[In]decent Intervals

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I did manage to replace the shock cord on my rowing erg since my last post here. I took the opportunity to clean up and/or oil the drive mechanism, pulleys, axles, etc. And to thoroughly clean the flywheel housing. I put in a CTC workout as a rating ladder: 12 x 1' on 1', starting at 20 spm and increasing by 1 every rep. I ended up with 3710m, which works out to 1:37.0 pace and what the monitor thinks was 25 spm. Meh.

On the BikeErg front, I've also been doing 1'/1' intervals. Today for example was 14 x 1'/1', the target being 600m/1:40.0 pace for the first 13 and then a fast last....



Mission accomplished. I've been lifting and doing weight-assisted stretching along with the erging and biking. It's certainly helping in terms of flexibility....

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Been doing BikeErg versions of so-called Billat intervals: microintervals at roughly vVO2max pace, with active recoveries. They come out of research Ms. Billat did with runners around 2 decades ago, the basic idea being to use the recoveries to mitigate HR rise and allow you to work much longer at that level than otherwise. The original version of them proposed 15 secs on/ 15 less on, with the former at vVO2max and the latter at half the pace. In my opinion, 15 second bursts aren't long enough on a BikeErg to allow you to achieve any sort of rhythm. You're always accelerating and decelerating rather than 'grooving in' a particular pace/rate combo. Moreover, IMO the proposed recovery pace might be okay for running, but is too slow for effective cycle training. Somewhere between 40 and 50% of vVO2max watts strikes me as much more realistic as well as much more effective for what I'm trying to do. My target pace is 1:40, which is 350w. I've been experimenting a bit with recovery paces, and have decided that around 45% of vVO2max watts is about right for me. Here's today's 40-min workout, courtesy of the graphing function in ErgData. I set it up as 40 mins with 1-min splits, as you can't do that many discrete 30-sec intervals....



HR on this looks a bit wonky from about 13 minutes through roughly 16 mins. I think it was some kind of transmission interference or other Bluetooth artifact, given that it came down from the plateau to the same slowly rising line it'd been on....

You can't really tell from the graph, but I probably averaged around 1:39 pace on the tempo intervals and 2:09 on the recoveries. Some of what looks like spikes in the recovery paces was the result of me fiddling with my toe baskets. I ended up with 20 minutes at 1:39 pace, on equal-duration rest/work. Inasmuch as my age-group unofficial 4k record is just over 1:38 pace (1:38.25; 6:33.0), that's three times the duration I could otherwise achieve at literally 100% effort.

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Haven't posted in a while -- been caught up for the last week and a half or so in scrambling to deal with coronavirus. Poland has instituted a number of prophylactic measures, including shutting the schools and universities; postponing or canceling concerts; and aggressively isolating businesses, etc. where someone has tested positive. One consequence has been a proliferation of rumors spread by social media: Wroclaw (my city) is going to be locked down for the rest of March, that sort of thing. And there has been a fair amount of panic buying to work around....

Anyway, at least so far I continue to hang in there. There's some hope that if the prevailing winds die down and the temperature rises in the next week or so, I'll be able to resume rowing/erging on my balcony. In the meantime I continue to work mainly on base-building. I'm also avoiding the commercial gym I belong to (and the city has shut the big public workout/recreation center). For some reason I've gotten on an OCD kick in which I'm trying to see how many distance intervals on fixed rests I can make exactly the same elapsed time and rating/cadence. I'm up to 14 out of 16 1k reps on 1' on the bike erg. True, I did the last one in 1:32, just because.....

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Like everyone else on the planet ought to be, I've been preoccupied recently with coronavirus issues. Not only are there practical issues (e.g. restrictions, closings, etc.) to deal with, in my case there's a real problem with risk. Diabetics and others with compromised immune and/or circulatory systems evidently are particularly liable to viral-induced pneumonia. I have been advised by my doctors that if I get a serious case of it, I could well die despite treatment. Alternatively, I could damage my lungs permanently. It follows that I am among those who need to hunker down in comparative isolation. It also follows that I ought to avoid unduly stressing my immune system (and/or my respiratory passages) from training too hard.

