Hi! I am doing a 15 minute erg, free rate although, my coach says to keep the rate above 26 spm, but I was thinking of building up the rate towards the end and I was just wandering how you would recommend I pace myself. P.S. This erg will determine the crews for a national competition we have coming up.
If the minimum stroke rate is 26 I’d say you’d wanna keep your base rate at 26-27 for as long as you can. Since it’s seconds that are ticking down and not meters, you’re not going to be done any faster if you speed up your stroke rate so it’s best to keep it low to avoid flying and dying. If you wanted to build it up I would probably not do anything until you’re inside of 90 seconds to go and then go up maybe 1 beat or so every 30 seconds so that you finish around 30spm.