Pete Plan Group - Startup Aug 20th thru 22nd

[hjs]

heading off into uncharted territory!
not done these intervals (lots of 1' and 2'r though)
PP Week1 S1
2k w/u and c/d @2:15
goal sub 1:40

8x 500m/3:30r @1:39.6
slowest 1:39.9 and last fastest 1:39.5
df134 sr31 353w
that was tough!

Missed your Racing weekend Lindsay, very handy 2k to start with. Get some low rater aerobic stuff in. Think thats something you can milk a bit.

[lindsayh]

Missed your Racing weekend Lindsay, very handy 2k to start with. Get some low rater aerobic stuff in. Think thats something you can milk a bit.

Yes thanks henry it seems like a good baseline => low rate stuff is definitely part of the plan right through to the end of Jan both the SS sessions in the PP and then there are sessions in the IP as well

[G-dub]

Lindsay, I have my yearly race experience one week before yours. I was worried about doing the PP too early and wasn't sure what I would do after it, or if I should just keep it going for more than 3 cycles to end closer to the event. Are you going to jump into IP from the beginning of that program based on number of weeks out, or are you going to jump into it as if you were in the second half, where all the sharpening work is?

[S-man]

Come back after a weekend and wow – new people, great times, so many positive vibes !!
Did 10k OTW on Sat then rest day yesterday. Feeling good and looking forward to cycle 2 of the PP. Really motivating now that I’ve got some times from the first time around to beat.

W4,D1 – 500 x 8 r3 1/2’ Did this in 2:03.0 r27 last time, so that was my starting pace.
Intervals
1. 2:03.0 r28
2. 2:03.1 r27
3. 2:03.0 r27
4. 2:03.0 r27
5. 2:02.8 r28
6. 2:02.8 r27
7. 2:02.2 r27
8. 2:00.2 r30
Average 2:02.5 r27

Well that felt pretty reasonable. Deliberately didn’t push the rate any higher for the first 7 intervals, as I figured it is better to focus on pushing harder than to just rely on high rate for me at this stage. Was nice to speed up on the last one though and see some lower splits
Sanz

[mdpfirrman]

Sanz - Nice work! You do miss a ton just by a day or two. It can be hard to catch up!

Lindsay - Amazing speed / power! I'm sure it was very tough at that pace. Part of the drawback of PP for being as strong as you are. The better you are as a rower, the more punishment PP dishes out!

Joe - Very nice times Joe. Probably a good idea to get caught up and not have to put in extra rows.

Piers - nice workout. Nothing wrong with having a lot left in the tank but an occasional pushing the envelope workout is OK too. I usually try to take my last round average and add a couple tenths to it and then stick to that for the early intervals and see how I feel. If you can sustain it without killing yourself, you've picked a good / challenging pace.

Adam - Your 6K row was a timed piece if I'm not mistaken (on the BPP). It's OK if you have a higher rate. The only drawback about the BPP is there's not a lot of chances to do slower or "low rate" (by slower rate we mean 18 to 22 SPM) work. If you want to work on low rate stuff, you'd have to add in the "extra / optional" days and keep it really low (like 18 to 20 SPM) and just work sensibly hard but keeping your HR lower (for recovery) at the same time. Honestly, I would not recommend doing this though if you're newer to rowing. You need to keep those optional days as recovery days for now. Most of the time, the low rate stuff is in the opposite part of the season to the PP. The low rate / strong stuff is when you're in your "base building" phase. The PP is more about building speed. You technically should already have a strong base of rowing before doing the PP, but the BPP is designed for those that don't with an upcoming race. If I were you, I wouldn't overanalyze stuff. Just stay healthy and have fun for now (like John mentioned). Henry (the one that mentioned you aren't pulling very hard) is an absolute wealth of information but he wasn't certain if you were doing a SS (steady state slower row) or a timed row. I believe you were doing a timed piece in which it's OK to "rate up" a bit. Although if you're going to "play around" with the intent of the PP (or the BPP), you can change up that 3rd row from a timed piece to a low rate very strong row and accomplish the same type of thing - which is to really build up your anaerobic threshold. Low rate work (with strong pulls) builds your HR up in a way very similar to a timed piece. It's challenging stuff though so you would want to do it on a day where you ideally have either a recovery row or a day off the next day. You'll build some more strength doing the intervals of the BPP too (assuming you don't want to do any low rate work for now).