Going forward, I will need to continue the sorts of base-building and threshold-level work I've been doing laterly and leave the high-end work alone. I also need to make sure that the volume doesn't add up such that it wears me down over time. I've been doing things like 1'/1' sessions on the ErgBike at nominal threshold pace or slower; repeat 1ks on the BikeErg trying to achieve OCD consistency in pace and cadence; that sort of thing. If it ever gets warm enough here in Wroclaw and calm enough, I'll take the cover off the rowing erg on the balcony and use that too.

Here was yesterday's ErgBike session -- I originally intended to try for 40 x 500m reps at 1:40.0 pace on 50 secs rest, but buggered up rep 3 (!) so switched over to negative-splitting the things.



Believe it or not, that's actually right about threshold intensity for me these days for the session. Today is back to the longer slower stuff....

[max_ratcliffe]

Like everyone else on the planet ought to be, I've been preoccupied recently with coronavirus issues. Not only are there practical issues (e.g. restrictions, closings, etc.) to deal with, in my case there's a real problem with risk. Diabetics and others with compromised immune and/or circulatory systems evidently are particularly liable to viral-induced pneumonia. I have been advised by my doctors that if I get a serious case of it, I could well

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Look after yourself Nav.

[NavigationHazard]

Like the rest of the world, I've been hanging in there and trying to adjust to lockdown/isolation measures. Where I am in Wroclaw is pretty much buttoned up for the forseeable future, among other things meaning that gyms are shuttered along with most everything else. The authorities also have booted people from the parks and greenways, making it very difficult to contemplate any outdoor exercise such as road rides on one or another of my road cycles. As for rowing, it's generally been too cold (still) or too windy and/or too wet to make erging on my balcony feasible. So I've mainly been riding the BikeErg inside while watching reruns of historic soccer matches. I've managed to confirm my memories of the Cruyff-led Dutch sides as being irresistablely beautiful in their attacking flows, if not necessarily to improve my general fitness all that much.

For some reason I've gotten into repeat 500m sprintervals on the BikeErg at varying degrees of difficulty. For example, I spent 4 or 5 workouts since my last post in pursuit of a Full Carla: that's 29 reps at exactly the same pace or distance and a hyperfast last rep. Eventually I managed to pull one off: 29 reps at 1:40 pace on 50" rest on 3/29 and rep #30 at 1:24.6 pace.

Yesterday I did 16 x 500m on 50" rest as close to flat out as I could get.



This was a PB for the session on the BikeErg, although somewhat slower than my best ever on the rower [1:27.4 average on 10/6/06, when I was objectively in ~6:10 form -- or better -- although I never actually did a trial at the time to prove it]. It does suggest that maybe I should take another run at my own unofficial BikeErg 4k mark for the age group. On current training form I'm pretty sure I can go below 6:28 on a good day, if sufficiently motivated hydrated and free from concern about too much strain on my immune system. I know, I know, JFDI. But it's hard to get past the nagging fear, and I say that in complete open honesty.

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Still locked down, with no sign of when things might start to relax a bit. At least this week is forecast to be significantly warmer, and I ought to be able to get back on the rowing erg on the balcony by Wednesday or so.

Yesterday was 30 x 500m on 30" on the BikeErg, negative-splitting them down from 1:40.0 pace in 2-rep intervals. I ended up at 1:37.9 average. I'm fairly confident I could hold 1:37 flat given even pacing from the start....

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Yesterday I managed 16 x 500m reps on 30" on the BikeErg at 1:34.4 pace.

Today was a rather gonzo 50 x 500m reps on 30" on the BikeErg at 1:39.2 pace overall. I negative splitted the last 16, which came out at an average 1:38.0 pace -- slightly under my unofficial age group 4k record pace.

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Same old same old. I did manage to get 50 x 500m on 30" rest on the BikeErg down to 1:36.9 average pace a couple of days ago. And I have switched over, at least in the short term, to longer base-building rides.

