Week 4 of Dog Days of Summer (40,000m requirement), looking to complete this on the water and a week behind on the Erg.
Monday morning, rest day, took the dog for a long walk, recovery from the weekend.
Tuesday morning rowing, another bad night, really not feeling like exercise, 2,000m (9:55.3) warm up, 10 laps of the C2 Real Time Loop, low heart rate ‘fat burner’ recovery row.
2,239m (12:03.9) cool down and some stretching.
Wednesday morning rowing, I decided to have another go at the 16spm beat the coach workout.
This will be the fourth time I have done this workout, the last time was just over a year ago, so with Head Race season just around the corner I thought it was time to have another go.
2,000m (10:08.2) warm up, then onto the legburner, this is an unrelenting workout, you can’t speed up because of the rate cap and you have to put in maximum effort on every stroke to claim the meters.
I felt the 17spm average it gave me for the last 4 minutes was a little harsh, if you check the graph, it was not really any worse than the previous 8-12 minutes.
New PB by 197m and just short of 5,000m, I am really happy with the progression.
12/08/2021 – 4,364m (2:17.5/500m)
18/10/2021 – 4,670m (2:08.5/500m)
27/05/2022 – 4,782m (2:05.5/500m)
23/08/2023 – 4,979m (2:00.5/500m)
I am still over 200m short of Shane Farmer‘s 5,263m (1:54.0/500m), but in my defence, he is a few years younger than me.
5,016m (24:19.7) cool down and some stretching.
Thursday morning rowing at the work gym, 2,000m (9:59.1) warm up, then another go at the 500m monthly challenge
0.6 seconds faster than last week at a slightly more sensible stroke rate, still 0.8 seconds off my PB.
10 laps of the C2 Real Time Loop, slowly getting faster, eased off a little towards the end then blasted the last 500m at 1:48.
Looks like the heart rate monitor was playing up again. 2,236m (11:06.6) cool down and stretching, shower, breakfast in the canteen and then up to my desk.
Thursday evening rowing, this was supposed to be a fine double with another member of the masters men’s squad, but he cancelled, so rather than wait for leisure I decided to have a long outing in my single, 2 complete laps of our section of the river for 13,102m
Friday morning rest day, I decided I had done enough exercise yesterday to warrant a day off before ramping it up on the weekend again.
Saturday morning rowing, 2,016m (9:33.0) warm up for masters rowing, the 8+ needed to be reassembled, so only a short warm up this morning before helping with the re-rig.
Masters rowing, fine 4x, stroke seat, steady state and a coupe of bridge to bridge ‘blasts’ (12,550m).
It was our turn to clean the boathouse, so I swept the boat area before heading into Staines for my usual Thai spicy chicken and rice for lunch.
Saturday afternoon leisure rowing, leisure 2x bow seat with Si, spent most of the session trying to persuade him to square the oar before putting it in the water for a longer stroke.
Sunday morning rowing, 5,017m (23:08.6) warm up for masters rowing.
Masters rowing, fine 4-, stroke seat, steady state then playing ‘leap frog’ with the other crew (9,209m)
Sunday afternoon archery, Short Metric shoot away against Bowmen of Harrow.
Very enjoyable shoot, as expected we lost the made score side of the competition by a wide margin as we did not have any of our best archers present (besides me) and I wasn’t shooting well, however we won the handicap side comfortably thanks to mainly bringing new archers.
This is the third time I have completed the Dog Days of Summer challenge.
The first was started on the day I received my RowErg on 1st August 2021, I was 17 and a half stone (245Lb/111Kg) and even 2,000m seemed like a long way, but this seemed like a challenge that would push me slowly to increasing distance and by the end of the month I had completed 100Km and was 18Lb/8Kg lighter. (I already knew how to row from school, I was just overweight and unfit).
August 2022 I had just bought a SkiErg, so decided to complete the challenge on both the RowErg and the SkiErg, so 100Km on each, I was no longer looking to lose weight by now, having lost 3 stone (42Lb/19Kg) in the first 9 months of rowing, 3.5 million meters in the bank and just looking to increase strength and fitness.
August 2023, I was out of the country, on holiday, when the challenge started and was grateful that On The Water (OTW) meters counted as I had no access to any kind of Erg for 4 weeks, but was by now a year back into rowing OTW and had reached out to a couple of rowing clubs near where I was staying and was going out for sessions with them.
Week 1 was 35,181 OTW meters and Zero On The Erg (OTE) meters
Week 2, I was back home, 40,432 OTW meters and 10,024 OTE meters (maybe do the OTE challenge a week behind?)
Week 3 was 40,804 OTW meters and 49.044 OTE meters
Week 4 was 41,634 OTW meters and 48,028 OTE meters
Week 5 is on track to complete over 40,000m OTE with 1 day and 12,012m already in the bag, but will most likely also feature another 40Km+ OTW.
