Choosing My Challenge

At the start of this semester when I got informed that I had to set myself a challenge I was stumped. I had no idea what to do and with everyone around me choosing half marathons I was becoming worried. I knew I had to choose wisely as it had to be something I could realistically complete in the time frame. I had to consider my past/on-going injuries to my knees and back and choose something that wouldn’t aggravate them or give me trouble managing them. I come up with the idea of indoor rowing and rowing 2kms in a really fast time and I put this idea to Brendon. He said that the rowing was a good idea but that it was at least 10km that I had to do. I hesitantly agreed. I set my time limit to be 55 minutes after I had done some calculating of the time it took me to do 2km. I chose indoor rowing because I had always enjoyed using the rowing machines in the past at school and past time I had gone to the gym. I also chose this because I always wanted to be a rower but was never allowed. This challenge scared me but the thought of going to the gym regularly and sticking to a training programme I made for myself scared me even more.     

Extra training pictures

Graphs

This is my graph that shows my weekly loading over the 11 weeks. As you can see there is no signs of progressive overload as I didn't go to the gym often enough and train hard enough for this to occur. You can see the large increase at weeks 7-9, this is when I was working.

This graph shows my RPE. In th blue it shows the planned compared to the actual in red. It is the average RPE for each week. As you can see both are pretty similar

 

 

 

 

This graph show how much time i spent each week training. As you can see it isnt much apart from the obvious increase when working.

 

Challenge Day

My challenge was set down for the 26^th of October but I decided to bring it forward to the 24^th. Leading up to the challenge a lot of people were asking me how I thought I was going to go. I told them I thought I was going to fail as this is genuinely what I thought was going to happen. I wasn’t really nervous as I knew I only had myself to blame if I did fail. I went to the gym early because I didn’t want anyone watching me struggle. I set the rowing machine for 10km and got stuck in. I was feeling good, it felt easy keeping the projected time around the 50 minute mark. It was really awesome to have Tash, at the gym also doing her challenge and Megan as they were both really encouraging. The first half took me around 26 minutes so I had a few minutes I needed to cut off to do it in less than 55 minutes. At this point I was still feeling good so I carried on picking up the pace slightly. I carried on a steady pace working the kilometres down I reached 2 km to go and I know at this point I could do it. For the last 2km i used everything i had left in my and went hard ti get if finished. I tried my very best to get home in 49 minutes but I just did not have enough fight left in me and the time stopped at 50 minutes and 53 seconds. I pretty much fell of the rower and just lay on the ground to catch my breath. I was so happy that I had achieved this in such a good time. I truly thought i was going to fail so i was stoked with completing it and achieving my goal.

Halfway point...So far so good

 

 

  2km to go, time to step it up

 

     



FINISHED!!!!!

 

 

 

 

Principles of Training

I had to choose principles of training that if I applied them correctly I would see benefit in my training. I had to ensure that I trained frequently or my previous training sessions would be a waste of time and it would be like starting over each time I went to the gym. I had to make sure I trained at a good level of intensity or it would all be pointless. I tried to make sure that I was always at an RPE of around 7 but it would often dip below this as I wasn’t putting in the effort I should have been. I had to make sure I trained for the right length of time. If I did too little I wouldn’t get any benefits from it and if I trained for too long I would burn out and take longer to recover. I also had to make sure the training that I was doing was relative to my challenge. Often when I was at the gym I would be ding cardio work but generally on the bike rather than the rowing machine. This was because I enjoyed sitting on the bike and going for 30 minutes rather than using the rower and getting a sore bum. I don’t think the training I did was specific enough for my challenge and this would have affected my time that I completed my challenge in. I wanted to put variety in my training so I didn’t get bored quickly but I didn’t do this successfully as I got bored of going to the gym after about 3 weeks. I tried to mix it up but I was unsuccessful at this and just returned to doing the same thing over and over. I wanted to make my training individual to me but I was often just doing what the girls were doing as it was easier to do that then think up something for myself. I wanted to see progressive overload in my training and then in my graphs but I didn’t see this because I didn’t go to the gym often enough and train hard enough or for ling enough to see it. This was rather disappointing. 

This is a short video of me doing some weights at the gym in on of my first weights sessions...  

Working/Holidays

During the 2 week holiday break we had I worked with my father at his work place. I was expecting to just be doing a simple job that I normally do when I work there that takes minimal effort but work had just hit a busy patch and it was full on. I was working at a wool store in Timaru from 8am-5pm Monday to Friday. I was all go from start to end shifting bales, pressing wool, unloading trucks and more. It was a lot of lifting work which was hard but I was getting used to it by the end. I worked hard constantly and this shows in my graphs when the have a dramatic increase. I had planned to go to the gym in Timaru but they are so expensive and by the time I had finished work I just wanted to sleep. I know I gained upper body strength from working as I could see an increase in my muscle and I was able to lift heavier bales by the end of two weeks. I think this helped in my training a lot as I had gained muscle which would have helped with my rowing when driving through my legs and then pulling with my arms.

Laziness

I love being active when it’s competitive and the aim is beating the opposition, but me and the gym are just not friends. I knew I would struggle with going to the gym and sticking to my training programme because going to the gym and sitting on a bike or running on a treadmill is not something I enjoy. I went to gym on the days we had to but other than that there were not many times I would willingly go. This definitely affected my training and the outcome of my challenge. My graphs show no progression, they all stay on one level of training which shows how little I actually did in comparison to what I should have been have been doing. When I did go to the gym I was pretty much just doing the same things all the time which become boring and repetitive. I didn’t really put much effort in either which didn’t help my training. I had great ideas of going to the gym and smashing my challenge but i just got sick of it as it seemed to take for ever from when we started training till the day of the challenge

Energy System

As my challenge would be mainly using my aerobic energy system I had to train this system to last the whole length of my challenge. When I started training I was pretty fit as I was just finishing up with hockey season so I wanted to use this to my advantage in my training. Hockey season would have given me a good base level of fitness to start off on. It was now my job to build on this through going to the gym and doing the right training to get myself into a position where I knew I could comfortably row 10km in under an hour.