What Was Your Work Out Today?

aokoye wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

aokoye wrote: »

Second day of the NW Masters Rowing Championships. I was in a mixed 8, our B boat (that was amusingly called the A boat on paper...) in the race. We rowed a really good race against mostly non-novice boats. We also totally walked on one of the novice boats that was there. I stroked the race again - my coach jokingly said that I stole it from one of the novice women who is in a similar place as I am with regards to her quick development (I think she's been rowing handful of months more than I have). I initially had her as coxing but wanted to wait to see how my men's 4 went.

Our cox was amazing! He coxes his D1 university's women's varsity 8 crew. His calls were so. good. And I mean, all of our coxes for this regatta are great and I've been coxed by three of the six that we're using, but this was so good. Note, he isn't the most experienced, that goes to the person who coxed my men's 4+ and has coxed at the US Olympic trials multiple times (and is probably AnnPT's age). A lot of our other boats had good races as well, especially our women's AA* 8+, men's F 2-, and our mixed E 2x, all of whom got first by over 9 seconds age adjusted.

*AA, F, and E (among other letters) are age categories that are used in masters rowing more on that here.
More information on boat classes, specifically on things like, "so what is a 2- anyways?" can be found on this handy Wikipedia page (a 2- is a coxless pair - two rowers each with one oar in a very tippy rowing shell). Also "mixed" in this context means men and women are rowing in the same boat.

Sounds like another great race-day: Wonderful!

Yes, great coxes are amazing. It's very amusing that what most non-rowers think they do is shout "stroke-stroke-stroke" or something. Good steering alone can be a factor in race results, not to mention the on-water tech corrections a good cox will pick up on, smart use of opponent-boat position and performance as a motivator, and general energy/mood management for the boat if the cox is good at reading & manipulating that.

I'd even carry that perspective over into indoor racing: They let competitors have a cox (who typically sits in a folding chair behind the rowing machine). If I can get a decent one, I'd always do that for machine racing, too. Even a fellow rower who's a good technique coach can do this, since the coxing-specific tech skills (like steering, water-reading) are out of the picture.

Thanks Ann and @MikePfirrman! And yes omg good coxs. At one point shortly after we lengthened I was like "omg he's amazing!" The calls he made were just so good. And he called the rhythm which was great. I looked at the times just now and it's very clear there were essentially three races (note - there wasn't a mixed novice 8 race). Bainbridge Island won by nearly 8 seconds, then there was the crews who got second through 4th (one of which was from my club) and then there were essentially the 5th-7th crews all of which were likely novices. Amusingly, order of those three rews (5th-7th) was the same as in my Novice 4 race in terms of the places.

My "workout" today was de-rigging and trailering boats and then doing the opposite once we got back. I didn't have any races but I went to support my teammates and help out. It turns out that there's a bit of a rigging and putting boats back in the boat house party after regionals as well. It's very good incentive to not stay home.

I've never had a Cox. Would LOVE one for an indoor race. The issue with Indoor racing is that you have to be careful with the venue. My last race (in Indianapolis), I knew the previous times of one racer and was designated to sit next to him, it's all public record on race results. I thought he was my biggest challenger. He and his Cox went over his strategy with me listening to their entire conversation. I held a slim lead going into the last 800 or so and knew when he was going to try to sprint (at around 500m). It's a way bit earlier than I like to like to sprint, but I set a PB by seven seconds (went from 7:18 to 7:11). His cox was awesome but it might have helped me more! Turns out that someone entered last minute and nudged me into second by a less than a second. We had 3 in our age group and I thought it was only two of us -- they put as many as 3 age groups going at the same time, so we were racing with 40 somethings too -- 10 down the line at a time.

Another time, a guy that had some of the best form I'd ever seen sat next to me. He was in his 60s but it was in Cincy and they lumped us all together in the same category, which isn't fair. His son was his Cox and was also amazing. I lead the entire race and his son was barking out orders for him to improve pace to catch me. It also motivated me. The issue with an Indoor cox is that everyone can nearly hear everyone else's instructions, but it's a huge motivation factor. Also, having someone that knows your race strategy and knows rowing would be huge.

