Roger Bikes

Category: Rowing

  • Too fast to start 2k

    Too fast to start 2k

    On Saturday I had my first 2km rowing test as part of the twelve week training program I am following. The goal of the training program is to improve my time in a 2km row.

    This training program is divided up into three 4 week segments. I just finished the first 4 week segment which ended with a 2km test. In 4 more weeks there is another test and 4 weeks after that will be the final test.

    Why 2km?

    That’s a great question. Being a noob to rowing I’m still getting up to speed on why things are done a certain way. Apparently the 2km distance is akin to the 1 mile distance for running. It’s long enough to not be a sprint but short enough that you are going anaerobic the whole time.

    Testing 1, 2, ugh

    My goal was to finish in 8 minutes flat. I felt that pushing myself to hit 2 minutes for every 500 meters as a pace was reasonable based on my training. In training I was doing back to back sub 2 minute 500 meter sprints. If I slowed down a bit I could do four 500 meter sprints in 8 minutes.

    For most tests my plan was to start easy and finish strong. The guideline from my training program was to aim for a stroke rate of 36 strokes per minute. Which is a really fast stroke rate for me.

    Naturally I went out too hard trying to meet the 36 strokes per minute rate. I covered the first 500 meters in my fastest split ever: 1:48.8. I then tried to slow down a little to save something for the end.

    The problem with slowing down is that your brain starts playing tricks on you. It tells you things like: “Hey this going slower thing is really nice. Imagine if we stopped and went and had ice cream sandwiches?” I had to regain my strength physically and mentally to finish strong.

    Result

    In the end it hurt badly and I wanted to stop multiple times and I may have cried a little bit. That just means I was doing the test right, right? I am very happy it will be 4 weeks until the next test. Just like in school, tests suck.

    Started too fast but finished strong.

    At the 800 meter mark I was sucking air in as quickly as I could. I would then realize I needed to get control of my breathing and do my best to get a rhythm going.

    At 1200 meters I was crying a little bit. This was where my head was talking to me about ice cream sandwiches. I contemplated stopping to f only for a moment. This was the low point.

    From 1500 meters and to the finish I was feeling good. I knew I had saved something after the way too fast start. I was visualizing finishing the test and focused only on that. My breathing was mostly under control but I was on the edge of losing it.

    When I finished with my time of 7:43.6 I was very happy with myself. Even though I had made a mistake and went out too fast I was still able to beat my goal. Not gonna lie that felt nice and is encouraging me to continue the training program.

    Oh and we had ice cream with Girl Scout cookies to celebrate.

    Maybe going out too fast is how its done?

  • Rowing the distance

    While my blogging habit has had difficulties recently, my indoor rowing routine has stuck to the training plan. I was worried that this training plan was too aggressive but so far so good. I have been sticking to the schedule and have completed every workout assigned. On average I am doing about 10km a day, 6 days a week:

    In the Concept logbook a season is from May 1–April 30, hence the week numbers in the chart. You can see where we went to Mexico in weeks 38 and 39.

    The variety of workouts keeps it from getting too repetitive or boring. I have never been particularly fast at anything. At 6 foot 2 inches I take some time to get going but once I am up to speed I can stay there for a while. The interval workouts in this plan are not my normal type of workout. I occasionally done some intervals on my bike, but mostly I am just going for a LSD(Long Slow Distance) ride.

    One reason I don’t do intervals on my bike is that I do not want to crash. Anytime you are exercising at full effort the opportunity to be distracted and crash increase. With indoor rowing there is almost zero opportunity to crash. Doing intervals on an indoor rower are much more safe than pretty much anything else I can think of.

    My fastest 500m effort was in the 4th interval last Friday at 1:49.5:

    That time puts me at 3818 in the world, according to the Concept Logbook. I am not quitting my day job anytime soon.

    This morning’s workout was a 5km workout as fast as possible. After warming up for 10 minutes I did the 5km in 21:02.4. I could have gone faster but the instructions were to keep the stroke rate to 26 strokes per minute. I think that helped me keep at a steady pace and prevent myself from burning out too quickly. Once the main workout was completed I finished with a 15 minute cool down.

    This Saturday will be the first 2km test of the training program. My goal is to hold a 2:00 per 500 meter pace and finish the 2km in 8 minutes flat. Is that fast? The current fastest time in the logbook is 5:52.8. An 8 minute time would put me at 7725 overall.

    Clearly I am not a contender for anything other than being a participant in a strange metaverse of indoor rowers. For now its a nice distraction to the cold weather.

