Improvements Aren't Always Weights Or Times
I decided to row ten thousand meters on the Concept 2 rower today. It was the endurance WOD. The WOD actually called for a max effort 10k row which I didn’t really do the max effort since rowing has been one of those things bothering my hamstring a bit.
I did row at a nice moderate pace though with no sign of it tightening up like it has been doing at around two thousand meters. The was definitely a nice surprise and a positive thing as I have been wanting to ramp up the rowing to go for another half marathon new years eve or day.
I wouldn’t be lying if I said I wasn’t strongly considering the idea that I would keep going after the ten thousand today to go for a half marathon. In the end I thought it was smart to not over do it for today. My longest row since last winter was a painful 5k last month, the main reason that was painful was that I had torn up my hands pretty good a day or two before doing a shit ton of snatches.. Today I didn’t have the ass cramps at least until the last 500 or so meters. In the end I decided it would be smart to stop there for today since I’m hoping to get Ina WOD later today so I wanted to conserve some energy.
My time was 50:24 for the ten thousand today which was slower than I’d hoped but I wasn’t being in any way aggressive. My splits did improve slowly as I went on without even trying to do that. It was far from my best but I’m not disappointed. My average heart rate was 133 and max was 139 which is what I consider the big improvement here. My heart rate would get that high in the past even at the mere thought of cardio. I was also never really breathing that heavy on this row. The thing I noted afterwards too is the drag faster was in the 160s. I must have not really noticed the damper was higher than it normally is or maybe with dust and what not the rower has changed over the past year. That explains the leg burn a bit but I still never really wound up breathing heavy.
The whole heart rate and breathing thing seems to go right along with what I have been noticing in WODS too. It’s harder to get my heart rate up unless it’s certain specific movements that I can perform with higher intensity. I have been doubling and tripling up on daily WODS for the past month and that has seemed to have been a big help