain is manageable and I'm not feeling much tightness in my heel or calf while i'm rowing...although I do feel like I might be favouring my good leg a little more.

I'm gonna do weights tomorrow and then a longer row on Sat with the drag factor up closer to normal levels and if that goes well, I'll get back on the PP for next week

Impressive piece, though it reminds me how far I have to go to get back to where I was. Glad to hear you're able to get through sessions with your foot.

glad to here the injury isn't slowing you down

sounds like great news!

thanks. (and thanks Cha!)

I haven't tried a max effort yet and am still a little nervous about doing so, but the hard 10 strokes every 5 mins didn't seem to hurt my foot so that's a really good sign.

am definitely gonna go at 9.5RPE in my first interval session next week so we'll see how that goes.

thanks and yes, I'm surprised and really heartened at being able to be bac on the erg like this so soon.

I'm slowly beginning to enjoy longer sessions and...it's beginning to sink in how much the longer pieces (and 40 mins isn't really a long piece for anyone other than me) contribute to speed over the shorter distances. most of the breaux on the C2 message board that I'm conversing with are way way way faster at 5k+ and are regularly doing 60-90 min sessions (and hard ones). long way to go on that front for me, but accepting that I need to commit to training hard in a 40+ and a 60+ min session every week, as well as in my interval sessions, is most of the battle for me. The last 6 weeks when I've been doing so, I feel like I've made some significant progress...albeit I haven't time trialled yet - I was planning on doing a competition this weekend but won't now because of the foot.

how long did you have off training in the end? although your HR is weird, I can't believe you've lost too much fitness. Have you tried a really hard session to see how far your max is off where you were before?

Reduced training frequency for a month and then completely off for two, plus gaining 15+ pounds and drinking a ton. It's not horrific, but it won't be reversed in three weeks of eating clean either.

I bet it was fun though.

There is a lot of good evidence that even for "shorter" events like the 1500/1600m run and such, ~80% of your training should be spent doing long slow distance.

Your aerobic capacity is what drives/determines your ability to clear the lactate produced by your anaerobic energy system (which is taxed during sprints), and it is presumably lactate build-up that throttles how fast you can run/swim/row/whatever. And aerobic capacity is trained by long slow distance.

Said another way, if you want to be able to maintain a given speed for a longer duration, or for a given duration maintain a faster speed, you almost always need to train aerobic capacity.

yes, I think I agree with all of this.

for me the most important thing is to enjoy my training and at this point I still enjoy the intervals the most, but with my structure of 4 row sessions a week, I think my short intervals, long intervals, hard distance and easy distance is a good balance to follow.

I also (or did until I broke my foot) walk for 45-60 mins a day at a decent clip, so I'd hope this builds a little of the base that another long slow distance might do.

easy distance for me today

60 minutes, 14302m at 2.05.9/500. 18s/m, hr ave 141, highest 154. drag 117.

felt really good despite a good sized hangover...this definitely contributed to the amount of sweat! I didn't warm up so the standard negative split and felt strong and easy throughout. I tweaked the drag up a little and it definitely felt better. I'll put it up a little more next week I think and get closer to 125.

rowed while watching the rugby league and I think I'll do all of my longer rows watching the sport from now on to stave off boredom

form check vid below - this was taken at 55 mins but it seems to be ok to my eye? any thoughts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgmkeSpfwN8

Its good to see man drag like factors round here. In previous times, a couple of guys were using grandma like drag factors in the 90s. The culprits shall not be outed but to say their fittest man aspirations are over with, is an understatement.

You do realize that everything else equal, a higher drag factor is optimal for a skinny marathon runner, and a lower drag factor is optimal for a strong powerlifter.

Thats not what i saw a while back. Heavyweights 130+ and lightweight women 100 plus. I used 115.

Grandmas and children use 90. I think it was rowing australia where i saw that.

Yeah, sorry maybe I didn't word that correctly. What I meant to say was slower twitch athletes use a higher drag factor than faster twitch athletes.

But anyway, all the the 130, 115, 110 etc you quoted are generally for 2k races. Most people train at a lot lower drag unless they are on the water rowers and want to replicate that on the erg.

Your last comment is not backed up by any of my reading or by the people I’ve asked.

My reading of 2 international rowing manuals - UK and Aus- plus polling on C2 of the very good (waaaay quicker than me) very experienced rowers, was that the standard range for all of them (no exceptions) was 125 - 135 with a few even higher. This includes the lightweight men (sub 75kg) who were at 115 or higher.

Most of them kept their drag consistent at these levels for all their rowing, most of which is long distance - 10k +. All of them would go far higher for a 500m - as high as 180 and some of them would increase their 2k a little…as high as 140-150.

For me personally, I like the extra weight at the higher drag and I think it makes me row more efficiently. Before my injury I was trialling up to 130 and it was great and I’ll be back there next week

I suspect Arjun's point is that there's a difference between where national level rowers set their drag and where the regular Joe hobbyist should; with that said, if rowing at 130 feels good to you, no reason to change it now.

I am intrigued by why your coach has you rowing so low at your size. Is it purely to give you more ‘feel’ as you look to perfect your technique?

hold up…..are you calling loco a ‘regular Joe hobbyist’??? That’s a damning, slanderous rebuke for the fittest man in h&f.

Loco…this cannot go unanswered

Well not yet, some old joe blow just outran me in a 5k. Heart a bit weaksauce after 9 months of easy training.

But i see the grandmas have checked in.

Probably, although I'm also generally 2-2.5 spm less than you are on my UT2 longish pieces, so drag is naturally going to be lower (more work per stroke if our overall pace is equal, which they used to be).

That's a lot of words to agree with me.

Drag is individual and if 130 feels good to you, then go for it. My only point is that the faster the pace, the higher drag you need to use. So like in your post, increase it for 500s and 2k races and what not. Decrease it for slow UT2 sessions. I have seen a few comments on C2 forum about people setting drag and forgetting about it. That's a leak of theirs even if they are better rowers.

I've made this point like 15 times and am not sure what you even disagree with. If your training drag is 130, then a 2k drag of 145 might be optimal. 170 for a 500m, max for 100m.

I mean think about it logically - even these C2 friends of yours who keep their drag constant for most of their training, use a higher drag for a 2k race and even higher for a 500m. That's because you need a higher drag when you go faster. So obviously you need a lower drag when you go slower! It can't be simpler. This will be my last post on this because it's getting tedious.

My comment was in response to this, with which I don’t agree with if ‘most people’ = good, regular rowers.

125, 130 + etc is where good rowers are training all the time. Most of them are also rowing their 2ks at this pace, although a few have told me they go higher. The majority of literature I’ve read and conversations I’ve had is that actually, the experienced rowers are keeping their drag consistent. Unless for a 100-500m type blast.

Now if you’re saying ‘most people’ as in general population of gym/occasional rowers then that is probably accurate. (Well…it isn’t, but onky because most people are idiots and train with the damper on 10, but they should be at 110 ish or w/e.)

With respect to our drag difference specifically, I'd guess that the fact that you struggle to even conceive of rowing UT2 at as slow as 15 spm and 18 spm is where I finished hour+ sessions probably makes a decent amount of difference. TG programs different training zones with different drags, so it's likely just a difference in training philosophy.

I'm planning some UT2 tomorrow, so I'll warm up at 95-100 and see how it feels.