Ergathon

Posted by William M. Connolley on October 25, 2009
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In training for Boston, I did a 1 hour erg cos the ladies were doing them, and sort of enjoyed it. And then we did Boston which was 50 km, but we weren”t really racing. And so I wondered how long an actual marathon (42.195 km) would take. And the answer is 3:20:58.4 (almost. I confess that I set the erg to 42125 because I forgot the true distance; I’ve re-scaled my time linearly which I think is fair). My split was down to a contemptible 2:25 towards the end before I “sprinted” for the finish at 2:05. I beat some of the folk at the concept2 sponsored marathon but I like to think that that is a self-selected group of the Leet.

I don’t think I recommend it. It wasn’t much fun; only the ipod saved my sanity. At the end my arms, knees, back and bum all hurt, which is sort-of good: all bits were getting tired. Probably my thighs don’t hurt enough. As for Boston, on the off chance it helps someone, I’ll tell you I: drank 5 little cups of water and ate two little marzipan bars. That was enough.

An interesting question is how I should compare my time to running-on-the-road (the subject of Rowing and Running a while back). From the C2 website I find that the record for age 20-29 (irritatingly you have to specify an age range rather than “all scores”), heavyweight (ditto; I’m 78 kg just on the border of lightweight and could probably get there if I wanted to) is ~2:40 whereas a road marathon record is ~2:06. So scaling my time by 2:06/2:40 (clearly a valid procedure) gets me an adjusted time of 2:38, which marginally beats my hero for all things Marathon, Maz, who has 2:47 and is like a whippet (although he is too elegant to be a real whippet; perhaps Dan Staite deserves the whippet title more, hopefully that won’t offend him. Dan’s ergo times are unreal).

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Comments

  1. #1 LCS
    2009/10/26

    Are you training for Boston 2010??

    On water: One standard cup is 284 ml, so on that basis you drank ~1.42 l. Which works out at a relatively low 424 ml per hr. At that rate, say, a five hour row would require 2.12 l + a bit more if it were nice and sunny. But 424 ml per hr is not very much, perhaps you could drink more and work harder. Sunshine and copious amounts of dissolved sugar might also make your row nicer :-)

  2. #2 Nosmo
    2009/10/26

    How much water one needs really depends on conditions and sometime on the individual (some people sweat a lot more then others).

    Why are you doing things like this without proper training? What are you trying to prove?
    You would have had a much easier and better time if you prepared for this. You probably could know about 15 minutes off your time with a little more preparation, proper nutrition, and even pacing.

    ["proper" training? Have I been naughty? I did this for the reasons I said. "pacing"? I think you overestimate the amount of resource I have available. I was lucky to be able to squeeze 5 hours out of a sunday afternoon to do the erg -W]