New sculls and a hard 500

This week will be a heavy week in all aspects. First of all, I have an ambitious training hour target. On top of that, this is going to be a crazy week with off site meetings as well as business travel. Let’s see how it works out. I have it all planned from today to Sunday, but it’s a fragile construct. Also, there is heavy wind forecasted Monday to Thursday, so I may have to stick to the erg anyway, even if I can make time to go to the lake.

Today I did go to the lake. Had to unpack my birthday present. My birthday was a week ago, but the present came today.

It was a pleasure to unpack and put together. I think I am the only one who has this blade/shaft combination, but still I better mark these sculls soon.

I didn’t have time to go rowing, though. Had to race home to be on time for my 7pm call. After that, I did today’s session.

The last week of the erg season and there was one last nonathlon distance where I needed to set a time worth more than 900 nonathlon points. First, I did a 5k warming up:

Somehow these twenty minutes went by very fast. I like a fixed distance and watching the meters count down. Also, I had some stuff to think about.

Then the main, painful event. I don’t know any other way to row the 500m than to go out as hard as you can and then hope to keep the pace.

It took a bit too long to get the pace down to 1:30, where I managed to stay for a disappointingly short duration of about 2 strokes. From then on it went downhill. At 100m to go I did manage to speed up a bit, from 1:38 to 1:36.

Good for 912 nonathlon points which doesn’t even make this my worst distance. Here’s the end score for this season:

After that I did a 5k cooling down:

And that was all for tonight. On Wednesday I will go out in the double. The new sculls are meant for the single, but I am considering to give them a maiden trip on the double. Otherwise I will have to wait until I return from Brussels.