I've posted this elsewhere, but it deserves maximum exposure: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanr ... 2/fulltext

The short version is that no one has any hard evidence regarding training or competiting in/around a coronavirus pandemic, so be prudent. The article does suggest some linkage between very high intensity workouts and/or sudden jumps in volume/intensity, and susceptibility to illness. And it recommends prolonged rest in the event of symptoms....

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What has degenerated into a weekly update:



I have just taken roughly 5 minutes off the previous BikeErg age-group 100,000m best. That had been Emanuele Romoli's 3:20:10.2, set in Trento, Italy on June 4, 2018. It is now 3:15:22.1, set in Wrocław, Poland on April 24, 2020....

That would be another age-group world record, if Concept2 were recognizing them yet on the BikeErg. David Hart, if you're lurking.... I currently have 5 all-time best age-group performances on rankable pieces: 4k, 30', 60', 40k, and 100k. And Royce Banks and I were trading the 1k best performance back and forth earlier in the year, before coronavirus intruded. I've had that one and lost it again a couple of times this season, and currently hold the second best performance behind my friend Royce...

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Still in lockdown mode here in Poland, and likely to be that way for the forseeable future. If it ever warms up, stops raining, and the wind dies down, I will be able to take the cover off the rowing erg on the balcony and resume training on that. Meanwhile I continue to work out on the ErgBike. For the last week or so I've been doing multi-rep 30" on/ 30" off workouts in and around the usual spring allergy attacks. I'm generally doing 50-60 reps at maybe 1:37 pace or better; my best effort to date is 66 reps at 1;34.2 pace. To a certain extent the results depend on the playlist. I've also been experimenting a bit with cadence and DF.

TBH, right now there's very little to feel optimistic about as far as training. Although Poland (like many other places in Europe) has started to relax some of its more stringent lockdown restrictions, there's no reason to think that the underlying problem has been resolved. Coronavirus is still out there among the general population, still spreading, and still perfectly capable of killing people under the right circumstances. I fear greatly that ignorant members of the general public will take even small relaxations as license to resume their previous lifestyles. And it won't take very long until we're right back where we had been, only with more victims. I have zero interest in attending a big indoor event unless/until my safety can be assured, both at the venue and in traveling to/from it. That pessimism sort of eats into the motivation....

[Boris1956]

Still in lockdown mode here in Poland, and likely to be that way for the forseeable future. If it ever warms up, stops raining, and the wind dies down, I will be able to take the cover off the rowing erg on the balcony and resume training on that. Meanwhile I continue to work out on the ErgBike. For the last week or so I've been doing multi-rep 30" on/ 30" off workouts in and around the usual spring allergy attacks. I'm generally doing 50-60 reps at maybe 1:37 pace or better; my best effort to date is 66 reps at 1;34.2 pace. To a certain extent the results depend on the playlist. I've also been experimenting a bit with cadence and DF.

TBH, right now there's very little to feel optimistic about as far as training. Although Poland (like many other places in Europe) has started to relax some of its more stringent lockdown restrictions, there's no reason to think that the underlying problem has been resolved. Coronavirus is still out there among the general population, still spreading, and still perfectly capable of killing people under the right circumstances. I fear greatly that ignorant members of the general public will take even small relaxations as license to resume their previous lifestyles. And it won't take very long until we're right back where we had been, only with more victims. I have zero interest in attending a big indoor event unless/until my safety can be assured, both at the venue and in traveling to/from it. That pessimism sort of eats into the motivation....

