Pete Plan Summer 2015 starts June 14

[jackarabit]

Thanks mates. I am certain of the 5" improvement I got from Pete in 11 weeks. I'd love to conflate that with 11" in five weeks. It ain't gonna happen. I'm going to do 800-200 waterfall with 1' rest, stop lifting at the gym, do a couple of 250s two days before and a Fletcher warmup on the day. Then put the body in gear and the mind in neutral. No doubts, no crazy hopes, just target paces and concentration.

[G-dub]

I also might try the 800-200 waterfall 1' r ! When you said it a couple of days ago, I thought you were breaking a test up that way, but now I get it! Maybe even shorten the rest time the second time.

[jackarabit]

I meant to experiment with the waterfall of roughly 2k total on the 3x9' CTC but somehow counting up meters makes me choke. I like to see "meters remaining " (in this instance 1200, 600, 200) which is the progression in distance pieces and distance intervals. I got an engrained tic about this from HMs. I'm making it an interval waterfall for the obvious reason that it's a sort of race distance dry fire runthru with a bit less accumulated stress. For live fire, i'm counting on a positive psychological boost from the decreasing distance increments. Probably BS but if it works . . . ? Thought about a full dress 1800m without a sprint. Gotta do it early. I want the glycogen tank topped up. Jack

[Edward4492]

Greg, since you brought it up, for some reason the 2k's cause angst in all of us because it's the only one we care about. Particularly when we're flirting with a nice round magic number like 7 minutes. It gets in your head. It's not so stressful trying to go from 7:10 to 7:08. or 6:56 to 6:52. So.....bang out a nice (relatively) easy 7:16 or so. Then a 7:12.....still do-able. one more at sub 7:10. Then go for a PR. And when the urge to HD comes (and it always does) just push on through.Or back off a bit. If you drop your pace by 5s (say from 1:45 to 1:50) for 100meters you only lose one second over-all IF you get back on it.
Having that "safety valve" in the back of your mind may be enough to carry you through. I tell the people I train, if at some point you don't feel like quitting a 2k......well, you ain't goin' hard enough!

One last comment. You mentioned going out hard for the first 20 strokes. May be digging a bit deep. I start backing off and settling in after 8 - 10 strokes.

[Edward4492]

Jack, nice work. You've been steadily improving.

[jackarabit]

Edward writes:

And when the urge to HD comes (and it always does) just push on through.Or back off a bit. If you drop your pace by 5s (say from 1:45 to 1:50) for 100meters you only lose one second over-all IF you get back on it.
Having that "safety valve" in the back of your mind may be enough to carry you through. I tell the people I train, if at some point you don't feel like quitting a 2k......well, you ain't goin' hard enough!

All good arrows in the quiver.

[G-dub]

Greg, since you brought it up, for some reason the 2k's cause angst in all of us because it's the only one we care about. Particularly when we're flirting with a nice round magic number like 7 minutes. It gets in your head. It's not so stressful trying to go from 7:10 to 7:08. or 6:56 to 6:52. So.....bang out a nice (relatively) easy 7:16 or so. Then a 7:12.....still do-able. one more at sub 7:10. Then go for a PR. And when the urge to HD comes (and it always does) just push on through.Or back off a bit. If you drop your pace by 5s (say from 1:45 to 1:50) for 100meters you only lose one second over-all IF you get back on it.
Having that "safety valve" in the back of your mind may be enough to carry you through. I tell the people I train, if at some point you don't feel like quitting a 2k......well, you ain't goin' hard enough!

One last comment. You mentioned going out hard for the first 20 strokes. May be digging a bit deep. I start backing off and settling in after 8 - 10 strokes.

Thanks Edward. And for info purposes. My name is Glenn. I think you've go it at Greg at the moment and I wouldn't want for the real Greg to be confused with me

[f2d]

Did the speed pyramid take 2 today with a more conservative pace.

Goal was 1:55 for the first 4 intervals, 1:54 for the 750, 1:52 for the 500, and 1:50 for the 250.



Would've hit all of them but after the 1K I decided to do the 750 conservatively since that piece is too long to tough out if I run into trouble.

I probably could've done the last 250 a little faster but I didn't want to burn myself out for this afternoon's row.

[f2d]

I tell the people I train, if at some point you don't feel like quitting a 2k......well, you ain't goin' hard enough!

One last comment. You mentioned going out hard for the first 20 strokes. May be digging a bit deep. I start backing off and settling in after 8 - 10 strokes.

I think if you don't want to want to quit every 2k in the middle you're not going hard enough. By definition the 2k is partially a test of pain tolerance and the mental toughness to block the dirty thought of quitting and to finish the piece.

And yeah, a power 20 is kind of lot. If you're doing the 2k at a rating of 30, that's a full 40 seconds, and that can burn you out. And varying your wattage too much isn't economical. Doing 40 seconds at 350 watts and then 40 seconds at 300 watts nets you less distance than 80 seconds at 325 watts. Doing a power 10 at the start, and another one in the middle at a small increase (like, if your split is 1:50, bring it down to 1:48 or so) can give you a mental boost, but if you're varying your speed a lot you're probably wasting energy. I'm sure it varies from person to person, but for me holding a mostly steady pace on a long piece is easiest and I'll just burn out if I try to do any significant increase in pace.

