Erging in "the black hole"?

[Myopic Squirrel]

Read with great interest Jackarabit's link to 2010 Sport Science Vol 13 pp 32-53's article about training's "The Black Hole", and Greg Smith's summary - "you don't make more progress by making steady state more intense - you make less". In my enthusiasm to build endurance, rowed today's piece trying to keep the split below 2:27 (down from 2:30 last week) at 20 SPM, DF 110, for 40 minutes. Monitoring my HR, after 15 mins was at 80% of my UT1, and from 25 to 40 mins, was at 85% of my UT1. My recovery rate was 11 BPMs over my regular recovery rate. So am I correct that to avoid erging "into the black hole", I shouldn't be chasing a lowered split rate, but instead disciplining myself to stay in that 70 - 75% band? Thank you in advance!

[jackarabit]

John, as I may have mentioned, I spent some months chasing and catching and increasing "recorded" max HR. Every trip passes thru AT and TR land and ends in the Republic of Anaerobia. Nobody is going to tell you to take these trips daily. As a CAD survivor (thus far), I hope to be able to utilize ALL of Utilization Training zone 1 for a few yrs to come. For now 150bpm is sustainable. My eyes don't bug out at 160. I prefer not to make the pigheaded effort to reach 166-172 too often. I'm a 60-80%er, little bit from column A and a little bit from Column B. I've never made an attempt to calculate %UT1. Until now, all I knew about was range in number of beats and top, bottom, and mean HR for a particular zone. Who advocates the use of percentages OF a heart rate zone?

Admittedly, the urge to participate in the pace race is there for me but the sun is a bit low in my sky for a lot of that.

Jack

[Edward4492]

There are those who are far better than I to answer this one....but I got my PR when I was doing lots of meters (70 to 90k weekly). The bulk of those were 15k rows capped at 80 percent hr and 20r. For me that's about a 2:08 pace. Once a week I would do a hard, 20r x 2:00 row at anywhere from 5k to 15k (only did one or two 15's, just too damn hard). I actually lost some of my speed (PR of 6:59, recent bests around 7:05) when I cut my mileage way back in preparation for race season. I'm convinced now that I lost speed due to under training. If I were to write a program for someone it would include four days a week of long, 20r HR capped rows with (2) days of thoroughly brutal interval work outs. The idea is to do the long rows at a pace that allows you to do it day after day while gaining fitness and not breaking down. And, make sure you're mindful during these long rows. Easy doesn't mean sloppy and unattentive. Keep searching for the perfect stroke.

[Cyclingman1]

I think the notion of training in the "black hole" is just a bit nebulous and almost seems like a scare tactic. Of course, training does not consist of the same paced workouts that are in a black hole. People who are serious about advancing will know if what they are doing is working. One has to adjust if too many intervals, too much tempo work, or too much LSD or too little. I do know that at some point, more is not better, especially for older athletes.

[Bob S.]

For older edgers who are beyond the newby honeymoon, improvement is a myth. You just have to work on slowing down the inevitable downward slide. There are minor ups and downs, of course. Illnesses, travel, and the normal intrusions of every day life set you back a lot of times and then you "improve" back to as close to you can to where you where before then interruption. In the long run it is all down hill. You can work on slowing it, but no way can you reverse it.

Bob S.

[Yankeerunner]

For older edgers who are beyond the newby honeymoon,........ In the long run it is all down hill. You can work on slowing it, but no way can you reverse it.

Bob S.

Amen Bob. It's a very difficult thing to judge, let alone accept. We know that we can't do what we did 10 years ago, or 5 years ago, but we think that it's perfectly reasonable to be able to do what we did one month ago. Yet at some point, we can't, and when we stubbornly try, we get injured. We can't just give up, or we would deteriorate even faster. But there is no exact formula for determining how much is enough without being too much. We are all an experiment of one. Getting old is not for wimps!

P.S. I just watched the video of you 8:44.9 at Long Beach. Excellent! You're doing it better than anyone who went before you.

[DuffyF56]

Could you post the link to either the original article or the post where this was originally discussed? Thank you.

[Myopic Squirrel]

Duffy, the article can be found here, including Greg Smith's summary - http://www.c2forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=15085

[lindsayh]

For older edgers who are beyond the newby honeymoon, improvement is a myth. You just have to work on slowing down the inevitable downward slide. There are minor ups and downs, of course. Illnesses, travel, and the normal intrusions of every day life set you back a lot of times and then you "improve" back to as close to you can to where you where before then interruption. In the long run it is all down hill. You can work on slowing it, but no way can you reverse it.
Bob S.

I guess though Bob it depends what you mean by "older" and newbie".
Nearly all my PBs are within the last 12 months and I'm still getting faster - am aiming for a 2km PB in the next month or two.
It will be really interesting for me to find the peak but no downhill slide yet.

[DuffyF56]

While googling this earlier I found this............

http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/en ... -Hole.html

I would like to find the original research paper.

