On Sunday I went over to Stephen’s to erg. Last time I was there the battery on the computer died and Stephen warned me not to rely on it, so I brought my gps to act as a timer and heart rate monitor. I also brought my video camera to bore everybody on YouTube again, but unfortunately the battery died after just a minute or two.
Without the erg computer, I was relying on other cues to know how well I was doing – I listened to the sound of the turbine and tried to notice what muscles were tiring. What I wanted to hear from the turbine was a ‘VOOgah’ sound that meant I was getting some pause and glide. If I wasn’t paying attention I would get a much steadier ‘vrrrmmvrrrmmm’ sound that meant I wasn’t pausing. (later on I tried the computer for a while and discovered that when that happened, my stroke rate went up from the mid 60s to the low 70s, but with no increase in speed.). I also tried to remember to get good twist and rotation – the more I concentrate on it now the sooner it will become natural.
I paddled steady for 15 mins, took a sip of water, paddled another steady 15 mins, then I tried the erg computer. With the computer to help me see if my stroke rate was increasing, I paddled for nine minutes steady, increased my speed for one minute without increasing my stroke rate, grabbed a quick sip of water and repeated two more times. The last set I finished off with two minutes of high speed (still at 65 strokes per minute) and some slow cool down. Over an hour of paddling all told.