New Wolverine Plan Thread

[gregsmith01748]

After a delightful weekend (L1 - 4 x 1K on Sat, and L4 - 2 x 40 min on Sunday). I am off to California without a erg in sight. 60 soul sucking minutes on an elliptical trainer this morning. At least it got the blood flowing.

[Bob S.]

I am off to California without a erg in sight.

We had our first real freeze last night. Did you bring MA weather out here?

Bob S.

[gregsmith01748]

You're lucky I didn't. When I took off from Boston, it was sleeting and 33 degrees!

[Bob S.]

You're lucky I didn't. When I took off from Boston, it was sleeting and 33 degrees!

It got down into the 20s here last night, but up in this high desert country sleet is rare. New snow in the mountains, however, so the views are great.

Bob S.

[gregsmith01748]

Weekly WP training wrap up

11/5 to 11/15

• 11/5 - L4 - 2 x 40 min - 168/172/180/196, 168/172/168/172 (-367m/-3 strokes) for the first 30 minutes, a lovely workout, then I hit the wall. I suspected low blood sugar since I hadn't eaten for about 6 hours prior. Ramped back the 2nd 40 minutes to lower rates.
  
  11/6 - L1 - 4 x 1K - 1:38.7, 1:45.4, 1:47.2, 1:46.1 - crappy pacing. I went out much too fast on #1, and never fully recovered. Ended up with a 1:44.1 avg split. That's where I'll start next time. On the plus side, my time for Int #1 was a new PB for me on the 1K.
  
  11/7 - L4 2 x 40 min - 168/172/176/180 x 2 (+212m/+12 strokes). Nice workout. HRs from 155 to 165, rising into the 170s at the very end.
  
  11/8 - Rest Day - travelling to California
  
  11/9 morning - 60 dreadful minutes on an elliptical trainer
  
  11/9 evening - Rule of 11s workout - (avg 290 watts, HR at 95% of max). I desperate enough to buy a day pass to a gym to get at a rowing machine, and I tried Mike Van beuren's idea for an interval workout, basically 2' fast 3' slow with a twist.
  
  11/10 - L3 - 60 minutes, 15268m, 1:57.8 - Meh.
  
  11/11 - Rest day, flying home from California
  
  11/12 - L4 2 x 40min, 168/172/176/180 x 2 (+355m, +28 strokes, max HR 167).
  
  11/13 - L2 4 x 2K, target: 1:48, actual 47.5, 46.8, 46.3, 48.4 --> actual avg 1:47.2. Interval 4 was a bit shaky.
  
  11/14 - L4 1 x 40 min, 168/172/176/200 (+169m/+4 strokes), I was going to do 80 minutes, but my calf hurt, so I cut it short.
  
  11/15 - L1 250/500/750/1K/750/500/250, target 1:40, actual: 39.8, 39.7, 44.7, 43.9, 43.3, 40.9, 32.8 --> actual avg 1:42.1, I set a much too aggressive target. I should have targetted about 1:42 and then I bet I could have done much better. Felt like crap before I started and much better after ward.

Comments: So, this has been a tough week. A trip to california and loads of work stress. On the plus side, I am sticking with the plan and putting all I have in to the workouts. On the minus side, I am having more workouts go badly (missing splits, weird pains, hitting walls, etc). I assume that is what happens over the long haul.

I am starting to worry that I am not making enough progress to hit my objective by the time WIRC happens. I guess I need to trust the training plan and not push too hard. It's funny, I've been at this for over a year and I feel like a total amateur when it comes to planning workouts and evaluating results. If it wasn't for this forum, I'd be totally lost.

[ThatMoos3Guy]

Really, it just looks like you maybe set targets that were just a bit too fast. That combined with a lot of travel isn't going to help your workouts. If you'd settled down a little more on some of the early intervals you could have posted much better averages.

One recommendation would be to have more of a rotation between the workouts. IE do a 4x2k one week, then a 5x1500 the next, and a 3x2.5k the week after that. This gives more time between workouts, so it's easier to improve upon them. My other recommendation would be to not go as hard on the L4 pieces. If you're not feeling good during the intervals it probably means you're pushing a little hard on the steady state. It can be hard with the L4, because the rate is so low and the split so high that it doesn't feel like you're going that hard.

And that's really not a bad pyramid session. With a little better pacing you'd be sub 1:42. I've never done that workout, but it's supposedly paced at right around 2k. And you might have died during the 4x2k, but you still dropped the average by a second.

If the next week doesn't go great, then take a couple days off.

[gregsmith01748]

Thanks for your comments, Andy.
I'm surprised how hard it is for me to work on pacing, but I'll keep plugging away. Maybe I'm pushing too hard on the L4s, but I really enjoy the workouts generally. What I started during this training period was to start wearing a heart monitor again. I will work on keeping the L4 HRs around 160, which I think is my Anaerobic Threshold.

