My buddy Phil Odence has started a blog on barefoot running. I only run when pursued, so not my bag, but still, anyone who pounds the pavement barefoot in eastern Massachusetts in February deserves a shout-out.
Phil also tweets as @podence and does biz dev for Black Duck Software.
Indoor exercise is tedious and without good tunes, it can be worse than boring and more like torture. Since 1994 I’ve been rowing on my Concept2 ergometer and trying to perfect the perfect “mix-tape.” The last 15 years have also seen me struggle to figure out how to listen to that perfect set of songs without a) horrifying people around me by playing them out loud, in the open and b) killing myself or my personal electronics.
At first I used a Sony portable CD player – one of those little round things – and set it next to the erg on a chair. I’d climb onto the rolling seat, put on the “sports” earphones, and then haul away for 30 minutes to an hour, the thin wire swaying back and forth with just enough slack not to pull the player off the chair and crash it to the floor. Too much slack and the rolling seat would roll over the cable, jam the wheels, bring me to an abrupt halt (not cool when one is pushing a 200 beat per minute heart rate) and trash the earphones.
Then I moved to a MiniDisc player and put it inside of a neoprene fanny pack/belt thing that made me look like an American tourist with black socks and madras shorts in the Bagatelle gardens. That was okay, but when I travelled I had to make sure I had the thing as no belt meant no tunes.
In 2002 or so I joined the iPod movement. I moved to an armband holster thing popular with joggers/runners. That was okay except it constricted the blood supply to my burgeoning biceps and I had to wind the cord around and around the iPod to avoid the aforementioned cord-meets-wheels-surprise.
Forget that little solution at home when I travelled, or lose it, and the iPod would get stuck inside of my rowing shorts – or “trou” as rowers refer to them – a tight lycra-spandex bike short sort of thing without the butt-pad. Rowing shorts are better than petri dishes for growing new biological weapons, and let’s just say you never want to borrow my iPod. Never.
A few weeks ago, while reading the Union Boat Club of Boston’s email listserv, I saw a fellow member recommend a solution called the iErg. This is a fabric cover that fits over the rolling seat of my Concept 2 erg, with a side pocket for the iPod. Brilliant. Ten minutes later I had PayPal-ed an order and within a week it arrived.
Perfect solution. I strongly recommend it. And I paid $25 for it, just so you know I am not blowing blogola/pay-per-post b.s.
Date: 04-26-2009
Distance: 5000 meters
Time: 20:40.0
Split: 2:04.0
Comments: Testing erg score integration with blog.
Tags: workout
I just climbed off the erg for the first time since Jan 7. Six weeks without exercise (other than beach walks) has left me fat and out of shape. So back on to the erg I went today — 5,000 meters in under 20 minutes so the news wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. Rotator cuff not affected by the stroke, so it would appear I have no more excuses and can try to work off the pounds in anticipation for the first water row on or around St. Pat’s.
I have over 500,000 meters logged so far in the Concept 2 log book for the year (C2’s year begins May 1), maybe I can get another 100K onto the books before the calendar resets.
Tomorrow is the CRASH-B sprints in Boston. I have an entry, but I think my best effort might be a feeble 7:30-7:45. Maybe I should man up and waddle up there anyway. Guilt will weigh on me for the rest of the day. And this was to be the year I went for a 6:15 race as it is my first in the 50+ heavyweight category. Oh well. Always next year.
With a mere 20,000 meters to go before I make the 200,000 meter Holiday Challenge, I entered the 2009 CRASH-B World Indoor Rowing Championships on February 22. Two months of training to get my 2,000 time down to something respectable. I’ll be in the Veteran’s 50-54 Heavyweights and the world record is 6:07. My best 2K is around a 6:25 or something in my early 40s …. so I’ll be happy to get under 7 minutes this year.
Something to obsess about.
Every holiday season the good folks at Concept2 — my favorite brand of all time, inventors of the Concept2 Ergometer, or indoor rowing machine — conduct the Holiday Challenge: a hellacious 30 day challenge to row and log 200,000 meters on the rowing machine between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
In the past, if you succeeded at rowing at least 7,000 meters per days for the duration of this challenge, you would win a printable certificate, the opportunity to purchase a t-shirt, and a free pin to wear with pride.
