Pete Plan Summer 2015 starts June 14

[jackarabit]

Wow, those are both first quartile performance, Galeere. Best felicitations on a very good morning!

[gregsmith01748]

Jack, First off, congratulations on a terrific result. Bettering your target by more than 2 seconds shows that you are really responding well to the training. I also understand really well what you are saying about challenging yourself in training. I think I have done the same basic thing as you in some sessions. You start with a "goal" of 2:11, so in your head you think, I'll just keep it a bit below 2:10 to be safe. Then you start pulling in the first rep and you see some 2:05s on the screen, so you slow down and find that you can hold 2:07 / 2:08 through the first interval. Once you've done one that fast, you really want to stick with the negative splitting kind of idea so you try to do at least as well as you did with the first. Then you are 2/5s of the way through and you're really feeling it.

I think you did well to hold it together through the back half of this workout and I can not only imagine, but I can remember from my own sessions how much that must have stung. Digging this deep every once in a while not only pushes improvements in fitness, but also increases tolerance for lactate and critically, shows how deep you can dig if you were in a race or time trial. Finding ways to open and crawl inside the pain cave during training makes going there in a race less of a big deal.

What I have seen in my training and seen in others reports about it, is that fitness improvements are not continuous, linear or even monotonic. There are periods of rapid improvement, plateaus and setbacks. No training plan can really deal perfectly with this. As Eisenhower said...Plans are useless, Planning is essential.

Probing the limits of your fitness by going beyond targets seems like a good thing to do, but with the following caveats:
- Accept that you might fail and have a positive mindset about using that failure to help you training, not get discouraged or angry at yourself
- Don't push every session this hard. Save it for a day when you feel really fresh, maybe give yourself the gift of a "eager beaver" session once every couple of weeks
- Make a pact with yourself to finish out the session, even if you HD. Sure, if you can't hold the pace, slow down in a rep, but don't walk away.
- When you are done, live with the average. If it's a big improvement, then you've earned yourself a tough workout next cycle. If it's slower than target, its actually a pretty indication that your target was too fast. Use the actual session average and try to strongly negative split the session next cycle.

I'm an engineer, and I strongly believe that you can only measure maximum performance by actually pushing past the point of failure.

"Ships are safe in harbor, but that is not what ships are for" - Shedd
"I feel the need...the need for speed" - Maverick

[kacken66]

Galeere and Jackarabit// thanks for feedback, need a restday to recover the challenge and a couple hard sessions.
seen your last workouts, right on track, keep going!

[jackarabit]

Greg, your scenario is pretty much the way it goes down in the headspace. Haven't heard Ike quoted for years! Jack

[G-dub]

Cycle 2: 5 X 1500 5r

Average cycle 1: 154.1 SPM 27
Average cycle 2: 153.2 SPM 27

1: 1:53.6 hr 170
2: 1:53.6 hr 177
3: 1:53.4 hr 180
4: 1:53.2 hr 183
5: 1:52.1 hr 188 (6 below max)

Felt good all the way. Had a little left to give. Tried to keep SPM at 25 but seemed like 26 was more comfortable. Of course the last one was higher at 29.

Good going on yours Jack.

Looks like the Galeere Train is leaving the station.

[jackarabit]

Same bakatcha, Glenn. I'm almost certain I know why we should resist the tendency to rate up in training. Yesterday, i scrambled to cover up the effects on this piece of a departure from tactical orthodoxy and got called on it. You are resisting the urge to choose overly-ambitious pace and the urge to sprint. Don't you think you're doing a good job of keeping the lid on and preserving good stroke form as long as possible? I judge that you are.

Hardy is strong and fast. He's going to afford us a brief glance at his tail lights when this flu bug is gone. Jack

[G-dub]

I guess I am trying to find a comfortable relationship between pace and rate for the sprint intervals and the endurance ones. Mostly to see is there is a sweet spot and also to find a reasonably happy place that during a test I can sit into. And as mentioned, I run out of breath the higher I rate! One other thing that I'm tweaking is the drag. I did the 500's the other day at 115 and the pace turned out OK.

[jackarabit]

G-dub writes:

One other thing that I'm tweaking is the drag.

Doing the same with drag factor. Took me nearly forever to build enuf leg speed to be able to get down to 110 but now I find I can preserve that stroke speed against slightly greater drag.

[jackarabit]

Cycle 2
Week 1.5
Recovery
8k @ 25 spm
HR cap 140 UT2
Df 115
2k warmdn
2:23.9

[Galeere]

Cycle 2: 5 X 1500 5r

Average cycle 1: 154.1 SPM 27
Average cycle 2: 153.2 SPM 27

1: 1:53.6 hr 170
2: 1:53.6 hr 177
3: 1:53.4 hr 180
4: 1:53.2 hr 183
5: 1:52.1 hr 188 (6 below max)

Felt good all the way. Had a little left to give. Tried to keep SPM at 25 but seemed like 26 was more comfortable. Of course the last one was higher at 29.

Well done Glenn, negative all the way with a strong fast last and a nice improvement of your avg.

[G-dub]

I would have been happier seeing a 2 after the 5 instead of a 3, but I'm not the type to track how I'm averaging while I'm doing them. Next time.

[BrunoBTR]

Alright. Week 7 of the beginner plan is done.
2x 8k @ 2:12 s/m 24 . Exact same pace only didn't speed up when finishing the second training.
7x500 @ 1:56 s/m 29. Started out below 1:55 for the first 3 reps but hit a wall. Finished with a sprint at 1:45 to make up. Guess I can go faster if i want. Just need to hold that pace for 7 minutes .
Week 8 here I come (8.5k & 4x1500)

[G-dub]

Bruno, it must be a challenge to pace the beginner plan week to week since the reps go up every week and there are lots of different types of workouts!

[BrunoBTR]

Pacing is a big mystery yes . Mostly just figuring it out as i go. Trying to atleast keep the strokerate steady. Hopefully i'll be able to pace better once I have some more experience with the various exercises. The variation is fun though.
Currently only doing the 3 core sessions + 1 x on the water.

[jackarabit]

G-Dub writes:

Bruno, it must be a challenge to pace the beginner plan week to week since the reps go up every week and there are lots of different types of workouts!

Interrupting to say it was a challenge simply to ratchet up volume. Marston gives some gentle hints; i.e., "Look back at what you did and do it faster this time" or " Do the longer distance this week as fast as you did the shorter distance last week." The cyclic repetition of workouts in Lunch Hour Pete yields hard pace targets. Only the second statement (above) from Beginner does so.

Re: pacing, check out Mike Caviston on short interval pacing in the UMich Wolverine Plan at this link:

http://www.concept2.com/files/pdf/us/tr ... nePlan.pdf

Caviston apparently expected a mere .3" improvement to average pace at each iteration (P. 10). I didn't determine if particular sessions repeated with greater frequency than similar sessions in PP? Jack