Monday 16.12: Rowing intervals

Monday. Row intervals for 5.250m

Starting the week with building the engine. Through a painful session of rowing intervals, full speed at all times. For a total of over 5k. I took inspiration from Chris Hinshaw who seems to be a god in endurance training, at least if you believe the monsters at NorCal Crossfit. He's created awesome endurance training at track and field for these Crossfit Games competitors so I wanted to have a taste of that and modified some of his training methods.

Intervals. Total of 5.250m. Full speed all the way.

• 3 rounds of:
• 1.000m row, 1:00 rest
• 500m row, 2:00 rest
• 250m row, 0:30 rest

It proved to be a spectacular way to put lungs, endurance and legs to real test. Mostly it was my legs that were the most damaged. I'm very pleased I was able to breath, heavily but still the lungs were doing their part. It felt like my quads and hamstrings were burning in the end of the sprints.

My focus was to go at full speed from the very beginning. And I was able to keep a good pace on even with the pain crawling in more and more after every sprint. I didn't keep a track of the screen and wrote the times on paper but I remember being satisfied on the numbers after each set.

The variation in the rest periods was somehow smart. Naturally the 1k row was the toughest because of the length but the recovery was only 1min before going all in on the next one - 500m. This distance takes about 1:45 to finish in a workout like this so the 2min recovery was warmly welcomed. At this stage my legs were always hammered. The third sprint, the shortest of them, was fast and I rowed at 1.34-1.39 each round.

Last 250m

So having only 30seconds to recover prior to entering another 1k row was not cool. But that was my strategy from the very beginning: not to think too much about the future, just live in the moment and try to keep a good pace throughout the workout. That being said, you probably understand the twist of the variation in the rest times.

He's one of my favorite Games athletes, Dan Bailey