I agree with everything you say. I suspect that the virus could well come back and bite us big time. I don't want to attend a big indoor rowing event at the moment as it would be an ideal environment for a respiratory virus to spread. I'm dealing with the current situation one day at a time. I train six days a week and just keep the mileage ticking over. Prior to all there was an article in The Times (I think ) that said for males over sixty cardiovascular exercise in a cool environment boosted the immune system. I haven't had a hint of a cold over the last 12-18 months so there may be something in that. I attended the WIRC in Paris in Feb and came back symptom free, this was at a time when the virus must have been all over Paris and the whole world was there. My youngest son returned from a training camp in Spain in January and said he felt pretty awful for about 4-5 days with flu like symptoms and as he said everyone at Madrid and on the plane was doing their best to be super spreaders. We avoided the usual Parisian tourist traps as they were too crowded and at that time some employees were refusing to work citing fears for their safety. FWIW I caught something post 2018 BRIC. I just felt about 70-80% a lot of the time and tired. I'd then feel better, train for two days and relapse. This lasted into Feb 2019. Someone else at my gym reported the same symptoms so it could have been acquired at the gym, we put it down to unknown winter virus.
Good luck for the future, keep well and keep going.

[Citroen]

TBH, right now there's very little to feel optimistic about as far as training. Although Poland (like many other places in Europe) has started to relax some of its more stringent lockdown restrictions, there's no reason to think that the underlying problem has been resolved. Coronavirus is still out there among the general population, still spreading, and still perfectly capable of killing people under the right circumstances. I fear greatly that ignorant members of the general public will take even small relaxations as license to resume their previous lifestyles. And it won't take very long until we're right back where we had been, only with more victims.

There's two ways the lockdown can be completely cancelled
1. A viable serology test, so folks can discover whether they have had the infection and have natural immunity.
2. A viable vaccine so that the folks who fail the serology test can get a needle stuck in them to get immunity.

Unless that's possible there's nothing to prevent my seven weeks sitting indoors from being wasted. I'm puzzled why a serology test isn't being given more priority when they're saying that a vaccince could be years away. The UK is planning to relax some lockdown restrictions at the start of next week. I'm worried we'll see a second wave kill another 30,000 victims here in the UK unless we can keep R0 below 1.0.

[ArmchairPhil]

TBH, right now there's very little to feel optimistic about as far as training. Although Poland (like many other places in Europe) has started to relax some of its more stringent lockdown restrictions, there's no reason to think that the underlying problem has been resolved. Coronavirus is still out there among the general population, still spreading, and still perfectly capable of killing people under the right circumstances. I fear greatly that ignorant members of the general public will take even small relaxations as license to resume their previous lifestyles. And it won't take very long until we're right back where we had been, only with more victims.

There's two ways the lockdown can be completely cancelled
1. A viable serology test, so folks can discover whether they have had the infection and have natural immunity.
2. A viable vaccine so that the folks who fail the serology test can get a needle stuck in them to get immunity.

Unless that's possible there's nothing to prevent my seven weeks sitting indoors from being wasted. I'm puzzled why a serology test isn't being given more priority when they're saying that a vaccince could be years away. The UK is planning to relax some lockdown restrictions at the start of next week. I'm worried we'll see a second wave kill another 30,000 victims here in the UK unless we can keep R0 below 1.0.

I share the concerns of you both but a reliable serology test and an effective vaccine cannot be conjured up. The particular virus is apparently mutating often so even when a vaccine becomes available it may only short to medium term protection as for example with the influenza vaccine for each new season or debilitating variant

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Meh last two weeks. I managed to get up to 100 x 30"/30" on the BikeErg on 5/16, the first 50 at 1:38.5 pace and the last 50 at 1:34.7 pace (average 1:36.6 pace); somewhere in there (5/14) I also tried for an OCD workout and managed 57 consecutive 30" reps at 1:39.6 pace out of a 66-rep session....

The things you do when you're lockdown bored and that's unlikely to change anytime soon. I am toying with the idea of entering the British Virtual rowing championships at the end of June. I'd actually have to get back on the rowing ergo to start training.....

The last couple of days I have been doing repeat 1ks on the BikeErg on 2' active rest. It's roughly the same grunt-wise as repeat 500ms on a rowing ergo. I did 8 x 1k on 2' two days ago at 1:36.0 pace; last evening I went deliberately slower on the first 7 with intent to blast the last. The wheels fell off on that last rep at about 600m in, and I limped home with a 1:33.8. I'd been on pace for about 1:31.5 before the blowup. As Clint Eastwood put it, a man's gotta know his limitations....