Twitter and Indoor Rowing 5k?

Twitter and Indoor Rowing? Non rowers, see if you can understand this blog!?

I had to go to the gym to do a 5k to start getting my fitness back after a 11 day cold so I asked Twitter to give me a target to aim for.

I gave 'Twitter' options of 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60 and 54 was picked by @IainMcGill (Scottish Conservative candidate for Edinburgh Central....weirdly enough!)

This was my code for a 1:54 pace, which is the time over 500m, so a 5000m is 10 of them which works out  to be 19mins 0.0secs. To make it harder, I restricted the rate to 22 strokes per minute. This means I wasn't allowed to zip back and forth but do it with controlled, powerful strokes until the end.

The way it broke down, into 1000m sections was this:

1000m - 1:54.0 pace, r22

2000m - 1:53.8 pace, r22 

3000m - 1:54.0 pace, r22 

4000m - 1:53.9 pace, r22 

5000m - 1:54.0 pace, r20 

Time - 18:59.5 - so 0.5s under target, although I wasn't aiming to beat it. I was pleased with the consitency and how it felt, I even dropped the rate in the last 1km to make it tougher.

My PB is 17:54.7 at a free rate (moving back and forth as fast as you want) but this was a different session and points to 'ok' levels of fitness. Obviously I want to improve quickly over the next few weeks, we'll see how that goes but in the meantime I havea 300m World Record Attempt on 9th April to prepare for, so lots of weights and short interval bursts to build power and lactic tolerance up.

Hope it didn't bore you to death!

Indoor Rowing Guide for those who want to know more.