What I Learned Rowing 200,000 Meters

The Holiday Rowing Challenge from Concept2 Rowing. I signed up to do a 200,000 meter rowing challenge and this episode is about what I learned by doing so.

More on the blog at CarolReMarks.com

A Most Beautiful Thing - a moving and inspiring documentary about the first black high school rowing team from the west side of Chicago.

DONATE TO THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING INCLUSION FUND from the Pocock Foundation.

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Dark Horse Rowing
Training Tall

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Chapters

• 0:52 The Rowing Challenge
• 1:59 A Most Beautiful Thing
• 4:19 Doubting Myself
• 6:19 What Did I Learn?
• 12:49 Benefits from Rowing
• 15:19 The New January Challenge
• 18:19 Future Episodes

Transcript

Carol Marks: 0:24

Hello, everyone, this is Carol Marks with the more remarks podcast. Welcome, welcome and Happy New Year to everyone. It's January 3, as I'm recording this, hope to release it tomorrow

Unknown: 0:38

January 4 on a Monday. Okay, so on this episode, I want to talk about what I learned rowing 200,000 meters and

Carol: 0:51

25 days. There is a challenge out there on concept to row I have a concept to rower in my garage gym. And I visit the website concept to they have monthly challenges. And I don't know why our how this came up. But I saw this challenge and it's a holiday It was a holiday challenge. And it ran from November 24, November 26, thanksgiving day until Christmas Eve December 24. And you could pick from two challenges. You could either row 100,000 meters, or 200,000 meters. I chose the tougher one. I don't know why. Because, you know, I think I have something to prove to myself I guess. Or I wanted to really, really challenge myself called the holiday challenge. And they

Unknown: 1:47

had several charities you could choose from that would benefit that they which concept would donate a certain amount of money,

Carol: 1:55

the more the meters that you wrote. And the charity that I chose was called a most beautiful thing. I had no idea what it was, but I liked it, the title of it. So I've clicked on it, went over there and started investigating it. And oh my gosh, here's what got me this is a quote from one of the people that

Unknown: 2:14

I'm about to talk about. All right, here's the quote, as the first black High School rowing team, we thought we were going to change the sport,

Carol: 2:23

just like Jackie Robinson changed baseball. But instead, the sport changed us. rowing gave us a purpose and gave us each other. It saved my life. And that's from our Shay Cooper.

Unknown: 2:36

He was one of the rowers. The first black High School rowing team on the west side of Chicago. So here's a little bit about the I'm just going to read it from the website and I will put the link in the

Carol: 2:51

in the show notes. So you can go check this out because I want you to go watch the documentary it is jaw dropping. Amazing. Alright, so um, you know, most beautiful thing is narrated by common Written and directed by Olympian Mary Mazzeo is based on the true story and memoir of our Shay Cooper, recounting how a group of young men growing up on the west side of Chicago, while living through the daily battles of trauma, violence and poverty, were able to come together through an unexpected yet powerful opportunity. And then it goes on to say we at the George pokok rowing Foundation, believe that rowing transforms lives. And the boat a most beautiful thing, inclusion fund to support education, scholarship and mentorship programs to get more kids rowing on the water, focusing on non traditional communities and communities of color, where youth face barriers to to participate in the sport. That is the kind of thing I can get behind. And I love it. First of all, go watch the documentary, it is amazing.

Unknown: 4:02

And then if you'd like to go donate, I'll put the link in the show notes again, and I you know, I wrote for the charity. And then I also donated some of my own money, not a whole lot, but I did what I could. That is what started this whole thing. And then I thought, well, you know, there's no way I can do it. If I don't make the 200,000 meters, at least I'll do the 100,000 meters. But even the 100,000 meters scared me too because the way I had been rowing before, I have never really done a long distance. Consistent consistently on the rower I would incorporate it with my CrossFit workouts where I might row you know, 400 meters at a time, three times, or you know, 500 meters,

