Overview of the 10 Week Challenge

Challange Completed

Yay, I have completed the challenge of 'Rowing 10km in 50 Minutes'

Time- 44 Minutes 12 Seconds

Completing the Challange

I am thrilled to say I have achieved my ten week goal of – rowing 45km in 50 minutes. I completed the row in 44:15:08.  I feel over the ten weeks I have become more flexible, stronger and fitter in many ways. When starting this ten week challenge I thought it was impossible to achieve this goal as I could only last up to five minutes on the rower before giving up. My friend Gina was rowing beside me and praised and encouraged me throughout the challenge. She was a massive help as she is very knowledgeable about rowing and knew what to say when I felt like giving up. I felt by not looking at how many kilometres or metres I had to go, was good as I was doing the best I could do as the time was making me stressed and frustrated therefore making my technique poor. When I was thinking of other things, I seemed to pull more and forget about how tired I really was. I still cannot believe I have completed this challenge as I thought it was impossible for me. I guess nothing is impossible when you put your mind to it and train for it. 

Left Photo: Before the 10 km Rown 

Right Photo: After the 10 km Row 

Week Ten

I also focused on flexibility. This week I spent 90 minutes on flexibility. My muscles were very tight from the rugby trainings this week and the gym sessions as I pushed myself hard at a high intensity. I still did 255 minutes of cardio to keep my fitness levels up, but I didn’t want to overdo it this week as the challenge is set for next week.  

When planning what I was going to do each week, I made sure I participated in at least two flexibility sessions. Flexibility is the range of motion/movement available at a specific joint (Baechle & Earle, 2008). I didn’t really use Flexibility as much as I should have over the ten weeks. When I stretched I only really used static stretching, and dynamic stretching. I made sure I held the stretch for 15-30 seconds to restore the muscle to resting length. I sometimes increased the stretch to flexibility and held it to 90 seconds.

Week Nine

This week I focused on Rowing a lot. I improved the intensity and slowly added more time and increased more distance. I feel as though I am improving my technique of rowing by my friend giving me tips, which I feel I am improving my distance and time each time I row. Even though it is week nine, I need to make sure I am correctly using the Rowing Machine before challenge.

(A photo of me Rowing)

It is important to understand the technique of rowing. Here is a You-Tube clip that help me understand the basic technique. 

Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrWEZbhpkoA