How to earn a beer (and some nonathlon points)

I have a few days left to catch up on my nonathlon scores. For those who don’t know, the nonathlon (http://www.nonathlon.com/) is an annual erg competition where your performance is measured against an age and weight determined standard. In this way, everybody can compete against everybody. Also, it’s a good way to make sure you make do your tests on all the Concept2 ranking distances.

Unfortunately, today was a long day with business in Prague. Had to get up at 5:30 for what ended up to be a 3 hour drive (doing the final 10km in a nerve wrecking 40 minutes). Then a full day of business meetings, followed by a 3 hour drive home (doing the first 10km in 30 minutes because of an accident) through pouring rain with an outside temperature of +3C, lots of traffic in hilly countryside on a bumpy highway with lots of road construction.

Then had to bring the company car back to the office, get my own car and drive home.

I was ready to sit on the sofa and drink a beer.

Well, I might just as well do a quick row before that.

Looked up my PB (1:31.6 from 2011/2012). When I am ready to do short sprinty work, I am usually in full OTW season swing, so I rarely do these on the erg. Well, this year I want a >900 nonathlon score on all ranking distances, so I better get going.

Not sure where I would end up, but decided to just fly and see and see where I would die and how far I would have to limp home.

Warming up consisted of a brisk 2000m with a 2x 10 stroke intervals (at 1:50 and 1:40) and a 5 stroke interval at 1:33.

Dialled up the 500m. Didn’t give it much more thought, did a race start and off we go.

stroke 1: 2:05
stroke 2: 1:50
stroke 3: 1:35
stroke 4: 1:26

Now keep hanging on below 1:30 as long as possible.

That turned out to be around 300m.

Then the average pace started to creep up but until the last stroke I believed it could be a PB.

It wasn’t to be: 1:31.7. One tenth of a second above.

Still think I deserve the beer (and the sofa).


Workout Summary - Apr 28, 2015
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|Watts|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS|-SPI
--|00500|01:31.7|01:31.7|454.3|38.6|167.5|181.0|08.5|11.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|Watts|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-|-SPI|Comments
01|00100|00:18.1|01:30.4|473.9|39.8|130.4|155.0|08.3|11.9|
02|00100|00:17.9|01:29.7|484.3|36.8|169.2|176.0|09.1|13.2|
03|00100|00:18.0|01:29.9|481.7|40.0|177.9|179.0|08.3|12.0|
04|00100|00:18.5|01:32.4|443.1|38.9|180.3|181.0|08.3|11.4|
05|00100|00:19.2|01:35.9|396.9|37.5|181.0|181.0|08.3|10.6|


1km cooling down brought today’s total to exactly 3500m on the erg and 412km in the car. 😀 😀 😀

The result made me think about how to do the 1km attempt on Thursday. Could I do a 500m in say 1:33, then follow with a 1:43 500m and still end up with a good 1km score? I guess a better way is to do 10 strokes full out, then settle for PB pace.

Now on to register for the Slovak Championships in Piest’any. A 1km Masters 1x for me on May 10. My son Dominik will run his first race in the boy’s single (up to 12 year olds). His reaction to the news: “Yes!”