This advice really applies to all the guys doing the BPP. Realize, when you see a guy like Jack or Dean or Glenn pushing pace a bit on their SS days (I do it on occasion) -- we've all done nearly 1M to 3M meters already this year!! I'll hit 1 million meters this week for this season (and I'm on the lower end of meters among the more experienced group). We've done base building all Spring and we've been "itching" to speed it up actually. The PP was intended to accomplish that. Speed you up after doing a ton of base building all year. For those of you without the "base" of doing tons of meters (and I was just like you last year!), go easy on yourselves. Most of us that have now done a lot of meters better realize our limitations and when we are feeling more fatigued from experience. We've crashed before so to speak.

[adam1882]

Adam - Your 6K row was a timed piece if I'm not mistaken (on the BPP). It's OK if you have a higher rate. The only drawback about the BPP is there's not a lot of chances to do slower or "low rate" (by slower rate we mean 18 to 22 SPM) work. If you want to work on low rate stuff, you'd have to add in the "extra / optional" days and keep it really low (like 18 to 20 SPM) and just work sensibly hard but keeping your HR lower (for recovery) at the same time. Honestly, I would not recommend doing this though if you're newer to rowing. You need to keep those optional days as recovery days for now. Most of the time, the low rate stuff is in the opposite part of the season to the PP. The low rate / strong stuff is when you're in your "base building" phase. The PP is more about building speed. You technically should already have a strong base of rowing before doing the PP, but the BPP is designed for those that don't with an upcoming race. If I were you, I wouldn't overanalyze stuff. Just stay healthy and have fun for now (like John mentioned). Henry (the one that mentioned you aren't pulling very hard) is an absolute wealth of information but he wasn't certain if you were doing a SS (steady state slower row) or a timed row. I believe you were doing a timed piece in which it's OK to "rate up" a bit. Although if you're going to "play around" with the intent of the PP (or the BPP), you can change up that 3rd row from a timed piece to a low rate very strong row and accomplish the same type of thing - which is to really build up your anaerobic threshold. Low rate work (with strong pulls) builds your HR up in a way very similar to a timed piece. It's challenging stuff though so you would want to do it on a day where you ideally have either a recovery row or a day off the next day. You'll build some more strength doing the intervals of the BPP too (assuming you don't want to do any low rate work for now).

I understand. Thank you for taking the time to reply and add to Henry's feedback. I'm hoping to get the next row in tonight so I'll take to gradually work on lowering my stroke rate, without overthinking it.

I can see already how much fun I'm going to have learning about all this. Thanks everyone.

[G-dub]

What I'm going to add about rate is not in opposition to anything said so far and may already have been said. We can vary rate / pace as a way to build a stronger stroke - its sort of like high rep weight training or riding hills on a bike to get stronger legs. And rate can also be used to go faster by bringing a higher "cadence" with lighter pressure, like spinning on a bike up a hill, to keep the legs from getting too worked over. Even on some of the interval workouts, it is nice to be conscious of rate as part of what you are doing so that you are using each workout as a way to build technique, memory, power and to experiment with what feels best and gets you to the end the most efficiently.

[JohnAd]

PP Cycle 2 Wk 1 Day 1 8x500m 3'30" rest
Last time 1:46.1 Target going in 1:44.0
01:44.0 r31
01:43.8 r29
01:44.0 r30
01:44.0 r31
01:43.9 r31
01:43.9 r29
01:43.7 r31
01:40.6 r33
Avg 1:43.4 r30

Tricky session today, I've been making quite good strides with my speed work and based off the 4x1k my target should have been 1:42.2, that would have been a big jump from my last effort and I was out celebrating a 50th with some friends yesterday and so was feeling a lot less than my best today. I mulled various options like skipping today, swapping today for an SS day but in the end I thought the best thing would be to knuckle down and sweat it out so picking a target was hard, in end the end I think 1:44 was about right given the HD daemons were out. All reps except the last one were 2nd half faster than first and my pacing is getting better, glad to have this one over and I think I feel better for having sweated out some extra toxins.

[mudgeg]

Beginners PP Week 3 Day 1

6000m row same pace as 5500m in Week 2.

Target was 2:13.4 - 2:14.5. Actual 2:13.7, so pretty much spot on target pace.

