Churbuck.com

Crossed 100,000 today with a mighty 10K in the boatshop in 25 degree chill. Definitely getting in better shape and that’s, as Martha Stewart would say, a good thing.

Working out in Dallas was a labor of love. Up at 5 am, get a day pass from the desk, troop a couple blocks to the Texas Club, erg for an hour amidst the elliptical and stair climbers (preferred music these days is the stoner-metal band Fu Manchu  but definitely need some new noise on the iPod), build up a bodacious pool of sweat, then endure the usual flesh eating virus creepiness I feel in any public gym.

But what a difference for the rest of the day …

So, 93,000 meters to go before Dec. 24th. Piece of cake. 18 days … that’s 5167 meters per day — heck, old men can do that. The mad men are the loonies who do all 200,000 meters on November 24th — seriously — that’s like an 18 hour marathon on the wheel of pain.

Holiday Challenge 2007 Honor Board

The goal: row 200,000 meters between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.

The reality: 6666 meters per day, with no days off. Hard to accomplish with any travel on the calendar (which I have).

The plan: 10,000 per day to build up a cushion for down days on the road.

The strategy: in each workout row four 2,000 meter pieces with a 2 minute, 30 second recovery row in between the pieces. Four hard work pieces adding up to 8,000 meters and four 2.5 minute pieces, averaging 500 meters each makes the entire workout an relatively easy 10K — all in all about 41 minutes of rowing.

I’ve done it before, and I hope to do it again. This is an awesome way to combat the bilious influences of holiday imbibing and engorging.

If I succeed I get a pin and the right to buy a t-shirt.

Date: 06-11-2007
Distance: 5000 meters
Time: 19:15.00
Split: 1:55.50
Comments: Power 5′s on the “5′s” and 10′s on the
“Ks”

20 minutes, that’s all. A little pollen got swallowed and gave me wicked heartburn.
Tags: ergblogging

Date: 06-01-2007
Distance: 7620 meters
Time: 30:00.00
Split: 1:58.11
Comments: Strongest piece in a while. Done in the shade, with new erg music. Pulled a hard 1:44 power-ten on every five minute mark with a full-on 60-second sprint to finish.
Back is still shaky, so I need to watch the power-tens, could mess it all up with one bad catch.
Tags: ergblogging

Date: 05-31-2007
Distance: 5000 meters
Time: 21:22.00
Split: 2:08.20
Comments: blech
Tags:

Date: 05-29-2007
Distance: 7010 meters
Time: 30:00.00
Split: 2:08.39
Comments: Long, low and slow. Trying to keep my heartrate down below 130 bpm to focus my efforts on fat burning. The rule of thumb in heart rate monitoring is that fat burns under 50% of one’s maximum theoretical heart rate (220-age=max hr) which in my case is a ridiculous 85 bpm. I try to go at a pace that would allow me to carry a conversation without wheezing and sub 130 bpm does that.

Date: 05-22-2007
Distance: 6000 meters
Time: 24:20.00
Split: 2:01.67
Comments: More human than a human

Date: 05-13-2007
Distance: 10000 meters
Time: 42:13.00
Split: 2:06.65
Comments: another slow and smooth piece in the garage, still babying the lower back

Date: 05-11-2007
Distance: 10000 meters
Time: 45:00.00
Split: 2:15.00
Comments: Low and slow, damper on 1. First post-back spasm row done at low to know pressure, with BPM below 130.

No erg for a while. My back collapsed on Saturday while I was rummaging in the garage for fishing gear. One mis-step and … twang. I was walking like an S-curve, lying on the floor trying to pop my sacrum back into place, doing weird stretches, and making everyone around me wince. Better today, but no erg for a few days I think.

Sacroiliitis sucks. 

Workout Name:Half-Hour-of-Power
Date: 05-04-2007
Interval #1: 7326 meters/ 30:00.00/ 2:02.85
Comments: nasty ugly Claritin/pollen/allergy hell row. Feel like an old man who smokes crack.

ErgScores.com | Welcome

I’ve started to get into this interesting site for tracking and mapping ergometer scores. What’s most impressive is the guy behind the site, Jeff Wagner, redefines great blog marketing. He detected I was erg blogging, invited me to check out Ergscores.com, then … and this is cool, wrote a widget that permits me to auto-publish my scores from the site to this blog every day, and a gadget for iGoogle.
What is ErgScores.com?

ErgScores.com is a free online indoor rowing management application. With ErgScores.com you can:

* New! Daily Erg Blogging
* New! Team Accounts
* Classifieds. Search for rowing equipment from classifieds across the web.
* My Community mashup of rowers by distance.
* Calendar support for scores and workouts
* Support for Google Gadgets
* Create and manage goals
* Manage your erg scores, daily workouts and graph your progress over time
* Export your scores into a variety of formats for sharing with others
* Team data management with graphs, reports and lineup comparison for coaches
* Access your scores from anywhere
* High School rowers can release scores to college coaches
* ….more features are being added daily. Comments welcome

Here’s what Jeff wrote me recently as an example of total mash-up passion:

“The biggest obstacle is getting the data into ErgScores.com.  I have not used RowPerfect, but I believe they have an auto-sync method that uploads the data directly to C2.  Unfortunately, C2 has no public APIs for their log book (that I know of anyway). So you would have to input your data into ErgScores.com directly.  Perhaps, I could make data entry easier for you by writing a Google Desktop widget for data entry or something of that nature.

Let me know what you think.

FYI: I book marked that erg finder you were looking for this morning for you ( http://del.icio.us/jwagner/for:dchurbuck). I’d love to mash that up as well..”