Meet Grit Season: A New Endurance Collection on Lake Lure

There’s a point in a longer row when the initial energy wears off and the finish still feels far away. You start bargaining with yourself. Maybe you ease up. Maybe you wonder whether you can hold your pace. What helps you through that moment is something you can practice.

That’s the idea behind Grit Season, a new six-part Hydrow Collection filmed on Lake Lure. Beginning Oct. 5, join Dani, Mac, Aisyah, Mike, and James to work on the pacing, patience, and mental endurance that helps you finish strong.

And there’s more Lake Lure to explore along the way. New Lake Lure workouts arrive weekly beginning Sept. 28 through mid-November, bringing fresh reasons to return to the water throughout the fall.

Endurance is a skill you can build

When you think about endurance, you might think about how long your body can keep going. But longer efforts also ask you to make decisions: how hard to start, when to settle in, and what to do when your confidence starts to fade.

Grit Season gives you opportunities to practice those decisions with an Athlete guiding you through them. You’ll work on holding your pace as intervals get longer, staying composed when the effort builds, and saving enough energy to finish with purpose.

“Mental endurance is definitely trainable,” Aisyah said. “The more you do it, the easier it comes to you.”

Each workout gives you something to carry into the next, whether that’s a better sense of your sustainable pace or a cue that helps you find your rhythm again.

A plan for the moments that test you

You won’t feel equally motivated through every minute of a workout. Dani puts it plainly: “Your positivity gets tired just like your muscles, so we need a backup plan.”

Across the Collection, your Athletes help you develop that plan. In Mike’s workout, you’ll practice a 10-minute race plan in three parts, including how to settle into your pace. When doubt shows up, he offers a useful instruction: “Your job is not to ignore the doubt, but to answer it.”

That answer might be a reminder that you’ve held this rhythm before, or a decision to focus on the next few strokes instead of all the minutes ahead. Aisyah offers another approach: “When it gets hard, that’s when I relax.” Her workout invites you to practice staying composed through a challenging effort that remains in your control.

These are strategies you can return to whenever a row starts to feel long. With practice, you’ll have more to draw on than the enthusiasm you brought to the first minute.

Six workouts with a goal you can measure

The program begins with a 10-minute Baseline row to establish your starting point. After four workouts that build your endurance and pacing skills, you’ll return for a 10-minute Retest to see how you’ve progressed.

Your goal: lower your average split while keeping the same stroke rate. Your split is the time it would take you to row 500 meters; a lower number means a faster pace. Keeping your strokes per minute (SPM) steady challenges you to improve your pace without simply taking more strokes.

After your Baseline, write down your average split and stroke rate so you have both numbers ready to compare when it’s time for your Retest.

Here’s how the collection builds toward that goal:

• Oct. 5: Set your Baseline with Dani. Start with 10 minutes at a steady 26 SPM. There’s no pressure to have it all figured out. Record your average split and stroke rate so you have a starting point to return to.

• Oct. 12: Practice pacing with Mac. In this 20-minute Sweat, hold 24 SPM as intervals grow from four to five to six minutes. Aim to match your split each round, or take a second off as you go.

• Oct. 19: Stay composed with Aisyah. This 20-minute Drive builds from 22 to 28 SPM before a sustained five-minute effort at 24–26 SPM. Practice finding calm while you work.

• Oct. 26: Rehearse your strategy with Mike. Use this 30-minute Sweat to practice a 10-minute race plan in three parts at 26 SPM, working on the discipline of settling into your pace.

• Oct. 2: Build confidence with Dani. Take on two 10-minute pieces at 26 SPM, with six minutes of recovery between them, in this 30-minute Drive. Learn from the first effort, then try to improve on it in the second. Give yourself easy days afterward.

• Nov. 9: See your progress with James. Return for a 10-minute Retest at 26 SPM and compare your average split with your Baseline. Use what you’ve practiced to work toward a faster pace at the same rhythm.

"Rowing over long distances not only challenges your physiology, it also requires you to defeat the first and most consistent obstacle: your brain’s wish to quit," Dani said. "With Grit Season workouts, we will guide you through improving your endurance by strengthening the physical and mental skillsets required to go the distance."

Find your starting point

You’ll find all six workouts in both the Grit Season collection and Destination: Lake Lure, with a new Grit Season workout arriving each Monday beginning Oct. 5. Complete any three rows in the Grit Season collection to earn your badge, and earn an additional badge by completing the entire collection. 

For the full experience, start with Dani’s Baseline and write down your numbers. Give yourself room to recover between challenging efforts, then bring what you learn into the next workout.

Ten minutes will tell you where you’re starting. Come back to discover what you can build from there.