oh my goodness, yes. the mental battle would be almost as challenging as the physical one.

4/21
Warmup - 10'
LD38 (UT2) - 70'
16918m/2:04.1/16.7 spm/164 HR/179 MHR

Had 90' total minutes programmed, but I felt a little bit tired before beginning and was starting to drag towards the end so I just cut it rather than burn myself out continuing the negative split. Spanned 2:08 to 2:01 flat for this one, so reasonably consistent.

some of your stroke rates 14 SPM I do not think I have ever finished lower than a 18 and that took a lot of focus on doing it

What's your drag set at for steady state? How much leg drive do you feel like you're getting?

I just know my damper is set at 5.5 on my last row the drag factor was 123 .
I think I could get more of a leg drive

lozen,

We're all special snowflakes and all that, but fwiw I think it's almost a certainty that your drag is too high by quite a bit. I'd play around with it and see how it feels, but my UT2 is at 90 and UT1 is 95.

4/22
ULD33 (UT3) - 30'
6739m/2:13.5/14.0 spm/128 HR/140 MHR

Rowed feet out for the first time in a while; gave me lower back pain when I did it 18ish months ago, so we'll see how this works. I'll probably just do it during UT3 for the next few months and then mix it into UT2 sparingly (obviously I'll also see what Gardner says).

yep, wow...I can't imagine rowing such long distances at such a high drag

I don't play with it as much as I should. I'm basically at 108 for most of my rowing...my time trials and my intervals and my 'UT1' rows and then I drop to mid 90s for the longer slow rows. my last 1k time trial I did at 118 and I noticed how much more challenging it was on my legs

4/23
Warmup - 10'
LD39 (UT2) - 50'
12168m/2:03.3/16.4 spm/163 HR/178 MHR
Cooldown - 15' (including 3x2'/2'r flat ratio)
r5823m

Didn't feel great before this one, and was considering just doing an unloading day; however, I felt ok after the first ten minutes, so I just reset the monitor and went. Might have paced this one a bit too quickly, but got a good sweat at least. I should definitely take tomorrow as an unloading day even if I feel alright, so hopefully I can make myself do that.

FW tip...drink beer, wine and scotch for 6 hours and then get a shitty sleep so that you feel so bad tomorrow you won’t be able to do anything other than a light deload.

(It’s what I did last night and it worked a treat!)

I'm about to open my second bottle of wine! (Shared with the wife, though, so true 'straylan achievement not yet unlocked.)

https://youtu.be/Aq1mEUSZv3o


ill try some at a lower damper than what I am at (5.5)

imo 5.5 is way to high. ~3.5 +/- 0.5 is where you want to be.

Im 6'2.5" and 243 lbs not a chance . Im thinking 4.5 may be as low as I try

Been a rough day few days of food/booze, which is ultra-convenient given how hard this piece is.

4/25
Warmup - 28'
LD40 (TR) - 7x3'/6'r
21:00.0/5898m/1:46.8/27 spm
3'_1: 826m/1:48.9/24 spm/172 HR
3'_2: 835m/1:47.7/25 spm/176 HR
3'_3: 837m/1:47.5/26 spm/176 HR
3'_4: 841m/1:47.0/26 spm/178 HR
3'_5: 847m/1:46.2/28 spm/178 HR
3'_6: 854m/1:45.3/29 spm/179 HR
3'_7: 857m/1:45.0/30 spm/179 HR
Cooldown - 20'
r20312m

Didn't really push myself outside of the final two intervals, since I wanted to make sure I negative split the whole way this time. Ran out of gas a few times in the last interval and skipped half a beat a few times, but other than that, I made it through. It was a bit slower than last time, but I figured just getting the work in as opposed to killing myself was probably better given my relative lack of preparation.

I've started taking his advice re: warmup more seriously on these longer pieces; I'd compress things before, but if warming up to UT1 pace before a UT1 piece takes 18-20 minutes done correctly, then that's how long it should take before I do stroke builds for AT and TR sessions. That plus doing a full 20' cooldown afterwards led to this being my longest session ever (looks like I ended up at 90' flat when you add in the rest minutes between intervals).

nice work on the intervals and my standard awe struck smh at your 28 min warm up/

mmm, I do like the look of this, as it's my kind of interval lengths.

