Pete Plan Group - Startup Aug 20th thru 22nd

[Phxrow]

Hello everyone. I'm new to the boards and wanted to introduce myself because I'm going to be starting Pete's Plan for Beginner Training next week on Monday.
I not really sure of the protocol in joining the group, but it looks like a short intro was provided by some new members, so I will do the same.

I'm a 36 year old male standing 5'10" tall and weighing 200 lbs. I have zero rowing experience and have never even been friends with a rower! I had been very into fitness all through my 20's, mostly weight training. I stopped working out seriously almost 10 years ago after getting married and starting a family with my beautiful wife of 9 years. After seeing pictures of myself over the holidays last year I decided it was now or never to get fit or be fat forever. So since the middle of January I have lost over 30 lbs (Started at over 230 lbs). Rowing on a Concept2 is 90% of the reason I have gotten back in shape. If I were to estimate the number of meters I have rowed in the last 8.5 months it would most likely be around a million. I really look forward to upping my fitness, improving my form and knocking out the next million meters.

Pete's plan looks daunting, but achievable with a bit more dedication and time. I look forward to the journey.

Cheers and happy rowing!

- Phxrow

[G-dub]

So glad you are joining us. Best advice I can give is stick to the plan, do the work, post it in here, ask questions and mostly enjoy the journey! No question is dumb at this point and you will get more answers than you need. It can get tough at times, it's an intense plan (at least for us old farts) so managing when and how you "burn matches" is part of it. No need to go off too hard and fast. Find your limits and be within those. Think long term.

[jackarabit]

Welcome Phxrow. I notice you guesstimate your lifetime meters. A Concept 2 virtual logbook is available online. Great record keeper for yearly and lifetime meters and training stats. We're also using a self-reporting spreadsheet in which we can reference the results of all participants this year. More of that next week. Pete Beginner ramps up weekly meter totals very quickly. Aerobic fitness and stamina follows. Not all fun but worth the effort.

Guys, Greg Smith recruited Phxrow. Thanks Greg.

[mdpfirrman]

Nice job Piers! I nearly missed your workout - things are moving pretty quick on this thread.

@ Phxrow - thanks for joining us. I'm not as familiar with BPP, but I think the cycles coincide with the regular PP if I'm not mistaken. Jack made a good point about using the online log to document your times. I take a phone pic and then enter it in when I get home. Obviously if you've got ErgData or something better than that, use it. You have to know what you've done in the past to pace future sessions.

Welcome!

[S-man]

Lots of excellent times being posted and some interesting discussion on varying rates and L4 sessions. Look forward to watching you guys with this, but I'll keep my PP vanilla for now.
@Jack - congrats on the PBs, but I think there is plenty more to come.
@Phxrow - welcome to the training here. I can personally attest to lots of great help and advice on this thread.

I have a confession - with work and domestic comittments taking over yesterday I ended up missing the D4 SS
So had to make amends today!

W1D5 - Hard(ish) 5k. I understand that Pete said these sessions don't need to be PB each time, just harder than the SS days. So aimed for 2:14 pace to start and faster depending on how I felt.

5k in 22:08.6 avg 2:12.8 r24

Splits
2:13.6 r23
2:13.1 r24
2:13.2 r24
2:12.7 r25
2:11.5 r25

That was challenging but do-able. And when I checked my records, that was my fastest 5k since 2013 - although maybe that just shows I haven't done any hard (for me) 5ks in the last 3 years
Sanz

[jackarabit]

Sanz I notice that you are a veteran on the erg. Is this your first exposure to a workout schedule directed at competition? Any comps over the years? If you see us lately-come johnnys messing up, let us hear about it. Despite being older than dirt, I am an erging infant with more opinions than experience and need to listen more and jabber less.

[S-man]

Jack, you got me. Have been rowing on the water (~1x/week) for several years. But never really managed to erg consistently, which explains my lack of fitness. That and the fact that I'm averse to pain . The idea is to finally knuckle down, with the help of you guys, and get my fitness up. Although I have some years behind me, no point trying to preach what I don't practice - I'm here to listen to the people who put the hours in, and put my miles in on the erg.
Sanz

[Bloodbuzz Corio]

PP Cycle 1, Week 2, Day 1 - Sprint Pyramid

TLDR: 1:44.9 average (brought down by a faster 2nd 500 and 250).

Or read on for details + PM shenanigans!

I was a bit nervous about this workout. I'd HD on it on June 29, then came back and did it again on July 1 with all 7 intervals <= 1:46.4 and overall average 1:45.7 (from a sprint at the end). I was hoping to go <= 1:45.9 for all 7 intervals today, but with my 8x500 last week averaging 1:43.8 and being very tough I was slightly concerned I was getting ahead of myself.

