The Concept 2 Dog Days of Summer challenge is here again, this year I have decided to do it on the SkiErg, and see how long I can also keep up with doing it on the RowErg as well.
The challenge is 10,000m in week 1, 20,000m in week 2, 30,000m in week 3 and 40,000m in week 4, this is how I started my fitness journey a year ago with my new RowErg.
Monday morning skiing, 1000m (5:43.8) warm up, 5000m for the challenge (26:32.2) and then a 1125m (6:53.8) cool down.
In the evening I had signed up for a 30 minute ‘Kettlebell’ class at the gym, I also managed to persuade both my children to come along to the gym with me.
I first warmed up on the treadmill with some intervals, 2 intervals of 2:00 @ 6Km/h alternating between zero incline and max (15%) incline, followed by 2:00 of zero incline @ 12Km/h then finally a cool down of 2:00 @ 6Km/h, 1:00 @ 4KM/h and 1:00 at 3Km/h, I then headed off to find the class.
I was surprised to find that I was the only male in the full class of 15 attendees. I was also expecting more actual kettlebell work, only about 30% of the class involved the kettlebell, the rest was HIIT cardio and a small amount of barbell work. I used a 14Kg kettlebell and a 15Kg barbell.
The session certainly had me sweating and kept my heart rate up, there were a few sections where I could definitely feel fatigued and had to take short rests to recover.
After the session I spotted my son with the various barbell squats he was doing before heading over to the rowing machine – I can’t go to the gym and not row!
2K (7:53.6) as a sort of warm up – I was hoping for a bit quicker, but I could feel I was quite fatigued by this point so I did some steady state rowing, 2231m (11:00.3) before challenging my son to a 500m race.
He set out much faster than I expected and after only 20 seconds he had a potential finish time of 1:50, so I thought if I do not start soon, I will never catch him so I set off in persuit.
He says his headphones started to slip at around 250m, and he slowed down to adjust them, but we both know that in reality he had blown up a bit from the fast start.
I caught him with about 100m to go and finished with a time 0f 1:42.5, which while not great for me was about right given my level of fatigue.
My son finished with a very respectable time of 2:04.2, I believe he could easily get below 2:00 if he paced it slightly better.
I then worked out the lactic acid I had just built up with a 1128m (5:04.6) cool down and then some stretching before we headed home.
Tuesday, calisthenics pull day, a repeat of last weeks session, but increasing the reps on a couple of items.
- Inverse Knee Rings Row – 3 x 12
- Rings Row – 3 x 5
- Rings Scapular Pull – 3 x 0:30
- Band Assisted Rings Pull Up (Purple) – 3 x 6
- Band Assisted Rings Chin Up (Purple) – 3 x 6
- Angled Rings Row – 3 x 12
- Static Rings Hold – 5 x 0:10
- Various Isometric Rings Holds – 0:10 each
Tuesday evening archery, shooting at 50m and helping the various beginners sort out their sight marks for 50m and 30m for this Sunday’s Short Metric double header shoot against Bowmen of Harrow and Hampstead Bowmen that we are hosting.
Wednesday morning skiing, a repeat of Monday’s session: 1000m (5:25.7) warm up, 5000m for the challenge (26:21.0) and then a 1123m (7:05.5) cool down.
This completes my 10,000m ski requirement for week one of the Dog Days of Summer challenge with 14,248m, although I will also ski on Friday to build up time on the machine.
The challenge counts both row and ski distances, so I actually completed the week 1 requirement on Monday, I am just trying to see if I can complete the challenge on each item separately.
Wednesday evening I had booked into the 30 minute ‘Lower Body Blast’ and 15 minutes ‘Abs Blast’ at the gym again, although my son has opted not to take part this week (I can’t say I blame him after how he suffered last week).
In the end I cancelled the classes as well, as I didn’t feel like another quads based HIIT session, although I still went to the gym.
Another treadmill interval warm up, 3 intervals of 2:00 @ 6Km/h alternating between zero incline and max (15%) incline, 3 intervals switching out the incline for 12Km/h then a cool down of 2:00 @ 6Km/h, 2:00 @ 4KM/h and 2:00 at 3Km/h.
I followed this up with some rowing, 2K (7:49.1), 3345m steady state (15:29.4), keeping my HR below 140bpm, 500m (1:42.2) and finally 1122m cool down (5:49.4) before heading home.
This completed the 10,000m rowing requirement for this week one of the Dog Days of Summer challenge with 12826m.
Thursday, calisthenics push day, a repeat of last weeks session, but removed the leg/core pieces.
- Knee Push Ups – 3 x 10 (low parallettes)
- Rings Support Hold – 3 x 0:10
- Bar Support Hold – 3 x 0:60
- Rings Bent Knee L Sit – 3 x 10
- Rings assisted dips – 3 x 10 (feet on floor)
- Numerous Rings Isometric holds
- Rings Push Ups – 3 x 10 (45 degree)
Friday, another skiing session the same as Monday and Wednesday: 1000m (5:50.9) warm up, 5000m for the challenge (23:26.1) and then a 1126m (6:33.2) cool down.
The 5K was not supposed to be a time trial, but it felt so good I just kept the pace and ended up with a new PB by 4 seconds, HR was mainly below 150bpm, so I could definitely go quicker if I just upped the average pace slightly as I finished still feeling good.
Friday evening I went and joined Staines Boat Club, this is the first step in getting me back on the water again, I have my eye on a racing single scull that I want to progress to.
Saturday morning, after walking the dog, I headed over to Henley to pick up a boat roof rack and have a look at the racing single, see the next post for the full story, long story short I bought the boat and brought it to Staines to store.
Sunday started off with another dog walk, baking a ‘cherry slice tray bake’ for the shoot later that day. Then in the afternoon my club, Harefield Archers, had an archery competition against Bowmen of Harrow. We were supposed to be hosting the shoot, but we could not get into the Harefield Academy and so ended up relocating to Harrow’s ground and running the shoot from there.
The conditions were almost perfect, if a little on the hot side, Harrow chose to set up 8 bosses and just have 2 people to a boss, this made for a much faster shoot as we only needed a single shooting detail and could shoot 6 arrows at both 50m and 30m with a low risk of arrow damage.
That said, the other person shooting on my target managed to ‘Robin Hood’ one of my arrows. On the plus side, both scored an X (inner 10 ring), although it was somewhat more of an expensive one for me as I will now need a new arrow!
As expected, we lost the ‘made score’ part of the tournament, and also as expected we won the handicap part, so we have started as we mean to continue in our quest to retain the handicap trophy.