But that was hard. Had two days rest, proper food intake, enough sleep but legs and whole body struggled. Was on 2:10 pace for a long way but just couldn't sustain that to the end. There again today was 3sec/500m faster than my 5000 at the start of this which was just a mere two weeks ago so I guess I shouldn't be too downhearted.

Gordon

[JohnAd]

Was on 2:10 pace for a long way but just couldn't sustain that to the end.

Try and avoid going faster than your target for the first 3/4 of the piece, always save any extra energy for the end. Later in the BPP Pete talks about the "game" of counting the number of consecutive stokes where it shows exactly your target pace and trying to beat your previous best. I found that pretty helpful for keeping it even through the piece as well as thinking about each stroke more.

[Bloodbuzz Corio]

@ John - nice way to stick to the plan there - and a really good outcome you can be very happy with I'd say. I also have less than 4" between my 8x500 and 4x1000.

PP 2.1.3 - 5x1500m/5:00r

I'd averaged 1:54.3 for this in cycle 1, and set a target of 1:54.0 for today. Did the first 4 intervals at averages of 1:53.9, 1:53.9, 1:53.8 and 1:53.6. Was feeling good after the 4th, but thinking specifically of Greg's comment about reasonable rates of improvement and not plateauing too early decided not to stomp on the last interval and aim for 1:53.5 for a sensible negative split. Was at an average of 1:53.3 with 500m to go in the last interval then this happened:



Meaning the overall session looked like this:



So that's actually a 1.2 second improvement from 3 weeks ago, and 5k - 2.1. Not a model session from the longer term perspective of sustainability on the PP by any means but boy howdy it was fun!

And yeah - so I've got ErgData now which means anyone who thinks I already post too many charts and data wonkiness may wish to consider blocking me - for example I can now tell you that interval 2 today had 161 strokes, and all of strokes 7-161 were at either 1:53, 1:54 or 1:55!

[Slacker]

Glenn or anyone else talking about rates.

What are the rates we (beginners) should be looking at and/or targeting for different kinds of work? I see a bit of 24 or less for SS stuff but not much guidance on intervals. Also while most beginner advices seems to indicate we row too fast what would be too slow? I'm working around 19-21 for me SS rows.

thanks for sharing,
Ben

[Slacker]

Good rowing so far today guys and laughing at Rohan. I had to glance at that graph a second time though as at first look I thought you hit a wall when in fact it was just the opposite.

I was a bit ill over the weekend but feeling strong this morning so I decided to give it a go versus waiting another day. I did expect to go a little slower. So Day 1 of BPP had me doing SS 6500m. Target would have been 2:20 but I opted for 2:22 because of the weekend. I did mostly ok until about the mid point when I started feeling it. I didn't think I'd finish but I watched my heartrate and kept going as long as my form didn't breakdown. Finished with 2:22.8 total time. So I was happy with that considering. Will take tomorrow off and hopefully be ready for the 3 x 1000m on Wednesday.

Ben

[gregsmith01748]

And yeah - so I've got ErgData now which means anyone who thinks I already post too many charts and data wonkiness may wish to consider blocking me - for example I can now tell you that interval 2 today had 161 strokes, and all of strokes 7-161 were at either 1:53, 1:54 or 1:55!

If you really want to annoy people, you can use either Sander's website (rowsandall.com)


or my spreadsheet


to analyze the CSV data that you get out of ergdata to the nth degree!

By the way. Awesome last rep on the 5x1500! You emptied the tanks on that one.

[JohnAd]

What are the rates we (beginners) should be looking at and/or targeting for different kinds of work?

My interpretation when I did it was that there are 3 types of work on the BPP:
Hard distance, all the weekly adding 500m falls into this category I think, certainly in the first half of the plan, the recommendation is that you start thinking about rate from week 7 and should be hitting 24spm for a 10k pb attempt in week 15. No harm in being aware of rating earlier but don't stress it yet just keep the mantra "technique, relaxation, and efficiency" going through your mind and think about stroke and try to make it better than the last one.
Endurance intervals, no rating advice given but a few more spm is to be expected
Speed intervals, nothing specific but higher again by a few more is to be expected

I don't think there is anything really comparable to the steady state/steady distance days on the non-optional days until right at the end or in some of the optional sessions in the second half.