So I'm on a club college rowing team, and I'm training for the Pittsburgh Marathon in May. I'm at about 60 mpw right now and I'm planning on upping to atleast 80..
My dilemma, we just started intensive conditioning for rowing monday, including erging and calisthenics, and I was wondering if you guys think rowing 5 days a week will be beneficial or if it will just lead to possible injuries and burnout.
Side note, I'm 18, it's my first marathon, and I'm looking to go sub-3.
my suggestion is drop your mileage from 60 mpw to about 0 mpw, and forget the calistenics, too.
just do about 3 hours of wrist curls a day so that you can be constantly popping your collar without fatigue. if you follow my workout plan you should be fine on all fronts.
Rowers are heavy with heavy bulky upper bodies
Rowing builds up your upper body, quads and butt.
If you keep rowing you'll soon be lucky to break 5 hours for a marathon.
thats actually not really true. rowings about 90% legs, and it doesn't add bulk. my 5k times dropped a minute without even running in the fall, just from rowing. so that point is false. my question had to do with the volume of both.
they are opposites wrote:
Rowers are heavy with heavy bulky upper bodies
Rowing builds up your upper body, quads and butt.
If you keep rowing you'll soon be lucky to break 5 hours for a marathon.
i dont know about that last bit, but the first two lines are correct. you will likely gain weight. intensive rowing like you will probably be doing is not beneficial. you will have a higher risk of injury and overtraining, but the bigger concern is looking like a decathlete trying to run a 1500. if speed is your objective, this will hinder your performance
No, No, No!
Don't listen to those who say you'll bulk up and rowing will hamper your marathon performance.
I did rowing intervals all last summer before a big marathon PR in the fall. There's no doubt in my mind that rowing helped improve my top-end cardio conditioning. I did not "bulk up" in the slightest. I can't honestly say I ran even 1 second faster in the marathon itself due to the rowing, but it definately helped me in some of the shorter races I wanted to do well in while I was logging high mileage, much of it at slow paces. I think rowing intervals are a lot more effective than running intervals at boosting the cardio system.
If you get into heavy-duty weightlifting to train for your rowing then you may have a problem. Otherwise, rowing itself will only improve your overall conditioning and fitness.
You'll be fine with the extra rowing. Just make sure to get in some long runs and one running workout. If you're on your college's rowing team I'd focus on getting all your rowing workouts first. I ran a 1:21 half marathon off about 20 mow while rowing 6 times a week so I'd say sub 3 is doable especially if you're a lightweight.
And I just want to add that I ran much faster than 5 hours. My time, in fact, was 4 hours and 58 minutes!
Bear in mind that rowers come in 'heavyweight' and 'lightweight' categories. The heavies eat a ton and may try to bulk up. The lightweights I knew were built like runners, with slightly more impressive back muscles. In fact several of the top ones at my Uni (which was world class at rowing) were on the XC team, and vice versa.
Usual rules of weight gain apply: you need a big calorie surplus to do it. Just watch your weight and don't worry unless it's actually going up.
I think you need to look a the rowing programme, see what it's giving you and complement it with running. It's most likely the rowing work is mostly technical, with some high quality work (equivalent to 1500-5000 pace running). So cut out some running intervals, do easy runs and drills+sprints to keep the form.
Not safe. If you row while marathon training, you could easily trip over the oars. I would not advise running and rowing simulatneously.