[Edward4492]

I'm with you Lindsay, I plan on going a whole lot faster the next coupla years, but I guess from Bob's perspective we're still "youngsters"! Gotta defer to Bob.....we should all be pulling his times at 90!

[Bob S.]

I guess though Bob it depends what you mean by "older" and newbie".
Nearly all my PBs are within the last 12 months and I'm still getting faster - am aiming for a 2km PB in the next month or two.
It will be really interesting for me to find the peak but no downhill slide yet.

In my own case, the honeymoon period came after my aortic valve replacement and 3XCABG, just before I turned 79. My earlier arguing (edit: blast it - I had typed erging, but automatic spell check had its own ideas) period was from age 69 to 71, but I didn't really train for the erg competition in those days. One of the old Crash-B rules was that you didn't train for it; you just went in and did it with whatever training you had been doing OTW and whatever erg work you did in between when you couldn't get out in a boat. I was in SoCal at the time and just used the erg at home for general exercise and the ergs at the club when the bay was too rough to go out. After age 71, I knew about the aortic valve problem, which was not very serious early on, but was gradually getting worse. They didn't have half decades then, so there was no incentive to do anything special on the erg. Another factor was that, setting the new M LWT 2k WR in 1996 at 71, after breaking the 2.5k the year before, I would have had to do better than my record time just to qualify. I assumed that I would be slower and just let it drop. I didn't consider trying to train for it; I just stuck with rowing OTW.

After the operation, it was a different matter. I had moved to the Owens Valley, which has lakes, but no facilities for rowing shells. There was no practical way to get back into OTW rowing, but a big need for post-op cardio rehab. We had moved too far away to take advantage of the rehab program provided by the hospital, so I was on my own. I had my 10 year old model B, with the original PM, at the time, so that was a major part of it, along with hiking in the Valley at 4000’ of elevation plus occasional hikes in the Sierras at 8000’ to 11000’, and a day or two a week of resistance work at a local fitness center. It was generally a couple of days a week of each type of exercise. I did it all in baby steps, just increasing time and effort very gradually. After a year and a half of this, I felt ready to make a try at competition and rowed at the 2005 Beach Sprints. It was exactly 18 months to the day after the operation and I ended up with 8:19.7, which was enough to qualify. I improved it a bit at the C-B itself, getting 8:18.1. That was good enough to get an invitation to join the USIRT Development Squad and try out to get on the team. At that point, I realized that now I was going to have to do some sort of training program. I also needed to do a couple of verified time trials. With that old PM I had no way to verify, but C2 provided me with a PM3 so that I could comply with the rule. I was accepted and went with the team to the EIRC in Copenhagen in 12/2005, where I got 8:05.6, breaking the old 80-89 M LWT record by about 8s. to pick up my first major post-op WR. I did a lot of other ranked and verified events that season and a few are still current WRs. A couple of months later, I was the first octogenarian to go sub-8.That one was at 7:54.9. By the 2007 season, the honeymoon period was over. I quit trying to make lightweight and did pick up all the long distance WRs as a heavyweight, i.e. 10k and up. The 2k eluded me. The old M HWT, set by Joe Clinard in 2000 after his hip replacement, was 8:03.5. I broke that, with Xeno coaching, getting under 8’ again, but it was not at an event. A few days later, at the Beach Sprints, I did 8:01.4. That broke the old record, but it never made it to the list - Frederick Osborne got 7:57.3 a couple of weeks later at Boston, with me trailing by exactly 3 seconds – a full boat length at that speed. The honeymoon was indeed over and I lost about 4s/2k for the next 3 years.

One little added note here: For LB and CB races in that 2007 season, I didn’t have a coxswain. Would that have made a difference? Who knows? – I don’t, but I am sure that it was a big help to have a coxswain for the 5 successful races. At Copenhagen, John Mills came around for a short while to give me encouragement, but figured that I was doing OK on my own and left to check on other team members. I was the only entrant in my category and he could see that I was well under the old record time, so he didn’t need to stay.

Bob S.

[Edward4492]

You're one of a kind Bob! Meeting you made the trip to B's worth it; totally priceless stuff! Erg on young fellow.

[Myopic Squirrel]

Bob,

While I know I'm working my way down the other side of the mountain, I'd prefer descending dragging my heels, and to slow the descent as much as realistically possible. You are incredibly inspiring to we of the "chronologically challenged"! Thank you for sharing your progression - your accomplishments are phenomenal. John

[Bob S.]

Bob,

While I know I'm working my way down the other side of the mountain, I'd prefer descending dragging my heels, and to slow the descent as much as realistically possible. You are incredibly inspiring to we of the "chronologically challenged"! Thank you for sharing your progression - your accomplishments are phenomenal. John

That's the whole idea. We can't reverse the decline, just try to hold it down to a slow gallop. I am naturally a rather lazy guy and can find all kinds of plausible excuses to avoid erg work. Then I lose ground and have to "improve" back to somewhere near the point where I was when I slacked off.

Bob S.