Carol: 4:45

three times in a workout. You know, it wasn't anything long endurance, it was not it was a it was a quick, quick thing that I used to do on the rower. And you know, occasionally I may have rode 10,000 meters and that was maybe once a month, but then later it got to be maybe once every three months. So I mean, I had rode a 10,000 meters before but not on a consistent basis. I did not row long distances on a consistent basis. Therefore I had to plan out what I was going to do. I really didn't think I was going to make it. But the thing is, I had 29 days to do it. I ended up taking two days, four days off total. So I really did the I did the challenge in 25 days. Two days, I have tried, I had to travel. So I couldn't row I was out of town. And then two days, I just took breaks from and they were unscheduled. I was gonna row every single day. But in the beginning, I was like, Oh, this kind of hard. So I did take two days of break. Not in a row. But anyway, so 25 days is what I ended up doing. And I did 215,921 meters. That is the equivalency of 134 miles in 25 days. I think that's pretty darn good for someone that's 54 years old. Doesn't row a whole lot. But I'm a rower now, because I'm hooked. And here's what I learned. First of all, I love rowing. I love that. Okay, that I could do it, I guess the body can do more than the mind thinks it can. I wrote my first half marathon during this challenge. There's 21, it's just a tad over 21,000 meters. And yes, I did it all at once. It took me one hour and 58 minutes. But I did it. And I was

Unknown: 6:45

pretty darn proud of myself, I was gonna do it. When I first knew I was going to do the half marathon, I was going to try to split it up,

Carol: 6:52

like do 10,000 meters in the morning and 10,000 meters at night. But I said you know what, no, let's just do it. And I took my time I paste it out.

Unknown: 7:01

And I felt really good doing it. The other thing, let's see number two, that I that I can follow through with a goal, a promise or commitment.

Carol: 7:11

Now I'm 54 years old, I should know how to do that by now. But, or I shouldn't, you know, I should be able to do that, you know, I'm a grown adult. And I would, I guess in the past, I would always set up goals that I really knew I couldn't achieve. So therefore I wouldn't even try or finish them. But this time I did. I'm sure it's not the first thing first time I've done it. But this was a really hard physically physically challenging one. It also taught me to plan and organize, like how many days I was actually going to be able to row during the month. And then how many meters per day I wanted to row.

Unknown: 7:54

So not to just get up and go out there and just willy nilly get on it and row not have a plan and then prepare for cold weather because it was during winter. And my

Carol: 8:05

rowing machine is out in the garage. So it was cold, I would lay out and figure out what I was going to wear the night before. And so when I got up in the morning, I just got up and put those clothes on and went outside and rode however I did. Let me take them back, I work second shift. So I don't have to get up that early in the morning, I would just wake up naturally. And then I would have a cup of coffee, I would sit here in bed and gently slowly wake up and then I would get out of the bed and then get dressed and then go out. And so it's not like I just popped up and went out there. The big thing the these are the next things coming up that I learned are huge game changing things that I learned. And that's about rowing techniques, and form and stuff like that. I'm going to put a couple of YouTube channels in the show notes too, because this is where I learned how to improve my rowing technique. And one of them is called Dark Horse rowing. And the other one is called training tall. I will put those links in the show notes. They are indispensable, great tips. So when I used to row before all of this, I would like I said I would just get on, I wouldn't have a plan. If it was a plan. It was in a CrossFit workout which is really short. I used to get on and just row hard go fast. My body was loose. I was flailing all over the place, I would just go hard and go fast. It was just terrible, terrible. But if for some reason, I guess you know how YouTube can read your mind. I would be on YouTube and these rowing videos would come up and I got to liking the Dark Horse rowing and the training towel rowing and they taught me a lot of how to do how to keep your heels down. I think there's some controversy behind that. For a long time. I did not keep my heels down would roll off my toes. But then I tried rolling with my heels down and it was a game changer for me. Now I'm a short person. I thought that was shortened my links but it didn't. And then I learned to push instead of pull. So I pushed off of the feet things the feet pedals

Unknown: 10:15

instead of pulling the chain sit up straight so If you're looking at a clock, when you when you push off the rower and you're in the back position, you really want to lean back just maybe, to like the 11 o'clock position. And then when you're going forward, when you get to the catch, and you get to the front of the rower, you want to be at like the one o'clock position, and so

Carol: 10:39

not not too far overextending, or anything like that. And then now, instead of paying attention attention to the meters, I now pay attention to my splits. Like how long it takes me to row 500 meters. So I'm looking at that split time, it used to be like 245. And that was hard for me. But I've improved, I've improved it to like it like 230. So it would take me two minutes and 30 seconds to row 500 meters.

