Hi all. My name is Rob Forde. I'm the Captain of Phoenix Rowing Club, based out of Muncipal Rowing Centre (in between Garda and Neptune Boat Clubs). We are primarily a social rowing club, composed of former competitive rowers (who are gradually being re-introduced into society) and new rowers (newbies), who have "heroically" decided to take up/try the sport of rowing! (They are in fact enjoying the wonders of the sport). As part of my role as Captain, coach and part-time rower, I have decided to re-kindle my love affair with the erg and to this end I thought what bette way than to do the erg championships and maybe set if not quite a shining example to my clubmates, then some kind of endeavour.
In my full-time days training I was no stranger to the erg and would say that I was one of those rowers who was a steady trainer on the erg with respectable enough times without producing anything fantastic. I would complete the dreaded 3 by 5k session but more often than not the third 5k was more about surviving. These days I am taking a more leisurely approach with my aim to complete roughly three erg sessions a week, principally consisting of a 10k/40 mins session each time. I had in fact been back on the erg in the last few months and was ploughing away at the 10ks. However I did find that I was feeling quite tired and I took the sensible approach of strapping on the heart-rate monitor. Immediately I saw that in order to stay under a heart-rate of 150 I had to weaken my splits. This I did and in the last week or so my splits have started to improve. Lesson number one: The heart monitor never lies!
I intend to use this over the next few weeks for any steady state pieces and keep to a 150 heart-rate or less for steady state pieces. An allowance will be made for a little bit of flexibility if I feel like pushing the last 5/10 minutes of a piece. The heart-strap will come off of course for any short pieces, I will know its high so there is no point in telling me!
I am taking a slightly 'casual' approach in that I am not following a set programme but I will mix it up between 'steady' days and 'having a go' days. The 'having a go' days will increase as the dreaded day approaches.
I hope to blog twice a week and hopefully a gem or two of wisdom will unbeknownst to myself be found here. I would say in passing particularly to new/novice or land rowers, make sure you get some technique lessons from an experienced rower. There are some fairly fit dudes out there on ergs but with some fairly unorthodox technique which I would think could/can lead to serious injury, particularly back injuries. Get lessons. Warm-up slowly (ten mins). Get off the erg. Stretch. Get back on and do your training. If possible train with someone who is of similar pace to you.
See you soon!
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