Having just done 40Km OTW, with several race pieces on the weekend and about 10K On the Erg (OTE), the last thing I felt like doing was a full marathon OTE for the C2 Marathon and Century Challenge.
Unfortunately if I didn’t do it today, it wasn’t going to happen. This was a bonus Bank Holiday due to the recent Coronation of King Charles III and I wouldn’t have the time on any other days before 15th May to do it, so today was the day.
The dog woke me up at about 05:30, so I dragged myself up and took him for a walk, came back, fed him and set up the rower.
My PB (by default) from my only previous full marathon, done during this challenge last year, was 3:18:52.3. I set a pace boat for 2:08 (3:00:00 target time) and off we go.
It took less than 500m to realise that the target pace simply wasn’t happening today, and certainly not for 3 hours straight, not after the beating my body took on the weekend, so I just settled into a comfortable pace instead, although even that dropped somewhat around the middle section.
I had to stop just before half way for a bathroom break and then set off again, I passed the half marathon point in about 1:35:00, which pretty much confirmed that sub 3 hours was not even on the cards for today, I decided instead to concentrate on beating my previous time.
I started winding the pace up with around 8,000m to go and pushed for home from 4,000m and again from 2,000m, the last 2,000m was completed in under 8 minutes, but I was only really chasing down seconds at that point, I had already lost to the pace boat by 3,825m.
I beat my previous time by over 3 minutes, although that time was not really that special to start with, based on what I should be capable of when fresh.
I will of course take the win, I started this piece knowing my body was tired going in to it.
I finished off the session with a 2,234m cool down to relax my legs and then some stretching.
This completes the full marathon part of this challenge.
Tomorrow is most definitely a rest day, OK, I may do some archery in the evening, but absolutely no rowing.
Tuesday morning, rest day, took the dog for a nice long walk, then emptied the car out (I keep may archery stuff in the boot), dropped the car off for a service and MOT and walked back home.
Tuesday evening, archery, this was supposed to be our first clout of the outdoor season, however rain stopped play and we were inside once again.
Wednesday morning rowing, I decided that our team needed a bit of a push with regards to OTE meters, so decided to do another half marathon, no warm up as usual, just straight in.
Second half marathon for the C2 Marathon and Century Challenge, nowhere near as fast as the last one as I was still recovering from Monday’s marathon.
No cool down as I had not exactly caused my heart rate to rise, the highest it reached was 110 BPM!
Thursday morning rowing, 2,000m (10:00.8) warm up, then I decided to have another go at a 500m TT, this time with a higher damper setting, so I pushed the damper up to 10, which made the drag factor 197 as opposed to my usual setting of around 125.
I beat last Thursday’s time by 2 seconds for another PB, however I felt that on this occasion the drag factor was too high and I was struggling towards the end.
caught my breath and then ‘just rowed’ for 10,014m (46:34.7) and finished off with a 2,237 (11:34.6) cool down and some stretching.
Thursday evening rowing, ‘red boards’ on the river, so just sat on the erg, ground out 10,013m while waiting for anyone else to show up, then decided to have another crack at a 500m TT.
I picked a damper setting at around an 8 which equated to a drag factor of 151, this was a much better setting, I started off well, actually hitting a 1:29/500m split, but at around 350m, I was fading fast die to all of today’s exercise and the estimated completion time was dropping below 1:34, at which point I backed off and just rowed it lightly in to the finish for a time of 1:44.
I finished off the session with a 2,547m (12:17.2) cool down and some stretching.
Friday morning, I had had another bad night’s sleep, not really sure why, I was certainly tired enough. I had intended to do another 10Km piece this morning, however after taking the dog for a walk I really couldn’t face it and so decided to have a rest day.
The Desborough Challenge has been postponed due to high stream on the river and is now set for Saturday 3rd June. There is still a chance that tomorrow’s OTW session will be called off due to high stream, but we will have to wait and see.
Saturday morning rowing, 6,010m (28:23.6) warm up for masters men’s rowing,
This morning, the river was on ‘Yellow Decreasing’ and ‘Red Boards’ either side of our section and we were contemplating Ergs or braving it out on the water.
After some considerable deliberation we opted to go out in a 4x rather than a 4- with regards stability when turning around in the strong stream, I was assigned the stroke seat being the most experienced sculler.
I in last week’s post about my experience with the senior men’s crew, this included two 2,000m(ish) pieces at ‘race pace’, I thought that this would make a nice comparison piece.
The below graph and metrics are from a section of the first of these race pieces (Church to the bottom), the one with the best time for the 2K (6:58.6) done at an average of 34spm.
This shows that we covered the 689m in 2:27.6 and 82 strokes at an average pace of 1:47.1 and my heart rate hitting 172 BPM (this was with a stream of 56.9m3/s).
We decided not to go all the way to the top as the stream directly off the weir would be even stronger, so stayed towards the bottom half of our stretch of the river.
We went up and down a couple of times at around 20spm just to get used to the boat, some of the crew had not sculled in quite a few months, so were a bit rusty.
On our final run to the bottom we decided to raise the rate to around 24spm and ‘send it’ with the legs for a bit more of a ‘push’.
We covered the 698.5m in 2:25.2 and 58 strokes at an average pace of 1:43.9 and my heart rate was a sedate 143 BPM (the stream today was 96.4m3/s).
So what does this tell us? Well if there is enough of a stream difference, 4 old men in a quad (3 of whom are not particularly fit) can be significantly faster at a much lower rate than 3 fit young men and a relatively fit old geezer in a four going ‘hell for leather’.
We then rowed ‘up and in’ for a total of 10,034m.
Walked into Staines, bought my usual Thai spicy chicken and rice from the market for lunch and headed back to the boat club to eat it.
Sat on the erg for a 6,017m (26:42.6) warm up and then out with the leisure group.
The stream was still high so rather than put the Desborough crew out in one leisure quad we were split across a few different boats to help spread the power. I was assigned a leisure double with one of the more powerful ladies and we proceeded to do three laps between the moorings and the church with a power piece from Staines Bridge to the church on each lap, this was great fun and we covered 6,891m.
Today was also the day that Team Either Oar crossed the finish line in Zion National Park, in first place, having completed our 1,068,604m ‘jaunt’ from Yellowstone National Park.
We still needed to complete our on the water version of the same challenge, for which we were currently about 60% complete with a month and a half to go.
Sunday morning rowing, 6,012m (28:06.6) warm up for masters men’s rowing and then again out in the same 4x, but a slightly different crew, #2 and #3 being new compared to yesterday and #2 still relatively new to rowing, I was once again in the stroke seat.
Similar session to yesterday, although we did not really push the rate as much due to the boat feeling less stable with the newer rower, (10,177m).
Walked into Staines, McDonnalds for breakfast before heading back to the boat club.
I sat on the erg and decided to see what happened and ended up deciding to do 1,000m pieces dropping 5 seconds from the pace at the start of the next 1,000m.
I started at 2:30/500m and stopped trying after 8,000m after having just done the last 1,000m at 1:55/500m, I then spent the next 2,000m cooling off before heading out for leisure rowing.
On today’s leisure session it was my turn to share the coxing seat for the session with one of the others, I started in the coxing seat and took them through the warm up, some technical drills and then a power piece from ‘the Staines Bridge to the church before turning around and swapping with the lady in the stroke seat.
We then rowed back up to the moorings before doing a second power piece down to the church again before going ‘up and in’ (5,022m).