{"id":107,"date":"2022-04-10T14:18:06","date_gmt":"2022-04-10T13:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/fitness\/?p=107"},"modified":"2022-05-17T08:58:29","modified_gmt":"2022-05-17T07:58:29","slug":"april-2022-week-1-world-erg-challenge-and-april-fools-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/fitness\/2022\/04\/10\/april-2022-week-1-world-erg-challenge-and-april-fools-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 14 (Apr 4 – Apr 10) – World Erg Challenge and April Fools’ Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

I decided to join my local branch of The Gym Group<\/a>, they were having a promotion of 50% off for the first month and no joining fee, so I thought I would give it a go.<\/p>\n

I main reasons for joining included wanting to start running, but in a controlled environment where I could easily monitor my progress on the treadmill, and also access to weights for strength training.<\/p>\n

I joined online on the last day of March, and went along for my first visit on 2 April, but rather than visit the gym as my main workout, I had already done a 30 minute walk with the dog and 14km of rowing before I decided to walk to the gym.<\/p>\n

Once there I decided to see what my running stamina was like, as historically I could run for about 6-800m before being out of breath and having to walk the rest of any distance I was hoping to cover. I was pleasantly surprised that I could actually maintain around 5 minute per km pace for 5km and put in a time of just over 32 minutes.<\/p>\n

If I can manage that time on a treadmill in the gym, then that should put me in about the middle of the pack for a 5km ParkRun<\/a>, I just need to buy a suitable pair of running shoes as the badminton shoes I normally wear as trainers have next to no cushioning for running.<\/p>\n

It took me a few minutes to recover, but I went on to do some weights and some more rowing, including 2 x 2km sets and a 500m sprint that set a new PB at 1:39.4 and this was after nearly 5 hours of physical activity!<\/p>\n

To say I did not suffer from all of that exertion would be a lie, my ankles, quads, shins, abs and biceps all let me know for several days afterwards that I had probably overdone the exercise (no surprises there) it was painful to walk and go up\/down a flight of stairs, although the pain eased if I continued with the walking.<\/p>\n

On the plus side, all of the muscles I use for rowing appeared to be fine, so I carried on putting in 14km+ each day for the World Erg Challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Another challenge this month is April Fools’ Challenge<\/a> where you row 1km on day 1 and increase by 1km each day up to 15km on day 15, this one should be fairly easy to complete since I am averaging at least 14km a day at this point anyway.<\/p>\n

Most days I was rowing a 2km warm up, 10km whilst watching a TV episode and then a 2km cool down after first taking the dog for a walk.<\/p>\n

I visited the gym again on the Monday evening for a ‘deadlift workshop’ which was scheduled for 30 minutes, I arrived early and did 20-25 minutes of reasonably fast inclined walking to try and ease my shin splints before seeing what I could do on the leg press – reached 330lb (150kg) , before I ran out of time and had to find the class.<\/p>\n

The class itself included all of about 5 minutes of instruction and then taking it in turns to do 10 lifts of the barbell with 88lb (40kg) of weights, which was then raised to 110lb (50kg) for a second round.<\/p>\n

After the class I rowed a couple more 2ks with a 500m sprint sandwiched in the middle, both 2Ks were sub 8 minute times and the 500m was a new PB at 1:38.7 that places me in the 70th percentile<\/p>\n

By the end of the week I was on day 9 (9km) on the April Fools’ Challenge<\/a> and was at 364km for the World Erg Challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I decided to join my local branch of The Gym Group, they were having a promotion of 50% off for the first month and no joining fee, so I thought I would give it a go. I main reasons for joining included wanting to start running, but in a controlled environment where I could easily…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/fitness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/fitness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/fitness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/fitness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/fitness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/fitness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/fitness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions\/172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/fitness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/fitness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/fitness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}