I completed a row of 35K this morning on my Concept2 rower. It is the final row of my biggest training week of my 6 month marathon training schedule.
Yesterday, I did a 15K lactate threshold row in 1:08:54.2 or 2:17.8/500m. This is the fastest 15k I’ve done by over a minute! I’m bringing this up because, obviously the intensity of this row affected the performance of my 35k row today.
The lactate threshold row consists of three equal intervals of 5k (for this particular distance.) The first interval is rowed at your marathon pace, the second at your best 10k pace and the final interval at your half marathon pace. I felt like, when I do these rows, I could exert myself more because I don’t notice my muscles aching which is presumably the major sign that you are exercising above the lactate threshold. Because of this, instead of rowing 2:23/2:17/2:19 for the marathon, 10k and half marathon segments of this LT session, I rowed closer to 2:21/2:14/2:18, giving me an average time of 2:17.8/500m for this particular workout. You can see the detail in my personal logbook here.
Despite the intensity of my workout yesterday, I managed to complete today’s 35k with an average 2:26.1/500m and an overall time of 2:50:23. I consider this a very decent time and if I can maintain this pace for a marathon, I should be able to complete it in ~3 hours 22 minutes.
The biggest problem I have with rows over an hour is that I develop pain in my left butt that forces me to stand up and sometimes walk around for up to a minute or more. Needless to say, this really adds to my time. To compensate for the additional time this requires, I try to row at a fast enough pace that part of these interruptions can be adjusted for. For example, today, before I took my first butt-break at the one hour mark, my average time was about 2:22 or better. The first break didn’t affect that too badly, but I was forced to take another break after about 20 minutes, and after that I needed to take a break almost every 10 minutes. This is disheartening, to say the least, and I haven’t figured out a way to avoid it. In fact, I am using 3 foam pads on the seat now.
Tortui 
Hello Kor, that’s a lot of rowing. I’ve done some reading on subjects such as your lactate threshold; VO2max; and than there are processes for sprint training like: phosphate training;Anaerobic (oxygen independent) exercise: ATP, creatine phosphate. But I can’t keep it all strait or when to be concerned with it.
For the seat issue maybe the next step is a much denser but custom shaped seat that conforms to your anatomy. For my bicycle the softer saddle certainly felt more comfortable to start with but as riding time and intensity increased it got vary uncomfortable and I waisted lots of energy squishing around in the seat. I didn’t notice all this until I got a vary firm saddle that fit my anatomy better and rode it for few weeks and than one day went back to the soft saddle. Of coarse there are lots of variables and the bicycle saddle dynamics may not translate to the rowing seat.
Hi Heeto,
Unfortunately, I know of no custom seats for the concept2. The best I can do is to add pads. The pads come with two cut outs for your pelvis bones but it’s hard to know when the bones are even in that area.