  • Diving into Indoor Rowing

    Just before Christmas I got an indoor rowing machine. The goal of getting the rower was to give me a way to exercise aerobically during the winter months. My left knee has no meniscus since it was removed surgically 4 years ago. This means that running is over for me, unless I want to accelerate and exacerbate arthritis. Riding a bike in sub freezing temperatures can be done but its not exactly fun. Then there is the chance of snow and ice which can be perilous at 20+ mph.

    So I got the rower with the intent of using Apple Fitness+ rowing workouts to get my morning workouts in. I prefer to workout in the morning because my brain isn’t totally turned on and distracted yet. This lets me get into the flow of a workout much more easily. Then I have the after glow benefits of the workout for the rest of the day. This helps me stay focused and comfortable while I am doing work or just relaxing on a day off.

    I quickly learned that the Apple Fitness+ rowing workouts are mostly anaerobic workouts with pretty high stroke rates. These types of workouts are useful for building strength and getting faster, but they do not build your aerobic fitness. Aerobic fitness training means that the body is using oxygen as fuel and has been shown to have a myriad of health benefits, both physically and mentally. Basically aerobic workouts are slower and easier than anaerobic workouts.

    So I needed to find an alternative for rowing workouts. I have found that having some type of structure for working out helps me stay committed to working out, lets me see progress in my fitness, and it reduces the chance for injury. Over the years I have followed a lot of different workout plans for a variety of exercises and goals.

    One of my goals with rowing is to do a marathon distance row of 26.2miles or 42.195 km. That will be a multi hour effort that will be best approached with a solid base of fitness and experience on the rower. I am not aiming to compete with anyone except myself to try and complete the distance. I want to do it prepared so that I can finish it and avoid injury.

    So I started searching for marathon training plans and found this thorough guide, which is a bit on the intense side of what I am planning to do. However it starts off by recommending that anyone new to rowing should start by focusing on a shorter distance first, like 2km. So I searched for 2km training plans and found this one. Its pretty straight forward and would give me a solid base to then move onto training for the Marathon later.

    Just before our Mexico River trip I did the first week of the 12 week short distance program. I am really glad I did because we did a lot of rowing on the trip due to there being a lot of flat water. The immediate difference to notice in this short distance training program is that there are a lot of interval workouts.

    Interval workouts are anaerobic workouts focused on getting you faster and stronger. This may seem confusing since I said that I wanted to do aerobic workouts. However to build a strong base when first starting a new exercise it is helpful to mix things up. The mixing things up is something that the Apple workouts did not do since there is no long term defined work out plan. With this 12 week short distance plan I do pure aerobic workouts 2 times a week. Then 4 times a week the workouts have an aerobic warmup and cooldown with interval training in the middle.

    The intervals are hard but they are helping me improve my form and understanding of rowing metrics significantly. They are also making me feel much stronger. My upper back, the lower half of my biceps, and my upper forearms feel especially stronger. This makes sense as I don’t do a lot of regular exercise that focuses on those muscles. In biking they get used but just to hold my torso up. They are not propelling me down the road, that is done by the legs.

    When I started rowing last month my form was not great and I didn’t know about strokes per minute and pace per 500m. Now I feel that my form is pretty solid and I have a much better grasp of how strokes per minute and pace work based on my goal with the workout. The metrics is one thing that I am really enjoying about rowing. The rowing machine has a surprisingly sophisticated computer that measures almost everything happening when you pull the handle.

    One of my favorite metrics is the average and peak force metrics. These tell you how hard you are pulling and it means that the rower is a power meter. For non sporting people a power meter may not mean much but in the last 10 years of so power meters have taken the sports training world by storm. Usually they are installed on a bike and allow for a more refined measurement of effort than the traditional heart rate meter.

    Measuring effort only with heart rate is problematic for a few reasons. The main one is that it is a measurement of effort after the effort has been applied. There is always a delay between the muscular effort applied and the resulting raise in heart rate. Another reason that heart rate measurement is less than ideal is that your heart rate changes based on a lot of factors besides the exercise. Dehydration, lack of rest, and the stress of daily life all affect our heart rates and therefore can make it difficult to get a good idea of what your effort actually is.

    With a power meter all of those issues are removed since the measurement is force applied to the machine and displayed as a force curve. The force curve lets me see in real time how much force I am applying and when. I can see if my transition from using my legs to my back and then arms is a smooth process or if I need to transition better.

    Yes the display looks like a graphing calculator from high school but I kinda love the simplicity of it. Maybe there is some nostalgia too. There is also an iPhone app for my rower that lets me see even more data while I am rowing. Its partially a nerd fest and workout session in one and I am kinda hooked. More to come.