Unknown: 11:10

But improving doing those, a couple of things improved my rowing significantly. Now I can go longer, without getting tired, or sore, or winded, I mean, you know, I don't remember all I'm still gonna retard it's still a good hard workout. But I don't tire out and get exhausted where I just can't go any further. It's, it's huge. So I also learned how to maintain my rower

Carol: 11:38

and upgrade the software on the monitor, I kept getting these notices, you know, upgrade your software on your monitor, I just kept putting it off, put it off, because I didn't know really how to do it, it seemed like we'd be involved. But I figured it out. And I did it. I say it wasn't physically challenging all that much. But it was, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be about that. So for instance, like after the first week of doing this, my fingertips kind of hurt from pulling on the handle, even though I'm really pushing off, I guess gripping the handle, but I didn't, you know you keep a loose grip on the handle. But for some reason, I guess, rolling those distances after about a week, my fingers started hurting. That went away after a while. My back upper like middle back kind of hurt a little

Unknown: 12:32

bit.

Carol: 12:34

But then that went away to after a few days. And then I that's when I started paying attention to my rolling form. And once I fixed my rolling form, man, that back pain went away instantly. I think the main thing is that I got chapped lips, rolling outside in the cold like that. So I learned to put on chapstick before I went out lots of benefits from wrote this this rolling challenge. I was going to save this to do a separate episode. But I think I'm going to talk about it here instead.

Unknown: 13:05

One of the first benefit that I've noticed is that I lost a couple of sizes,

Carol: 13:11

I will well maybe one size. I think the main thing that I noticed though was my clothes fit better. It also helped me concentrate on something positive.

Unknown: 13:23

Therefore getting my mind off of all this crap that's going on in the world. It also gave me time to think meditate, pray during long distances like that 30 minutes to an hour, come up with podcast ideas. I will do a separate episode of the things I think about on my long rows, because that's quite comical. I guess another benefit was along those lines with prayer meditation, it helped me put things in perspective. It what used to be big, huge things drama, just didn't really matter anymore. took over helped me change my thoughts about what was important and what was not important. It settled me down about COVID Don't get me wrong,

Carol: 14:12

I still have a very healthy fear of COVID and help me calm down about not getting together for Christmas. You know. I did cancel Christmas and don't know if you heard it in another episode or not. I say I cancelled it. I cancelled our gathering of it. I just felt like that's the best thing to do for everyone. And I wasn't that upset about it. And then the other benefit is of course the improvement of the improvement of my rowing technique, time performance, all that. So now that that holiday challenge is over with what's next. You know, I'm not even doing CrossFit workouts anymore. All I'm doing is rowing. I have fallen in love with rowing. I've even checked into like real rowing on the water. Here in Huntsville. They have a couple of groups I've reached out to them because I think I would like to try that. I'm sure it is totally different than rowing indoors on a machine. The guy I sent the guy this Guy an email with his Rowing Club and he said, to check back in the spring, that's when they're going to start things up again. And I think I will do that. I just want to check it out, see what it's like the new challenge in January. Now that this holiday challenge is over with, I'm decided to do a challenge every month in 2021. With concept two rowing, concept two is a website, they have monthly challenges. So January's challenge started, of course, January 1, and it is a whole lot tougher than the one I just finished. instead of counting meters, they're counting calories. Now, rowing calories is way different than rowing meters. I mean, you're still rowing, you're still rowing the same. But it takes longer to row calories than it does meters. For example. If I row 10,000 meters, that's a long time that's a long distance that's three miles. But in calories, it's only about 500 calories. Big Huge difference. The goal for January that I signed up for again, they had different levels. And again, I had to pick the hardest one is called the big burn to road 20,000 calories in the month of January. Now that is like rowing 10,000 meters every single day, and throw in about three half marathons. That is a lot of rowing. A lot of rowing. Today's only January 3, and I'm feeling it already. I did. I started off with a half marathon on January 1, January 2, I did 10,000 meters. And today at this morning I did 10,000 meters. When I get done with recording this podcast, I'm going to go out there and row another 10,000 meters. That will put me at about 2500 calories in three days. I have a big huge haul in front of me. Y'all pray for me. There's no charity associated with this one. This is just for personal, you know reasoning. But I do love it. I love Love, love it. And I hope you guys will check out some rowing videos and if you're at a gym, jump on a rower and give it a try. It's a lot of fun. I do like it. That is the podcast for this week. And I hope you've enjoyed it. Next time, I will probably talk about our new thing that we're doing to the house. We have started purging everything from the house. It's gonna take a long time I have it scheduled all the way out until like May. Anyway, I'm gonna start doing episodes on that too, because I have a lot about that as well. It's so much fun. I love podcasting. Okay,

Unknown: 18:35

I hope you've enjoyed this. Go to my page, my more remarks podcast page on Facebook. Like, share it, whatever. And if you've enjoyed this episode, please give me a review and help share the Word that I'm here. And y'all have a good week. Thanks for listening. Bye