Bob S. wrote:
I didn't use HR as a guide, I just used it to detect whether or not I was having an off-day. I used wattage based on % of 2k - at least what I thought my 2k should be. That was alway just a wild guess, since my best 2ks were all done at sea level. I live at 4,000' elevation and did all of my training at home. That includes most of my time trials over 2k. Even so, I got a feel for it after a number of sessions and could tell when I was on track. Incidentally, I did not have HR information for any races or time trials since I got the dynamic a few years ago. HR is available on it, but time trials done on the dynamic do not count in the listings.
Re the IP: I often didn't agree with the plan, so I just tweaked it a bit to fit what I wanted.
Bob S.
I think HR is only good as a guide in sessions that are a lot longer than sprints. At least, that's been my experience. The times when I've seen my HR climb up to near or equal maximum have been in half marathons or 10Ks at what turned out to be a new personal best. For shorter distances, HR seems to lag a lot behind what the IP interactive training program says it should be in the intervals regimen it has. If I did the IP interactive 2K program, I'd have to mostly disregard HR because although I know what resting HR and max are, I know it doesn't act like the training program seems to say it should.
If you do all your training at 4,000 feet elevation, that should have the effect of giving you a boost in oxygen metabolizing capacity, at an elevation nearer sea level. So training at 4,000 feet should help you do better in C.R.A.S.H.-Bs at Boston, where the elevation is nearer sea level and the oxygen is a bit more plentiful per cubic inch of air.
From what others have said to me about the Dynamic C2, they can get a better time for any piece on a regular C2. But I guess the dynamic has some characteristics that people who row OTW like to be able to experience.
The 10K I did today online with a guy in Denmark was anything but boring. He was way too fast for me to race him in the ordinary way, but I found that it could be a totally satisfying race if I just focused on adjusting my pace up or down so that it was always less than 10 seconds/500 meters slower than his. That was my goal, to keep his lead in the 10K less than 10 seconds / 500 meters ahead of me. When it started out, I was rowing about 2:08 or so and he was rowing at 1:58. I increased my pace to 2:07 and he increased his to 1:57. Etc. He didn't seem to want to row at much faster than 1:53 so I settled in at about 2:02 for a lot of the time, to keep the difference less than 10 seconds between our paces. And it went that way all through the 10K until he reached the finish line. Then I eased off into a warmdown pace for a few hundred meters, changed my mind about going slow when there were about 200 meters left and picked up the pace to the finish.
After that 10K, I felt like I was vibrating all over and energized. Now... I feel like going to sleep.
