I’ m new to rowing, just started in March 09. I rowed about 3 times a week, alternating 5k and 10k sessions.
I did and do other sports, too – cycling, swimming, paddling, climbing, nordic skiing. But to be honest, so far it was kind of ‘a bit of everything, but nothing serious’, meaning I went cycling OR swimming OR paddling etc. once or twice a week but never cared about things like training plans, performance monitoring and so on and didn’t enter any competition.
Now I got hooked on indoor rowing and suddenly find myself studying training guides and maintaining a training logbook
Until now I mostly rowed without a ‘special plan’, not doing interval training etc., just set the 5 or 10k distance and rowed as fast or slow as felt good. That was ok to get used to the rower and the rowing technique and gain some experience how my body reacts to the load. I also made some progress, bringing down the 500m avg for the 10k from about 2:45 to 2:28 and even achieved my first goal, finishing a HM under 2 hours (1.58).
But gradually I feel that I’m reaching a (first) plateau phase and it’s getting harder to improve results. So I decided on following a training plan and settled on starting with the light version of the 5k Pete plan and am really curious how this will effect my results. I just did the first set today.
But I’m quite unsure what progress would be realistic to expect, and where and in which timeframe I should set my goals to make them challenging but not out of reach. The ranking lists are a nice motivation, but as they say nothing about how long / hard /regularly each rower was and is training to achieve those results, I miss some information to compare my times with those.
To give an example… until now, my best 500m split during a 5k session was 2:10.7. But even when I only do some single strokes with ‘full force’ I don’t get the 500m avg under 2:00, not to mention maintaining this for 500m. In the ranking list are women in my age and weight class who did the 500m in less then 1:50. And I really wonder if this is a realistic goal for me at all (considering my hight and weight) and if yes, which timeframe I should set for it.
Or for the long distance - I want to go for a FM until end of this year. Based on my recent HM result the forecast is about 4.10 for the FM. Would it be realistic to set the goal on 3.55, and how could a corresponding training plan look like?
Are there any rules of the thumbs that give some orientation on what progress one can expect with which training plan and how to set ‘good goals’? Or is this too individually and one has to make his own experience by and by?
