Monday rowing, set the drag factor to about 150 and did a 2K warm up with 5 sets of 10 strokes hard in the last 1000m to wake the muscles up.
Took a few minutes as a breather before attacking Dark Horse challenge A (0:45 for distance).
I Managed 235m, i never really hit my desired pace and then it was all over, 3m better than Wednesday, but 7m worse than last week.
Not overly bothered as this one has the least overall impact on the total distance, but looks like I may need to do some work on my sprints at some point.
Moved the drag factor back to 135 and then onto my 10K whilst watching Battlestar Galactica S01E03 (47:40.8).
Decided to try out my ‘new to me’ SkiErg and do a 1K – I managed 4:43.5 (2:21.7) at 41 spm, places me in the 11th percentile for my age group, so I have quite a way to go to push myself to the other side of the bell curve.
Drag Factor was set at about 80, no idea if this is a good setting or not. I felt this one in the quads, as every stroke is a squat, this will take a while to get used to.
Finished off with a 1K cool down on the rower and some stretching.
Updated the firmware on the SkiErg from version 716 to 723, looks like it had not been updated since it was new.
Tuesday calisthenics, repeated last Tuesday’s workout, increased reps and times, swapped bent knee rows for straight leg rows.
- Straight Arm Plank – 3 x 2:00
- Inverse Row – 3 x 5
- Reverse Plank – 3 x 2:00
- Row – 3 x 5
- Close Squat – 3 x 30
- Scapular Pull – 3 x 0:35
- Band Assisted Pull Up (Green) – 3 x 6
- Band Assisted Chin Up (Green) – 3 x 6
- Knee to Floor Lunge – 3 x 30
- Asian Squat – 3 x 3:00
One large superset running down the list 3 times.
Tuesday Evening Archery, spent the evening mainly shooting at 70m.
Wednesday rowing, new benchmarks for week 3, I was hoping for good things this morning, however everything ended up falling just short.
Dog walk this morning was a little uncomfortable – walking in barefoot shoes all week has caused the area just in front of the ball of my left foot to be a little tender, I will give my feet a break from them for a day or so.
2K warm up went well, slightly warmer today so felt warmer much faster, foot pain not really noticable when rowing.
Challenge C started with so much promise, but then I started to fade after only 4-5 minutes, fade continued through 12 minutes, then I started to pull it back again to finish with 4463m
This is 69m down on last week’s baseline and 18m down on my week 1 baseline that was done after challenges A and B.
Challenge B did not go much better at 837m, it was a consistent row, but just never quite hit my desired pace.
This is 29m down on last week’s basseline and 31m down on week my 1 baseline.
Challence C – why not, in for a penny, in for a pound, how bad could it be?
It was terrible, the rower had come off the front of the mat and was sliding all over the place, my concentration was shot, form went to pieces and I ended up with 219m.
7m down on last week’s baseline, but 23m down on my week 1 baseline (I did do that one first though).
Re-positioned the rower on the mat and did my 2.2K cool down and then decided to give C another shot, I couldn’t believe it could be any worse.
This time I managed 226m which was only 1m down on last week’s baseline and 17m down on week 1 but 6m up on the earlier disaster. Still not a great distance, but I was tired by this point and was just happy the session was over.
The one big positive to come out of this mornings less than optimal baseline session for week 3, was that I passed 3 million metres on the RowErg since I started using it last August.
The length of time taken, to achieve each million, has remained fairly consistent 107, 105 and 106 days, although the number of actual days rowed to achieve each one has gone down 88, 75 and 72.
This in turn means that the average number of metres rowed on a day of rowing has gone up from 11363 to 13333 and now 13888m.
Calisthenics, repeated last Thursday’s workout, but increased some of the reps and times a bit more.
- Incline Push Ups – 3 x 5 – parallettes
- Close Squat – 3 x 30
- Bent Knee L Sit – 3 x 0:35 – dip station
- Hollow Body Hold – 3 x 30
- Frog Stand – 3 x 0:10
- Lying Knee Tuck – 3 x 40
- Bar Support Hold – 3 x 0:55
- Band Assisted Dip (Green) – 3 x 10
- Straight Bridges – 3 x 30
- Leg Raises 9cm – 90 degrees 3 x 30
One large superset running down the list 3 times, went from knee push ups to full body.
Friday rowing, 2K warm up with only 2 sets of 10 hard this time – save that energy.
Challenge B here we go – Well that didn’t exactly go to plan.
I didn’t think I started out too hard, I was doing 1:39/1:40 at about 35spm, this was my intended pace and rate.
By 1 minute 40 I had dropped to 1:43, after which I just dropped off a cliff pace wise and the voices in my head were yelling at me to quit. Stopped for about 8 seconds to catch my breath before limping to the finish line at 1:49 pace.
On the plus side, it was a gain of 13m against Wednesday, but down over 20 on either of the first 2 weeks.
Had a good rest, then tried challenge A – This went much better than Wednesday, for a 10m gain, still not where I want it and still can’t get the power down as the ERG is sliding around too much on the mat, I may have to try this one at the gym.
After break to try and fix my son’s headphones, I did my usual 10K (45:55 today) while watching Battlestar Galactica S01E04.
Saturday, walked the dog and did a couple of laps of the park, came home and had some toast, then cycled to Northala Fields for a ParkRun, very hot today, so my pace was suffering, crossed the finish line at a sprint, but still had a bunch of metres to go before my Apple watch had logged 5km.
My Official time was 30:03, which placed me 123/273, 87/131 Male and 11/13 VM50-54.
Sunday – Father’s Day, one of my presents was a set of Double Circle Gymnastic Rings from Amazon, these will be a great addition to my Calisthenics training.
Having set them up on my pull up bar, I can confirm that absolutely every exercise is many many times harder than doing it on a static frame or bar – I am completely unable to support my body weight off the ground with them at present for the equivalent of a bar support hold, although I was pleased that I could manage 2 x ring chin ups.
Concept 2 had the Juneteenth Challenge for today for freedom, emancipation and racial equality. Concept 2 will donate $2.00 to various charities for everyone who completes the challenge.
The requirement is 1900m – RowErg, SkiErg, BikeErg, on water and on snow metres count and can be combined – I decided to do this on the SkiErg as a 2K, since I have not done one of these since I bought my second hand SkiErg last weekend.
Quite pleased with my time of 9:15.6 as a starting baseline for a 2K on this piece of equipment. Certainly could not maintain my initial pace of 2:15, but happy with the overall result as something to improve on.