7.9K rowing the double today (Monday), after an unusual-for-summer two-day break. Sunday's my standard real rest day; Saturday I went to an all-day workshop of my mixed-media book arts group, and missed out on a beautiful day for rowing with my rowing-club friends. Sadly, a person can't do everything . . . and I admit I waved wistfully at the river from the highway bridge as we were driving to the workshop.

30 minutes on the indoor rower today. Felt OK on the rower, then got on the Air Bike and felt a bit flush and shaky. Shut it down after 10 minutes, very light on the bike. Hopefully, I just pushed too hard yesterday. Had a juice in the AM, so it wasn't because I didn't eat. Anyway, feeling better now. Plan to go light again tomorrow.

6 miles of walking and a quick kettlebell circuit
Slowly easing back into resistance training

15 min bike
50 min elliptical

Yesterday- 90 minute Krav Maga stripe test. I’m tired and sore but had a blast.

Spin class day again.

Started the day with an easy 3.1 mile run, felt a lot slower than it actually was.

5/3/1 cycle 2 week 1 deadlifts and bench with
5x10@42.5kg sumo deadlifts
5x10@26kg bench

No PT again today but she gave me a lovely spin workout to do.

10x 20sec sprint/20 sec recover
10x 40sec standing hill climb/20sec recover
10x 20sec sprint/20sec recover
5x 40sec standing hill climb/20 sec recover

Collapse in a sweaty, shaking mess.

Finished the day with 45min of extremely sweaty insanity

dvmmcw3094 wrote: »

Starting on the 80:20 running program. Theory is most runners spend too much time training too hard- they suggest running 80% of the time at a slower pace then 20% of the time at a hard effort to improve race times. I am trying to once again to break 60 minutes in 10K and 2 hours in the half marathon as my running seems to have stalled.
Week one is getting used to running slow.
40 minutes at 4.7mph. Definitely felt slow 🏃🏽‍♀️

Not only for runners. I know several rowers that have gotten off of plateaus by doing this technique. Mind numbingly boring for your slow, steady days. But it has to be very hard (like 90% to 95%) on your 20%. It's very hard when you're "feeling it" on slow days and can't blow out smoke, so to speak. Most rowers make this same mistake. Your 80% should feel like a 6 out of 10. I'm about ready to embark on a long term training program using a HRM to better track this using HR spread. HR isn't exact either but it helps you realize (roughly) where you need to be and if you're working too hard on your long, slow days. I know tons of rowers that do HR restricted work. They figure out just how far they can work without building up lactic acid and then stay there and don't exceed that HR. Now, this changes over time with better fitness and work.

Calisthenics warmup
Romanian deadlifts 2x12
Pushups 2x12
Lunges 2x12
One arm DB row 2x12

0626

Handstand Pushup - Grease The Groove (On a Yoga Block)
5 x 3 (15)

Pull-ups - Fighter Pull-Up Program (15R Max) Day 10/30
5 x 8 (40)
*Changing up the rest format. Going to do this until Friday, take Saturday
and Sunday off and pick up day 11 on Monday…

Yoga
Hatha Sun Salutation - 10 Rounds

Meditate

7500m on the indoor rower today. Set up the new HRM. Worked great with the rower and ErgData (a rower app). Then I tried to do 24 minutes (what was left to make up an hour) on the AirDyne Pro and couldn't get it to sync to that. Ended up adding an app to my phone to track what HR I have during those workouts too.

On the rower, I was around a 143 HR average, 115 or so Watts, 21 SPM, 2:23 pace or so. Slow for that high of HR. But the HRM was very solid throughout as far as I could tell. Huge upgrade over the last time I tried one (a Polar H7). My Polar H7 was all over the place on the rower. Never was accurate.

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