The pain was also different, it felt as though my muscles were in a debt (which they were) and no matter how hard I breathed, there was no way I could repay it, so I just had to endure it for 11 minutes at a time.

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Not thinking anyone would actually do it, we offered a modest prize - a WARC visor - to anyone who managed to complete all 10 ergs in 10 days (with a disclaimer that WARC would not be held responsible for any physical, emotional or psychological damage.) Well, Ed did it.

Hes the third person to ever achieve the 10 Erg list - the first were a pair of awesome schoolgirl athletes from Melbourne who proudly wear their WARC visors everywhere.

Ed sent us a dropbox of all his erg shots AND he wrote a blog about it.

On behalf of WARC, we say: Ed is awesome.

Be like Ed. Ed writes: My name is Ed Nash and I am a first year medical student at Caius College, Cambridge.

I knew they would be hard, but I thought, I do 10 training sessions a week during term time, 1 per day for 10 days cant be THAT bad.

I also didnt know exactly what my fitness levels were like due to being off rowing for a few weeks, but my most recent 2k had been a 6:44 so I chose 1:41 as my TMS pace and hoped for the best.

The Vomit Session 1000m at TMS -5, four minutes rest Two x 500m at TMS -10 with two minutes rest between Two x 240m at TMS 15 with one minute rest Going into this session I knew it wouldnt be easy, it required me pulling a pb 1k, 500m, and 240m consecutively, but I was optimistic and was blissfully unaware of what lay before me.

The 1000m went by without a hitch and I finished it with an average split of 1:36.3.

I missed the goal completely, finishing in 1:35.2 and realising that I was definitely not going to come out of this well.

The second 500m however, was where everything really fell apart.

I started off around 1:35, trying to keep the rate high and minimise my losses but with 350m to go I suddenly felt like Id been hit by a train and both my rate and my split were irrecoverably lost.

I cant say Ive ever felt so terrible while erging as I did just then.

It came to me as a massive shock and my entire body felt like itd turned to jelly as I stumbled across the line with a miserable time of 1:53.1 and 2 minutes before my next sprint.

I was in no mood to give up however, and I braced myself mentally for what was about to come.

I won back some self-respect by completing the next 240m at a split of 1:34.7 at rate 38 (although it was supposed to be at 1:26), and the next at 1:38.3 at rate 37 before rolling around on the floor for the next 10 minutes trying not to be sick.

While I was incredibly disappointed with the times I got, I left the session feeling pleased because those 15 minutes probably impacted my rowing more than any single training session Ive done in a long time.

It showed me that if youre prepared for the pain youre about to experience, and you know what it feels like, you can cope with it and push through.

But if youre not ready, and it comes as a shock, you have very little hope of fighting through it.

Just like at the catch, you must be braced before the pressure hits it.

From this session I concluded that 1.) Ones training program should occasionally have horrible ergs like this in them, just so that youre ready for the pain when it hits you, and 2.) it is always possible to hurt more and you have definitely not reached your total potential yet.

Bad news erg (bad news comes in threes) Three by 3000m.

Each 3000m includes: 2500m at the 6km pace, 250m at TMS and the last 250m at sub-TMS.

There was no rest time defined for this erg, but as KimmyJCrow suggested in the original article that any session with 1 minute rests should be on the list, I thought 1 minute rests seemed appropriate.

According to the 75 power rule, my 6K test split should have been 1:51.1 so I held this split during the first 2500m of each piece, before stepping up to 1:41 and beyond.

Unlike the first day, I managed to complete this erg at the correct splits, averaging 1:49.4, 1:49.7, and 1:49.1.

This erg was hard in a different way to the previous one.

What made this one hard was dealing with the effects of the sprint for the first 2500m of the next piece.

So while the intensity was not on the same level as the day before, the length of time spent suffering was much longer and so finding a way of coping with each 11 minute piece was the biggest mental struggle (I started counting the strokes left at 200 to go during the last piece).

2K Erg Training Program