[G-dub]

I will take using less power for less time at the beginning under advisement. It's acutally not hard to get on pace within a couple of stokes, so will try that. To tell the truth, though, I'm not sure it's being too tired too soon that gets me - maybe having just a titch more thorough the middle will help, though. I actually can't figure out what causes it because I have certainly gotten through much worse on the interval workouts than what I'm feeling when I bailed on the 2K. Maybe it's more to do with what is yet to come and not staying in the moment, maybe it's having all that information right in my face (unlike a run or a bike ride where you can just go by feel and you sort of know you can keep going and pushing).

Thanks for the advice, I've gotten sick of myself at this point, so I can only imagine that you all are sick of me moaning too. Wednesday (dang I've now committed) I'm going to not go for anything other than to negative split to a pace that will have me at or under my current 7:08. There is no reason why I can't PHYSICALLY manage that right now. And if the going gets rougher than it should, and I should plan on it, well I guess I just have to finish it anyway. And then it will be done until the next time.

[f2d]

I will take using less power for less time at the beginning under advisement. It's acutally not hard to get on pace within a couple of stokes, so will try that. To tell the truth, though, I'm not sure it's being too tired too soon that gets me - maybe having just a titch more thorough the middle will help, though. I actually can't figure out what causes it because I have certainly gotten through much worse on the interval workouts than what I'm feeling when I bailed on the 2K. Maybe it's more to do with what is yet to come and not staying in the moment, maybe it's having all that information right in my face (unlike a run or a bike ride where you can just go by feel and you sort of know you can keep going and pushing).

Thanks for the advice, I've gotten sick of myself at this point, so I can only imagine that you all are sick of me moaning too. Wednesday (dang I've now committed) I'm going to not go for anything other than to negative split to a pace that will have me at or under my current 7:08. There is no reason why I can't PHYSICALLY manage that right now. And if the going gets rougher than it should, and I should plan on it, well I guess I just have to finish it anyway. And then it will be done until the next time.

I think your mental state right now is weighing in negatively on your performance, big time.

If you start a piece feeling frustrated and not confident that you can hit your splits, there's no chance you're going to succeed. I have never once finished a workout when I went into it thinking I'm going to quit in the middle before I even started.

[G-dub]

You bet. I need to be more aggressive. Less "hopeful".

[Edward4492]

Glen (no more Greg!), you're just vocalizing what everybody feels. Take solace in the fact you're not alone. Jim seems to have it under control, I think that is due to his extensive history of endurance racing, TT's, duathlons, etc at a high level.
I'll tell you exactly how I did my last couple of 2k's. Could help, won't hurt.

First 500m: three short hard quick strikes, then 3-4 overly long, over reaching, grabbing as much chain as I can, driving the average pace down around 1:40. Then I start the gradual back off watching the average so at the 1500m to go mark I'm at about a 1:45.

From 1500m down to 800m: settle in to a sustainable pace. Right now for me that's about 1:48-49. I'll "commit" to a number for 100m and re-evaluate. For these middle meters I'm focusing on good long proper strokes at a sustainable pace and rate (30-32r). My focus is on form and execution, I purposefully divert my attention from the monitor as I approach the 1000m point and focus on just getting to 800m on pace. At 800m I start counting down from "20". Seems like with-out really trying I start to go 1s or two faster. I'll do the 20 countdown twice which takes me under 500m to go. Now I try and drop a second off my pace at every 100m, at 150m full out sprint.

Nothing magical or special about what I'm doing.....no science here. The idea is to come up with a plan including contigencies for the bad feelings. When you have 1250 in the bank, the worst of it is done. When you feel like HD'in, back off the pace for 100m. Give your self a short break. Then re-group and drive it home. You won't lose more than a second or two.

Good luck!

[f2d]

That seems like an awfully aggressive first 500 meters.

The "typical" splits for a 2K is the last 500's the fastest (since you go all out in the last 200 - 250m), the first 500 is next, then the middle 1k is the slowest, but they should all be relatively close. Having a 4 second spread between the first 500 and the 2nd 500 seems like a lot. I'll pull hard for the first few strokes because starting out under your goal pace is a must, since if you start out over trying to catch up will immediately kill you mentally, but then I'll settle in to my sustainable pace immediately.

The hardest meters by far are from 1300 - 1100 IMO. That's when the pain starts kicking in and you still have a very long distance to go.

[Edward4492]

f2d, no arguements here. The fastest guys keep very close splits. With me I think it's the psychology of being able to back it way down at the 1500m to go mark with a few seconds "in the bank". Right now (current fitness) the back off as you correctly stated is too much. My best ever 2k I started the same way (1:45 at the 1500m meter mark) but only backed off to 1:46 and held that down to 500m. With a fast final 500 I got under 7min. I looked at Paul Seibach's splits from his 55-59 LWT hammer race this year and he was almost dead even 1:40's the whole way with a 1:39 in the final 500m. A perfect race to be sure.