Just 5 days to go on the C2 April Fool’s Challenge and the C2 World Erg Challenge, then I can have a rest day.
Monday morning rowing, 2,000m (10:20.5) warm up, then 10,000m for the C2 World Erg and the Dark Horse National Parks Challenges.
More UT2 training, no point tiring myself out on these distance challenges. 2,243m (12:08.5) cool down and stretching. Day 10 of the C2 April Fool’s Challenge (10,000m requirement).
Tuesday morning rowing, 2,000m (10:18.2) warm up, then 10,000m for the C2 World Erg and the Dark Horse National Parks Challenges.
Another UT2 ‘fat burner’ no cool down today as I have a 09:00 meeting, Day 11 of the C2 April Fool’s Challenge (11,000m requirement).
Tuesday evening archery, ‘longbow Vegas’, I thought it would be fun to give the 1/2 Vegas a go with a longbow, apparently the Herts county record for this is a score of 93, I managed a score of 74 with loads of misses, so 93 is definitely possible.
Wednesday morning rowing, 2,000m (10:16.8) warm up, then 10,000m for the C2 World Erg and the Dark Horse National Parks Challenges.
Another UT2 ‘fat burner’ 2,242m (10:32.2) cool down and stretching. Day 12 of the C2 April Fool’s Challenge (12,000m requirement), only 3 more days to go.
Thursday morning rowing, 2,000m (10:18.4) warm up, then 10,000m for the C2 World Erg and the Dark Horse National Parks Challenges.
Another UT2 ‘fat burner’ 2,235m (10:04.2) cool down and stretching. Day 13 of the C2 April Fool’s Challenge (13,000m requirement), only 2 days to go.
Friday morning rowing, 2,000m (9:53.5.4) warm up, then 10,000m for the C2 World Erg and the Dark Horse National Parks Challenges.
Another UT2 ‘fat burner’ 2,234m (10:40.0) cool down and stretching. Day 14 of the C2 April Fool’s Challenge (14,000m requirement), 1 more day.
Saturday morning rowing, today was the last day of the C2 World Erg Challenge and also the C2 April Fool’s Challenge, I needed 15,000m for day 15 of the April Fool’s Challenge which would also just take me over the 400,000m line for the World Erg Challenge.
There is still no rowing on the river due to high flow and river height, Abingdon HORR (tomorrow) is also cancelled for the same reason.
I was a little fed up of doing 2,000m warm ups, 10,000m steady state pieces and 2,200m cool down sessions so decided I would finish both the C2 challenges in style with a half marathon.
I don’t do warm up pieces before half marathons as they are long enough and usually build enough over time to be their own warm up.
I decided to watch ‘Mindgamers’ as a distraction as this lasts about an hour and 38 minutes and I should be done before the film ends.
The above screenshot only tells half the story.
I started off well and felt good, so decided to settle at a pace of around 2:06/500m and 25-26spm.
Whilst I had not gone into this session with the intention of it being a time trial, by about half way through I was becoming increasingly annoyed with myself that my pace kept dropping to around 2:10/500m due to zoning out watching the film – it was actually working too welll as a distraction.
With 10,000m to go I took my airpods out (blue dip in the graph below) and actually started concentrating on putting in a semi decent time, I was unsure of my current PB so did not really have a target time to aim for.
As previously mentioned, I had been aiming to keep my average pace at around 2:06/500m, but now decided to push it to around 2:02/500m whilst still keeping the rate at around 26spm, it still drifted, but I kept pulling it back.
Then with about 4,000m to go, I pushed again to average 2:00/500m, and raised the rate to 28spm, again it drifted, but with 2,000m to go I pushed for the finish, aiming to keep 1:57/500m or better and upped the rate to around 30spm, finishing with a power 10 over the last 100m at 1:54/500m and 33spm.
The first 10,000m took me 42:19.1, I completed the last 10,000m in 40:42.3, the last 5,000m in 20:10.8, last 2,000m in 7:49.9 and the last 500m in 1:54.5.
I crossed the line in 1:27:48.4:
This turned out to be a new PB by 10.4 seconds and begs the question, what could I have achieved if I was actually trying from the start?
This completed the April Fool’s Challenge:
Having done way more than the 15,000m requirement for the day. Congratulations to all the other Dark Horses who also completed this challenge.
After catching my breath for a few minutes, I then did a further 2,241m (11:20.7) as a cool down to work the lactic acid out of my legs from the ‘sprint finish’ on the half marathon and then some stretching to complete the World Erg Challenge with a total of 409,615m.
Congratulations also to the other 86 people who signed up to the World Erg Challenge, and donated their meters to team Dark Horse, not all of whom are on this forum, looks like we will finish 10th this year.
Whilst the Dark Horse National Parks Challenge is still on-going, I believe I have earned myself a day of rest tomorrow.
Sunday rest day, I took the dog for a nice long morning walk, but other than that had a restful day.
Went to see the musical ‘Newsies’ with my daughter at the Wembley Troubador Theatre in the evening.