I think I've asked you this before but I assume your boy has you staying on the machine and continuing to row during the 6 min rest periods? What rate & speed are you doing during those 6 mins and roughly what does your hr get down to by the time you start the next interval?

So, you're pretty short for a rower .. but w/e ...

https://www.concept2.com/indoor-rowe...er-setting-101

So ... nah. You probably do really want to try the range I suggest. Your weight doesn't really matter.

Thanks!

It's just harnessing my OCD, lol - 3' each from 14 through 16 spm, then 1.5 minutes each from 17 through 22 makes 18' total, after which 1' light paddling, after which I do my three sets of stroke builds on the 3'. I have something to concentrate on with respect to pacing the entire time (plus the TV), so it doesn't feel like it takes that long.

It's a tough one, that's for sure, but you get to exert yourself, that's for sure; you only get to do intervals 6 and 7 if you negative split the first 5, so he encourages proper pacing.

Regarding rest interval paddling, for this piece, he only requires that you paddle the first and last minute of the rest intervals, but says you have to stay moving during the entire six minutes regardless. I like banking the meters, so I row the whole time (except for some time to sip water); I ended up doing a shade under 9k meters for those 42 minutes, but between pausing to drink and gasp for air, I'd guess I maybe rowed for 40 minutes total. It ends up being around a 2:15 pace or a bit higher for the time I'm actually active, but it's at a higher drag so it's not exactly ultra-easy. It does feel good for me to keep moving, though. HR-wise I end up getting down to UT2 level (145-155 range) by the time I start my next interval.

4/26
ULD34 (UT3) - 30'
6781m/2:12.7/14.0 spm/135 HR/147 MHR

All future unloading days are going to be feet out unless otherwise noted; felt pretty good and controlled today.

HR a little high today, but not surprising given the weekend booze and heavy day yesterday. 60' of UT2 tomorrow and UT1 intervals either Wednesday or Thursday depending on recovery.

4/27
Warmup - 10'
LD41 (UT2) - 50'
12106m/2:04.0/16.3 spm/154 HR/172 MHR
Cooldown - 15' (including 5x15 strokes @ 1:39-1:41)
r5867m

Legs felt pretty dead going into today, so this was kind of a drag; seems like tomorrow needs to be a rest day unless I feel amazing tomorrow. Cooldown included "short builds to race pace", which are 15-20 strokes at ~32 spm; he gave me a 1:42-1:43 target pace, but 1:40ish wasn't especially stressful, so I did that. It's definitely helping with my rhythm, and I'm more relaxed (if nowhere near relaxed enough) at these higher rates since he added these drills.

4/28
ULD35 (UT3) - 30'
6686m/2:14.6/13.5 spm/122 HR/132 MHR

Took today a bit easier.

This workout isn't exactly the same as the 15x3'/1'r I used to do (the rate is capped at 20 spm for this one), but close enough that I thought showing it might be interesting.

4/29
LD42 - 8x3'/1r (UT1)
6332m/24:00/1:53.7/20 spm/169 HR/179 MHR
3:00_1 - 777m/1:55.8/20 spm/155 HR
3:00_2 - 782m/1:55.0/20 spm/163 HR
3:00_3 - 785m/1:54.6/20 spm/165 HR
3:00_4 - 790m/1:53.9/20 spm/169 HR
3:00_5 - 794m/1:53.3/20 spm/172 HR
3:00_6 - 797m/1:52.9/20 spm/175 HR
3:00_7 - 801m/1:52.3/20 spm/177 HR
3:00_8 - 804m/1:51.9/20 spm/179 HR
r10753m (18' warmup + interval rests + 20' cooldown)

Seems like improvement? Don't think I could have kept the same rate of negative splitting at the pace I was going, but it seems like my power output improved overall in the last few months. RPE of the last set was probably 8-8.5 or so, so about right for UT1. Glad I rested yesterday.

4/30
ULD36 (UT3) - 30'
6691m/2:14.5/13.9 spm/125 HR/138 MHR

Might be getting a little bit of a cold; we'll see how I feel tomorrow.

Today marks the end of the 2020-21 Rowing Season as tracked by Concept2; I logged 4,276,375 meters, which seems pretty k.

this is a really nice looking session. Great pacing

Pretty sick volume for the season, great work!