How do you “man up” in 600 strokes?

You row a hard 30r20. (Or 30 minutes at 20 strokes per minute for those who don’t like short hand.)

Not a training session I do often, and one that really favours taller athletes as it’s all about stroke length and power when the number of strokes you can do is capped. But when it’s all about stroking power all you have to think about it pulling hard on the handle every 3 seconds, nothing more (well, pushing hard with your legs really, you know the deal).

So 30mins set on the clock, exactly 600 strokes in which to cover the greatest distance possible. It’s one of those sessions where you have a maximum pace you can go at, so if you start too slow there is just no catching up. But also if you start too fast there is no trading rate for pace to be done, and it can be a long and painful decline in pace to the end. It nearly went that way…

5min splits:
1:47.4 / 20
1:48.3 / 20
1:48.2 / 20
1:49.4 / 20
1:48.6 / 20
1:47.9 / 20

30mins = 8305m / 1:48.3 / 20

Always a row where you get to half way and could happily stop and call it a solid training session, but you can’t really every call 15mins a training session can you? I may have slowed a little there to get through the tough patch, but for the first 30r20 for some months I’m pretty happy with the overall effort and pace. Previous experience has taught me that rowing this session regularly I can get a fair bit faster at it, but that is doesn’t translate well to an improvement at free rate distance, or 2k, and therefore it’s not something I plan to do.