8by500 1m30s rest - Happy New Years

Well after the 2k tester three days ago I was all eager to start the process of slowly destroying myself on the erg via speed sessions and power endurance aiming to build a sub 6:10 2k for the Irish on Jan 23rd. Life did its usual trick and few a few things in the air which ended yesterday with me doing a round trip to ikea in Dublin which is about 6 hours driving and got home around 9:30pm. By the time I'd walked the dogs, unpacked some of the car and gathered myself it was 1am. As I still need to put together the five wardrobes today I was pretty much ruling out training today as well. But, woke up at just before 6am and thought feck it lets go training. Bag was ready from two days ago so started warm up at 7am and then set the 8by500 1m30s aim was simply get through it at r30 1:33 pace which I figured might be tricky enough. At half way I decided to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and upped the pace. Let me say that the first 4 reps weren't exactly easy but I know that in order to progress you need to get the training done. Bearing in mind the current situation I'm very happy with the outcome :-)

I wish you all a great new year, 2015 I thought was bad for me having got cramps in the first 500m of the world indoor rowing championship finals in February to then go through the back issues I had resulting in a operation in August 2015 to remove part of a disc. 2016 however has been a year I would not wish on anyone with losing our son after him being diagnosed during the pregnancy with Edward Syndrome coupled with losing my job not to mention other troubles. Surely 2017 has to be better.

2k Test - starter for ten

Of the back of nothing but half marathons and full ones with one speed type session in the last two months - and even before that training wasn't that speedy... lol I decided on a 2k test today as a starter for a months worth of work aimed at the Irish on Jan 23rd the aim was just to rate 28 for the first 1500m at 1:35 pace and then see what the body and mind was capable of. So after 5 hours sleep waking at 4:30 I was in the gym about 7am and after getting changed a warm up I started just before 8am not the ideal time for a 2k tt but there you go. The piece itself went pretty well - rated slightly higher and pace slightly faster but kept it controlled and for once the voices in my head where more positive than negative. Very dry mouth at the end and legs where pretty loaded - happy with how it went and feeling positive I can build on it :o)

Interesting it showed 6:14.9 when I finished but rounded up to 6:15.0 ffs....

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

C2CTC cautiously aggressive

After doing nothing but half and full marathons over the last 44 days this months C2CTC was not going to be comfortable so went with a cautiously aggressive attempt.
Also discovered what that strange cage thing is for in the gym it's to secure the erg on sprints... No? Lol

Full Marathon - Age Group PB and Irish Record (TBC)

Continuing with the Crazy Bear challenge with days lost and finishing line closing in I had to come up with a plan to try and get the remaining 7 half marathons in with 6 days left - simple - 1 a day and with a double up. Hmm but that was complicated when I offered to help out my father in law with some work on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday ... so 7 half marathons in effectively 3 days - bugger - ok then 3 HM's on two days and then a gentle one to get over the line - well if I'm doing three a day I might as well do a full marathon and so that was today's plan - get up at 6 and do a HM at the gym then home and refuel while doing a few chores and back to the gym for a full marathon. After which I was popping round to finish laying a laminate floor and then put a bed together.. good job I ain't working.

This mornings HM went pretty well - lifted the stroke rate to 22 to ease the pressure on the legs and kept it at 70% HRR finished with decent time of 1:18:28.2 or 1:51.6 ave.

So back in and a fiddle to get set up off I set the target was the current Irish 40-49H record of 1:53.1 or 2:39:06.3 set by Ally Cooper. I find a groove of sitting just below 1:50 pace rating 24 and felt confident of holding it - although the HR did rise quite quickly initially - so went with that - all was going well until about a hour from the end when I guess the earlier HM and lack of proper refueling took it's toll and had to draw on a lot of grit to try and even continue - took a few stops for water and chocolate but I'll be honest I was looking at the "wave" (the erg equivalent of the runners wall lol) well after what seemed like a eternity I did manage to get back into a groove but the initial plan was in tatters and it was a case of best of what was left - bearing in mind the circumstance I was happy with result and after all it is a new record and age group PB - plus only 4 HM's left to do now!

 the list above is missing a HM on the skierg

HM r24 80% HRR with lift in final 1k

Continuing the HM theme yesterday was r22 which came out at 1h18m9.7s or 1:51.1 pace today we lifted the rate to 24 and trained in the middle of the day apart from having to deal with aching groin (daughter managed to kick my left knut as I hugged her goodbye at preschool earlier) it went well decided to drive on the last 1k just cos I could

Crazy Bear HM no 15

No 15 - first row since 20th November other than the 1k ctc play on the 30th November. The redundancy has knocked me all out of kilter but have a new plan now to get the training done. Joined a new local gym which has a single erg but no one appears to be using it ;-) also has a lot of weights and 4 Wattbikes. Today's row was HM r20 at 80% HRR and was very sweaty