2.5km warm up, set up the PM for the 7 intervals with their distances and rests and set off. All good through the 250, 500 and 750 (all under 1:46), till after the 750 the rest started counting down not from 4:30 but from 0:30! Really didn't seem like the sort of error I'd make when putting this in, but after a slightly mad panic to start the stopwatch on my phone, plugged in a new workout for the last 4 intervals and went off at my best guess of 4:30 after the end of the 750. 1:45.8 average for the 1k also, but then the rest started counting down from 1:30! Now I know I hadn't programmed that in, this time had stopwatch ready to go, had one more go at programming in the last 3 intervals but there was obviously something wrong with the PM because it had the wrong figure after the second 750 also - so did the 500 and 250 as single workouts using my phone to time the rest periods.

Hence a slightly wonky photo of the interval times:



So I did manage the second 500 and 250 somewhat quicker than my target, and on the whole this was easier than I expected, but I do wonder if the PM stuffing up actually helped - both the distraction before the 1,000 and second 750, and then some frustration I was able to work out on the second 500 and 250! Having said that, I was pretty happy with how I felt both during and after this - so very pleased with this one on the whole.

I was also wearing my HRM, and so knowing the time of the each of the 7 intervals I played around with the chart a bit to see if I could work out exactly how long my rests had been based on HR peaks and troughs. I've put here in the white text with black backgrounds the rest periods which gave what I thought was the best match between HR patterns and the known interval times which looks like I might have cut the 750-1,000 rest short a little, but on the whole got them close enough I feel this workout 'counts'.

And another 6 days before I have to do 4x1000!

[G-dub]

Quite the ordeal Rohan! Great effort. And there is nothing work with brining it home hard the last two. That's what you are supposed to do if you have it in you. It sets up a new average time to try and beat the next go around, which if I'm honest is one of the reasons I've been keeping my splits a little tighter at the moment

[G-dub]

SS: 10K, 2:05.8, r22. Felt fine. Thought I would be more tired. 2 X 6 tb deads 290#. Pool party next.

[G-dub]

Thanks Paul. You'll get it back.

[jackarabit]

Effective rest for the pyramid 22.5'. 2' less than for the 8x500. "Effective" in that the rest period shows up on the monitor after every rep including your last in the case of a fixed interval workout. So the last one may count as "rest meters" but doesn't facilitate another go. You can choose to paddle thru it but like the man said: "You can rest all you want when you're dead." I doubt if most even think to paddle thru the last rest, rather pushing <main menu> immediately on finishing the active period.

Very obvious to all on a workout with fixed rests is that you multiply the rest time by number of intervals - 1 to get the total effective rest. So 3:30 x 7 = 24.5' for the 8x500. Not quite so simple or obvious in the case of variable rests.

Rohan, impressed by your quick thinking on the timer improvisation. Truly busy as the one-armed paper hanger!

[bisqeet]

35 km in a quad+ (++Dexter, our Maltese)
Today and tomorrow is our trek weekend
From rosenheim to Mühldorf.
Overnight stop in wasserburg.
Beer. 30C lots of sun.
Today was about 6 hours, about 3,5-4 in the boat.
Will post a link later to the pics. Quick shower, bbq and alcohol..
Tomorrow last stretch home, then pp2.1

[jackarabit]

Envious of your long wkend in the sun, Dean. Beats dissolving rock salt in water to kill poison ivy and weeds in the driveway. Wife won't let me nuke em with a strong herbicide. Thinkng of future generations of children and Maltesere. We call broadleaf weeds a "lawn" but surrounded by folks who feed and kill year round. Goodbye butterflies. So long bees.

[mudgeg]

I was recommended to this group via another thread on the forum and not quite sure what the protocol is for joining.

By way of introduction, I do have some previous erg experience but that was five years ago. Since then I have been reasonably active until about 18 months ago when a virus contracted while travelling in Africa cause me to have a passing acquaintance with the Reaper. Fully recovered now and started serious rowing again in March this year, row most days and logged about 0.6 million metres since then. Training has been a mixture of the C2 daily workout and whatever I feel like. So I am going to start the PP in earnest from this Monday 29 August but I am going to begin on the beginner/intermediate level.

I am 59' 6' tall and about 210lb and in my youth was a rugby player of a very good standard and pretty fit. I am probably 5/10kg overweight due to the layoff from exercise but working on that. My 2k time is 8:26 and my best 5k a touch over 22 minutes so still modest but a distinct improvement from earlier in the year. My target is a 20 min 5k and a sub 8 min 2k both of which I think, are very achievable targets.

I live in the south of England so anyone reading this in the same general area, it would be good to team up for some virtual or actual joint training sessions.

One immediate question I have is that I read somewhere on this thread about a spreadsheet for capturing results. I row in a gym that only has a C2 with a PM2 monitor. I manually fill in my C2 logbook but that only seems to capture time/split/distance.