Final HM in the Crazy Bear challenge - Seasons Best (just)

Well firstly like to say a big thank you to Stuart Thorpe who came up with the idea of the Crazy Bear challenge which is to row (or ski) 30 half marathons in the 45 days leading up to xmas and also to David Plumb who's been key in organising it and all those who participated in the challenge whether they completed 1 or where called Jen who is currently on 60 or something daft - I just checked and she is on 62... in total 64 people signed up to it and at this moment 950 half marathons have been completed which is over 20 million meters rowed!

So yesterday I took the day off from a HM (and did the ctc instead) so that left me with today to get the 30th one done - I wanted to finish with a bang (after all that's why I'm called Beowulf) so I targeted a aggressive start which I hoped would see me close to (what was - more on that later) the current season best HM 40-49h which was set at 1h33m44.9s (1:44.8) by Tony Larkman with a drop back plan off my own Irish 40-49H record of 1:14:49.0 (1:46.3) and at 7am that's what I did. The first 5 minutes my mind and body went into a slight panic (maybe I should do a warm up...) but controlled that, unfortunately my gym shorts and my "undercarriage" where not getting along and no matter how much I wiggled and pulled around I just could not get the "landing gear" situated in a position that wasn't going to cause discomfort - this messing about went on for nearly 20 minutes and added into that was the Heart Rate pickup dropping I basically got so pissed of I dumped the handle (you can see this in the Garmin IQ detail below)

But it was the last day for the challenge and I wanted to finish it for more reasons than are obvious to the eye. So I picked up the handle and got on with the job at that point it was all about finishing the HM nothing more. Dropped the rate to 20 spm and just went for the grind. I've also been having slight wrist pain (right wrist) and certain skin issues on my backside (ie lack of it as I've grated a few patches off) so really not feeling the love for the erg. At about half way though I felt like I was getting into a good groove, undercarriage was nicely in place and legs felt strong so the new plan was to up the rate and see what happened. It turned out that I beat my seasons best by .7 seconds as Beowulf drove home the final 500m averaging around 1:30 split lol.

About half a hour before writing this I spotted Olaf Tufte broke the WR for the 40-49H half marathon at 1:40.7 average r25 1:10:49.0 - still I beat him over the final 97m ... lol

1 minute World Record 40-49H with video

Concept2 started recognizing the 1 minute and 100m ergs as world records earlier this year and that combined with a disappointment in the Open Irish 500m (Silver with 1:19.3) led me down the path of a bit of sprint training which also coincided with a lack of time available to erg anyway.

Although I've been keeping my blog going here I haven't published it as I wanted a good crack at the record before letting the other big boys know what I was up to and so should think that either Shawn Baker, Dirk Möller, Rob Smith, Graham Benton, Luke Wollenschlaeger, Marcos Cesar Morales, Mark Roberson, Noel Carey, Lloyd Gilby or Paul Brown (imagine if we all got together for a small team event ...) will add a few meters to this before too long. But for the briefest of times for the second smallest event I hold the record.

Warm up was a 200m steady then 2 minutes low rate and finally a 200m with the first 10 strokes the same as the 1 minute piece. Basically pushed of and hit 1:49 on first stroke then 1:22 and down to 1:13's and held it there - about 5 strokes before the end I was showing 399m as predicated finish but I just paced the finish to make sure I did. Quiet happy about that as my back operation was less than 6 months ago - maybe got some fire back in the Wulf's belly.

6+

100km World Record - Overall

Well - err - where did it start - I suppose when I heard that the French rowers where launching a mass attack on 100km WR's the seed was sewn - then with Anita Pearce and Lucy O'Brien also entering the frey along with Anne Bourloux in Canada doing a tandem it seemed everyone was doing them - so I thought I'd set aside the date (17th May and have a go) now as mentioned in my blogs recently my knee is isn't in the best state - but with baby sitting arranged and the Mrs organised I said I'd have a crack at it anyway. Training wise - well just confidence in my training with Q and the recent FM PB helped. The only people to know I was going ahead before hand was the Mrs and close family and also Q. I kept it quiet as I wasn't sure how the knee would hold out.

