Train Hard : Post 5km Testing

So, I was a little too exhausted, and strangely excited after last nights’ testing to manage to report back!

However, I’m rather pleased I managed to smash my previous time and got myself a split of 1m57s09ms – total time 19m39s 🙂

The last 100m hurt a lot, and I could feel all of the food I’d rammed down yesterday starting to move back up in a bid for freedom(!), but I managed to stay on the seat and keep it down, and one of the lovely novice lads Ross was on hand with bottles of water and jelly babies to revive us all once we’d finished!

Our coaches, Ralph and Jacqui were a great help all the way through it – a little frightening at times with their bellowing and screaming at us, but it helped with concentration!

Once you’re ‘in the zone’, its easy to let something slip for focussing too much on something else.
The software display for our machines contain so much information, and you have twenty minutes to focus and smash it – its quite a lot for your head to deal with, especially after a long day of work!

I found myself focussing on the distance left, watching it chug down, (wishing I could find an extra foot of legs or arms to make it go a little quicker!). The problem is, focus on that over everything else, and you can find your stroke rate shooting up!

For our testing we have a set average stroke rate to stick to – this is to make it fair for everyone testing, to have a constant to measure by.
The stroke for this test was to be between 26 and 28, average across the 5km.

Now in theory, this means you have the space to go crazy in the first few strokes to set yourself a good split, however it’s all about pace in a 5km – going crazy for too long means you can burn out earlier than you’d like, so it’s a tough judgement!

I did get my rate up to the high 30s for the first 10 strokes but made sure to quickly drop it back down and watch my average stroke rate lower over the remaining 4500m.
And having Ralph shouting ‘stroke rate, Charlotte’ was enough to remind me to keep an eye on that – anything over 28 would be a test fail and would not count!

Anyway, it’s sessions like this that I wonder if I’m wired differently to others!
I do love the pressure of having to perform in a fitness capacity like a RowPerfect test!

There were 3 rounds of testing last night, and my group were lucky enough to be the first to go, which meant we got it over and done with without little time to sit and worry about it!
And in good team spirit we stuck around after a bit of stretching (we attempted a jog around the block to warm down, but it was far too cold and soon gave up on that!) to watch the others complete theirs and cheer them on! It’s nice having people to push you when you feel like you’re dying – it’s something I find really helps, so I like to be able to return the favour 🙂