  • 100,000 meters so far

    I bought an indoor rowing machine a few weeks ago to keep my aerobic fitness going through winter. We took delivery on Dec 24th and I did a short 10 minute workout to test it out. Since then I have used it 10 more days and so far have rowed over 100,000 meters or 100km, also known as over 62 miles.

    I am still trying to take it easy and the longest single distance rowed was today at 15km. I broke it up into four 3750meter segments with a 3 minute easy break between each one. Breaking it up like that is something I learned from a 12 week training program I am going to start after my vacation.

    One might think that rowing in a room would be really boring and it could be. To keep things more interesting I have been listening to audiobooks during the workouts. So far I have listening to Sid Meier’s Memoir, which if you have played any Sid Meier games is a fun listen. Now I am listening to Range by David Epstein, which is a really fascinating review of how humans have changed due to the modern world.

    This is a change from my initial use of Apple Fitness+ workouts, but I found that those workouts were not as helpful as more traditional rowing workouts. In the Apple workouts you watch the video to match the instructors strokes per minute. That works fine but from reading about rowing workouts the stroke rate they are using around 26 to 30 strokes per minute is pretty high.

    The training program I am using now has my long easy workouts at 18 to 20 strokes per minute. This is a lot slower stroke rate which allows me to focus on my form much more. It also keeps my heart rate in a zone 2 area which is best for improving aerobic fitness. There are also more difficult interval workouts that use higher stroke rates to work on my strength and speed.

  • Getting started with rowing

    Getting started with rowing

    I returned the really expensive mountain bike a few weeks ago. It was too small and I also don’t need a super duper high end mountain bike. I don’t need to go any faster than I already go. In the meantime the ground is covered in snow and riding a bike out of doors is not happening as much.

    This creates a lack of aerobic exercising which leads to a grumpy Roger. No one wants a grumpy Roger, especially me. At first we considered getting an indoor bike trainer setup. One consideration was to get a trainer that we could attach our road bikes to and ride inside. Another was to buy a spin class style trainer.

    While I was researching all of this I was also reminded that indoor rowing is a great aerobic exercise. A few years ago I got into the CrossFit thing as a good friend owns a gym here. CrossFit uses indoor rowing as an anaerobic workout or for warming up. I enjoyed using the rower, the rhythmic movement is similar to how pedaling a bike becomes a rhythm, and there is no impact.

    So I started researching indoor rowing machines and quickly identified 2 main types: air resistance and water resistance. The most famous air resistance is the RowErg® by Concept 2. You will see these in most gyms, they started making machines in 1981, and are used by elite athletes for training. There are a variety of water rowers on the market. The advantage of a water rower is that they are less noisy.

    My goal with the rower is training and the RowErg is very reasonably priced compared to all types of brands I reviewed. I asked my Crossfit gym owner friend for advice and she highly recommended the RowErg. So the purchase was made.

    We took delivery on Christmas Eve and I have used it all but one day so far. We agreed to set it up in the guest bedroom in the basement. This gave it a dedicated space so that it is always ready to be used. We can also close the door to avoid bothering anyone else in the house.

    With the location determined now we need to start rowing. Apple Fitness+ offers rowing classes so we started using those. They are good workouts but a little short and more focused on keeping a high stroke rate of 26 to 30 strokes per minute. One of my goals in 2022 will be to row a marathon or 42194 meters. Training for that will require slowing down and rowing for much longer.

    Concept2, who makes the RowErg, have an extensive training section on their website. Part of this is a Workout of the Day (WOD) which emails you each morning 3 workout options for the day: short, medium, and long. So far I have done 2 of the long workouts and they have kicked my butt. The first was 2 sets of 6000 meters and the second was 3 sets of 4000 meters.

    Concept2 also has an online log book that you can manually enter or use their mobile app to do so. The app connects wirelessly to your rower to collect workout data which you can then quickly sync to the cloud. This helps them keep the cost of the rower significantly lower. Once you upload the data you can then see what other Concept2 users are doing from the Rankings tab of the log book.

    Concept2 goes even further with this and has Challenges throughout the year to keep you motivated and even connect with other rowers. There are also teams and races depending on how involved you want to get. For now I am using this as a training tool especially while there is snow on the ground.

    As with any new toy I am tempted to use it all the time right now. However this is a great way to burnout and even get injured. I am giving myself some time to get used to rowing without getting too crazy. I will continue to take it fairly easy and use it as a way to prepare for rowing our raft on the Usumacinta.

    Once we get back from the trip I plan to start training for a Marathon effort sometime in April or May. That should give me enough time to get used to spending long periods of time on the rower.