So after spending part of last night and today setting up at about 11:20 am this morning I set off - I had targeted the overall WR of Jesper Jensen, Lemvig, Denmark from December 29, 2011 which was 6:13:49.3 average of 1:51.9 - but as I set off I found it comfortable at sub 1:50.9 pace and as I was seeing sub 6h10m on the predicted finish I ran with it - all went quite well - knee held up - big "pain" I had was the rubbing on the skin from the onesey - forgot the vaseline - so I was pootling along all fine and dandy then bang - hit the "wave" (what runners call the "wall" lol) so luckily because I had such a lead on the overall record I was able to drop off the pace and somehow I managed to get home and still knock a minute of the overall record - and 10 minutes of my previous 30-39 record - knee is sore now but I might let it have a rest tomorrow - blisters on my butt and hands got a lot as well. Overall I'm happy - but I know there is still a lot more there with some better prep work.

Result - 6:12:39.2 - monitor crashed after I stopped - luckily rowpro survived - I did get a screen shot from the video the mrs took (I'll add that in here in a day or so)

Big thanks to the mrs for looking after me and Mrs Mum for looking after the little one - also Q as ever for investing so much of his time in me

Click on me to go to the video direct 

Or the physical link is here - http://youtu.be/xIHw-k5PPCc 

100k 30-39H World Record

Well - where to start - I suppose the idea of breaking the WR first came to me when I attempted my first 100k in 2012 (6h46m) I did this very last minute without any huge prep and with a support team who I hadn't had chance to talk to before the day - still it went well and apart from one stop to clean the rail I rowed all the way through it. After that I attempted row24 during which I failed an attempt at a WR which I felt sure I could attain - after 15 hours various physical issues took over and I had to stop - that took a lot out of me on a physical and mental aspect. In December my daughter was born 7 weeks early and again things got thrown up in the air.

I then started up training again seriously in March once I heard the Irish Indoor champs was on - I didn't attend in the end as in a 2k TT I was only able to pull 7min (my PB is 6:06) after that I started focussing on the training which was reduced in time from what I was used to due to the new family - this in turn led me to look at gains elsewhere - the most obvious place was weight loss and I managed to drop about 18kg in the last 6 months - this meant gains on my rowing and PB's in a lot of mid distance rows as well as the HM and more recently the FM (Full Marathon - 2:34:34) and again my mind turned to the 100k Two weeks ago I stated my intent to Q (my coach) and with that in mind I set myself a date to do the row - my birthday 22nd Aug - and over the last two weeks I focused solely on the 100k - during which I rowed a 50k piece and two 25k's - physically I was set ready - but the set up for the row was not and so it was postponed until the 24th - with my partner Pamela as my support crew - my mother-in-law Liz to babysit Lilly and the kitchen to row in I was finally ready.

So 12 o'clock on the 24th August and finally ready to roll - music on and off we go - focus on the 5k and split - fluids on the 5k and food every 2500m between - after about 10k I stopped - put the handle down unstrapped my feet and looked at Pamela "no sod it, I can't do it" she replied "you can't do it?" I then strapped back in and picked the handle up and set off again "your doing really well" Pamela commented. So why did I stop - well the guilt of taking up the entire day for rowing and the fact my right knee had started playing it's games (pain and locking up) after another few k I was back on track and I asked Pamela to give the knee some freeze spray for the knee - two applications and after a few k it seemed to be OK - thank god. At about 30k I again turned round to Pamela and said I couldn't do it - she gave me the look - that one that says "you better bloody not" and I kept going - trying to concentrate on every 5k hitting the split my spread sheet told me I needed to get in order to hit the WR.

Somehow I made it to halfway - back was stiffening and knee still hurting - but halfway done and with the split showing at 1:55 to hit the WR I kept going and focussed on getting to the FM distance left to go - it's a weird point of view - looking forward to only having a marathon to row - but I was - because then I was in known territory - about 30k to go I started feeling sick in my stomach - too much sweet stuff and "sports drink" I was thinking about asking Pamela to bring a bucket down for me - but decided if I needed to the floor was OK as it was tiled lol - after that I broke it down - looking at hitting the HM to go - then the hour - then the 10k - still on target and then the final 5k split came up - the predicted finish was still bouncing either side of the WR but I knew I had a little bit of wulf finish for the last few hundred meters.

So with 200m to go I let him have a play - got the split down to the low 1:30's and it was done and so was I - felt like I needed to be sick - but kept it down - photo's of the monitor took I stumbled up from the machine - took a while to stand up straight and then in a hot bath - weight before the row was 107kg after it was 104.4kg. 147 Ave HR 170 Max HR TE 2.8 EPOC 75.00 ml/kg 5690 kcal