The Torch

bad weather forced me into some pieces on the erg this morning. I enjoying rowing more than erging obviously but every now and then it is good to get an objective measure of where you are physiologically. I'd say if there is a downside of being on the water all year, it is losing track of the toughness that the honesty of the erg instills in you. The workout was 12 x 400 m with 1 min rest. Once you start...you better get ready to fight because there's not a whole lot of time to regroup in between pieces. I went out fairly conservative but started to believe in the middle of the workout that I was capable of more than I thought...I started out rowing 1.33's, then started bringing it down to 1.32's, then to 1.31's. The arches of my feet hurt more than anything throughout the pieces! Towards the back end of the workout I felt very confident that I could reproduce the same stroke time after time and that I was not going to fade. Yes, it hurt quite a bit, but I could push and drop the pace as the workout went on. My last piece was 1:30.9 and I finished with an average of 1:32.0 over the 12 pieces. Not sure how it relates to a 2k score but I would think its not too far off. 6 x 500 m/ 1' rest for me has been about .5-1.0 split off of my 2k score. That's 3k of rowing with a little more each piece. This is slightly less each piece but almost 5k total of rowing. So who knows, but its probably not a whole lot different. I feel like if I can be close to 6:10 on stationary as a lightweight I can do some special things this summer. Power is not everything but when everyone is the same weight its a big part of the equation.