Sunday, 25 September 2011

30 minute PB

I set myself the task of rowing one of the ranking pieces today and planned it pretty well.

Chris woke me up with a lovely cup of Rooibos tea and he had already put a couple of sweet potatoes in the oven to bake. I read the paper and surfed the net for a while waiting for the sweet potatoes to do their thing.

Down to the serious rowing plan.
I ate my energy fuel slathered in organic lightly salted butter and black pepper and another cup of Rooibos whilst I checked my previous 30 minute PB times:
  • 2011 season = 30min = 6293m = 2:23.0
  • 2010 season = 30min = 5770m = 2:39.5
  • 2009 season = 30min = 5909m = 2:32.3
So I set out with the aim to get below 2:20 so I could beat my Cross Team Challenge 30 minute session of 6360 metres at a pace of 2:21.

Next came the tricky wait for the ultimate time to do your exercise after eating a hearty breakfast... too early and you feel sick but too late and you've burned off your fuel just reading the paper. I must have timed it well today. I did a slow warm up of about 10 minutes had some water, selected a CD to listen to, put the fans on full blast and then selected 30 minutes on the PM4.

I set out strong (almost too strong and was at a pace of 2:17 for a bit too long) but I soon settled into a good rhythm, here are the splits:

06:00 = 1311m = 2:17.2 = 27spm = 172hr
12:00 = 1294m = 2:19.1 = 27spm = 174hr
18:00 = 1286m = 2:19.9 = 25spm = 177hr
24:00 = 1285m = 2:20.0 = 22spm = 181hr
30:00 = 1306m = 2:17.8 = 22spm = 187hr

As you can see the splits weren't that even and I struggled in the 24 minutes split. I was thinking about how nice it would feel to 'oar-down' at this point, but I battled through to the end.

2012 season = 30min = 6483m = 2:18.8 = 178hr

The distance rowed for the 30 minute session bumped me into the top boat in the September Cross Team Challenge. This also places me in the top 5 out of 14 other lightweight women aged 30-39 across the world in the C2 ranking.

Today's row shows me what I am capable of and it highlights that my 5k (pace 2:21.8) and 6k (pace 2:27.0) times could be significantly improved. Not to worry I have got until the end of April 2012 to tackle those ranking pieces again.

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