This is not a trivial pursuit. I have succeeded three time since the first time I did it in 2002, and find that if I don’t get the minimum number of meters rowed in the beginning I won’t be motivated to make them up later on. Well of course I didn’t row yesterday — two helpings of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts followed by two slices of pecan pie, one of pumpkin, a snifter of armagnac, and two glasses of Ruffino chianti — it was Thanksgiving and I did do the Crossfit workout of the day (which is going to make this year’s Concept2 challenge all the more horrible as I intend to do both in my quest for eternal youth and the ability to snap off 10 real pull ups followed by 100 pushups).
Oh well, it’s in my DNA to abuse myself so. Some Anglo-Celtic-Teutonic yeomanic stock that makes it imperative that I turn myself into a human piston for 60 minutes every day.
As my stepbrother says, “The body is evil and it must be punished.” Well, having logged 11,000 meters this evening, that means I have to row only 10,000 tomorrow to be on track for the little pin and certificate. Yay.
I love Concept2. It’s a privately owned company in Morrisville, Vermont that was founded in a dairy barn by the Dreissigacker brothers in the 1970s to make carbon fiber oars and rowing machines. The brothers, both veterans of the USA national team and elite athletes, needed a way to maintain their fitness during the frozen Vermont winter so they cannibalized an old bicycle, nailed it to the floor, and figured out how to make a rowing machine.
That machine has morphed over the last 30 years into a simple, well-engineered, accurate and affordable piece of equipment known as a Concept2 Model D/E ergometer. It is the standard for most high school, collegiate and national rowing programs, and is the centerpiece of the growing sport of indoor rowing. Users can race each other over the internet by networking their ergs, and the exercise is acclaimed by everyone from firefighters to astronauts to radical programs such as CrossFit as the ultimate, full-body workout.
When I travel I try to pick hotels on the basis of whether or not they have a Concept2 ergometer. Very few do, tending to instead buy whatever the corporate headquarters purchasing agent has negotiated as part of a bulk buy for treadmills and stair-steppers, etc.. There are some rowing machines on the market which are complete and utter disasters. The worst of them is the Bally Life Rower, followed, almost below disdain, with any number of cheap rolling-seat-piston based contraptions sold at K-Mart. A WaterRower is an acceptable stand-in, and the other alternatives are almost never seen outside of an elite training facility.
What drives me nuts is the condition of the Concept2s in any given commercial gym. These machines are relatively cheap, but because they are so simple in terms of moving parts they tend to get parked in a corner and ignored until they completely fail. There is a relatively constant, but slow paced upgrade cycle on the machines, with new display monitors, handles, and small tweaks introduced every two years or so. Most gyms never upgrade and because Concept2 operated as a direct web/telesales operation, I doubt there is a large sales force physically calling on the big chains of gyms or hotels to push upgrades.
So Concept2 — here’s a simple idea. Print up adhesive-backed labels with your 800 number, your logo, and a short checklist. The headline should be: “Fix Me!” Put a picture of your latest erg on the sticker with your logo. Under the headline write: “One of your customers thinks you should … then add a checklist:
Make the labels available on your site and let people like me stuff a few into our gym bags. I’ve gone up to trainers and sundry attendants and asked them to fix the equipment, but a big sticker stuck on the frame would get their attention, spare me and them the confrontation of arguing over a machine, and give Concept2 a little branding.
I crossed the 200,000 meter mark this morning, making this the second “Holiday Challenge” I’ve completed in 30 years of indoor rowing. It started on Thanksgiving, Nov. 25 and ends Monday night, Christmas Eve. I get a pin for my trouble and the right to buy a t-shirt.
But this isn’t the end, actually it is the beginning of the indoor rowing season. Tom Bohrer, the coach at my rowing club, the Union Boat Club, is running a UBC challenge from Dec. 7 to Dec. 31 and I’m standing third at present against some very committed competition. Then there is the CRASH-B sprints — the world championship of indoor rowing over President’s Day Weekend in February. This is my last year in the 40-49 heavyweight men category, so I am thinking of embarrassing myself one last time before moving into the old fart division next year.
I just want to point out that the leader in the Concept 2 holiday challenge has rowed 1.6 million meters to date. That’s well over 50,000 meters a day. That is insane.
Workout Name:Half-marathon
Date: 12-15-2007
Interval #1: 21097 meters/ 1:25:17.0/ 2:01.3
Comments: First half-mara ever.
Tags: half-marathon