I am trying to switch up my workouts. Here's the rundown of the past few

L1
- Today: 250/500/750/1K/750/500/250
- 11/9: rule of 11s
- 11/6: 4 x 1K
- 10/30: 8x500

L2 - I really wanted to redo the 4x2K because I wanted to try the faster split
- 11/13: 4 x 2K
- 11/3: 4 x 2K
- 10/21: 5 x 1500
- 10/3: 3/2.5/2/1.5

L3 - Looks like I could switch this one up more.
- 11/10 - 60'
- 11/1 - 10K
- 10/19 - 60'
- 10/10 - 60'

It looks like my frequency of L1s and L3s is OK (if you account for the week and a half where I stopped because of knee pain), but I am not quite getting in an L2 every week (its more like one every 10 days).

I will try to establish a more rigid rotation of L1,L2 and L3 workouts just to make sure I am getting the variety I should.

Thanks again.

[ThatMoos3Guy]

Guess I should have looked through your previous workouts a little harder! It does seem that you're doing a pretty good job mixing up the intervals, so just keep doing what you're doing.

One comment Caviston says about increasing the pace of level 1 intervals is "Personally, I'm very happy to improve at the rate of about 2 tenths of a second/500m every week." The key is not to bit off more than you can chew; it's a lot more fun to start at an achievable pace and speed up than to barely hold on.

I know what you mean about the level 4s. It's easy to drop the heart rate down during the 16spm sections, but then it comes up pretty quickly! One thing you might want to think about is bumping up the intensity by increasing the strokes in your pieces. Mike recommends starting with an average around 18spm and slowly building it up by 4 strokes or so a workout. The other option is to increase duration. With this it becomes very important to follow the sequences correctly, or else it becomes impossible to compare workouts. Supposedly this will allow for longer term improvements, rather than by setting a faster reference pace.

I've read the wolverine plan a few times, and routinely do L4 workouts, but never actually followed it, so my advice should be taken with a grain of salt (I do however plan to follow it for a month or two this winter).

Edit: what are your goals for WIRC?

[21dbr]

Hi all,

Have been using the WP for around two months now and it is having a great effect. Have worked up to doing the full program over this period.

I am now acheiving all the minimum times suggested, for all the workouts, in relation to my reference pace.

I have a question however about pacing on the L1 Pyramid session, and how you pace each segment of that workout.

If i am looking for an average of say 1:37 (my ref pace). Should i go out and pull at 1:37 for all the pieces? or Should i go faster in the 250s and 500s, and slower in the 1000s??

How do you guys pace this session?

Any thoughts wouild be appreciated

James

[ThatMoos3Guy]

The pyramid can be a real tricky one. It's recommended that you go at an even split until you get to the thousand (so hold that 1:37) and then speed up as the reps become shorter. I personally like to go a little faster on the first 250, because it's so short. However, it's very possible to start out too fast and quickly regret it. I like the pyramid a lot, let's you get in a lot of 2k paced work, and while the 1k hurts a lot after that the intervals keep getting smaller!

[hjs]

The pyramid can be a real tricky one. It's recommended that you go at an even split until you get to the thousand (so hold that 1:37) and then speed up as the reps become shorter. I personally like to go a little faster on the first 250, because it's so short. However, it's very possible to start out too fast and quickly regret it. I like the pyramid a lot, let's you get in a lot of 2k paced work, and while the 1k hurts a lot after that the intervals keep getting smaller!

The piramide is ment to be 1 seconds above the 8 x 500 session. The often stated around 2k pace is not what Mike says. So around 2k minus 2 seconds. I do it not evenly paced. I try to keep the 750/1k/750 around 2k pace, the first 250/500 faster and the last 250/500 faster then the first pair.

Rest around 5 minutes centers per 500 meter.

[gregsmith01748]

The WP guidelines for all L1 workouts is "no slower than your 2K PB", and I think that holds for the pyramid sessions as well. I have been trying to push faster, and it works OK on the 500s, doesn't work on the 1Ks, and works to some extent on the pyramids. The best idea I have seen is to work hard to control pace on the first intervals, and try to negative split on each one, then go all out on the final interval. Then you use the average of all the intervals as the start pace for the next session.

[KevJGK]

Just in reply to some of the recent posts about the pyramid, this is an extract from Mike Caviston's additional WP notes:

"I use the same approach for other Level 1 workouts (5 x 750m and the Pyramid). That is, I negative- or even-split each individual piece. I don’t do the Pyramid often enough to have developed what I believe would be an ideal strategy, but I do it roughly like this:
250m) fast as I can
500m) about the same as my best 8 x 500m pace
750m) about a second slower than that
1000m) about another half second slower than that (i.e., the 750m)
750m) faster than the first 750m
500m) faster than the first 500m
250m) fast as I can
In the end, my best Pyramid average will end up about half a second slower than my best 8 x 500m average."

Hope that's of interest...

[gregsmith01748]

@Kev3G. Thanks for posting that. I wish I had found it. I'll definitely use that guidance next time I do the pyramid. Sounds a lot more sane than what I was doing.

[aharmer]

@Kev3G. Thanks for posting that. I wish I had found it. I'll definitely use that guidance next time I do the pyramid. Sounds a lot more sane than what I was doing.

When he references the 8x500 is it 3:30r or 2:00r? And to extend that thought, how much would you expect the extra 1:30r to help a guy out? I currently do the 8x500 with 2:00r but don't remember exactly why.