Pete Plan Group - Startup Aug 20th thru 22nd

[G-dub]

Preparation for our upcoming family reunion is taking up a good deal of time this week. My SIL flew in to help my wife so now I have two bosses. Meant to take Tues rest day and then 4x1k today but didn't happen. Hoping to do both interval sessions in 3.3--the 4x1 tomorrow for certain. Did the hard distance and one recovery out of sequence last wkend and may get in one additional SS piece. Three epicycles is enuf for me. Favorable prognoses to the walking wounded and good fortune to the sound of body (and mind).

Not sure about the sound of mind. Great work Jack. As always it was full of ups, downs and sideways. But it was always rich and filled with

[john_n]

My Cycle 1 Week 1 Day 4 session today

That should be Cycle 1 Week 2... the second week, not the first week, for that session info

phpBB seems to lock out the ability to edit a post after a certain amount of time...

[JohnAd]

Thanks all for the kind words on my waterfall yesterday, it is getting quite addictive posting times and getting the feedback from everyone.

Piers, you've got to get that waterfall done. I would completely ignore the 5K + 1 thing and just go out at what you think you could hold for 7500 at and then push a bit for the last 500m of each rep, the 5 minutes will hopefully seem like an eternity but you'll finish and then build it up from there. It's not a scary session really, after all it's just a 7.5k with 10mins rest in the middle

Jack, I hope you're just doing your best James Brown impersonation and it's not really goodbye quite yet. It would be a shame not to see those PBs tumble after all that effort so I hope you can treat the family gathering as a taper and get prepared to set some new benchmarks.

John N, glad you got the image posting sorted out, some interesting SS graphs. From your blog (love the photo at the top) if you wanted friends would an hour of power not attract a few more takers. Looking at your bottong graph there seems to be quite a bit of variation in the rate for each stroke, some 2:05 and some 2:25, is that a side effect of all the different targets you're going for or are you trying to keep some metric or other at a particular value? On my SS rows I normally keep every stroke within a band of about 5 splits which I think is quite wide compared to some here.

Lindsay, if you are coming over for BRIC you'll have a few extra cheerleaders from this group

[Pie Man]

You are right JohnAd, I will do the waterfall tonight come hell or high water, at a 1:59 target pace, I believe I could do 30 mins faster than that (will probably be my next hard distance) so should be 'easy' just to get a time done.

[JohnAd]

Paul, very well executed session by the look of things, 0.5 faster than your 1550s and longer too.

[aussieluke]

PP week 5 day 2

3x20' 2:06.8 r22

[mdpfirrman]

John N - that's a strong SS row for an hour (actually more)

Luke - fast SS as always.

Tim - No need to push if you don't want to. I don't. That's still a decent row and I like to keep it at UT2 also.

Paul - nice improvements. Good solid intervals and solid execution.

Jack - Good luck with the family reunion!

Did lift today along with TT - 5K. I didn't push too hard on the lifting part (around 30 100lb KB deadlifts / 30 or so incline bench - 150 lbs or so / some dips / 30 lb KB one arm swings -- only one set of those, KB one arm presses - 30 lbs - someone took the dang 35 lb one I usually use -- around 50 of these over 3 sets). Didn't do any back other than the swings.

Waited around 10 minutes (seemed like enough recovery). 19:55.4 (1:59 something pace). Kept it just under 2:00 for most of it and didn't try to get much under 20 - I knew I couldn't. Felt good getting it done under 20 after the lift. When I was peaking a month or so ago I was around 19:40, so I'm not that far off right now. Maybe in about a month or so I'll not lift and go for a PB again. I know I could crush my PB if I didn't lift prior (my current PB was set immediately after a heavy session).

[jackarabit]

Anything but Pete 1.1
Cold start 30'

[mdpfirrman]

Solid row Jack!

[Pie Man]

Yes solid row Jack.

Strong SS sessions from Mike and Luke.

John N I love the balancing act with your heart rate during your SS row proving to be very effective.

Good to see your continual improvement Paul.

Nice 5k Mike good to see your two weeks off is fading into the distance.

So I finally did the waterfall tonight.

1609m warm up (going to try that as my hard distance tomorrow)

As I HD the first one 200m into the 2k at 1:58 and didn't even attempt the second one site to back ache. I was a bit nervous about it. So taking JohnAd advice I aimed for 1:59 with a slight speed up in the last 500m.

3000m 11:48.6 1:58.1 30 spm hr 151
2500m 09:46.3 1:57.1 31 spm hr 157
2000m 07:37.4 1:54.3 31 spm hr 164

Av 1:56.8 which is two seconds slower than my last 4x2k. It's funny how high my expectations have got. I thought the last 2k would be easy to blast to a low/sub 7:30 time. It wasn't I took it easy to around 500m and only hit 1:48s in the last 200m. Any way glad I have finally done this and hopefully next time i will be able to improve again.

[mudgeg]

PP Beginners Week 8 Day 2

4 x 1500m

Struggling this week with business/travel commitments so here we are on Thursday and this only the second session of the week.

Target pace of a modest 2:03 from the 3 x 1500m of last week and here are the sad actuals:

1. 6:12.9 / 1500 / 2:04.3 / 35spm
2. 6:12.9 / 1500 / 2:04.3 / 35spm
3. 6:14.9 / 1500 / 2:04.9 / 36spm
4. 6:16.4 / 1500 / 2:05.5 / 34spm

So didn't even make my target pace. Might as well get my excuses in upfront - long day, 300 mile drive, bad food, bad coffee, tedious meetings and training in the hotel gym on an unfamiliar erg where I just couldn't get the drag right. Notwithstanding all that though, I have just hit a position where gains are now small and the going seems tough. Nothing to do but just front up and get through it.

[Slacker]

Gordon, still good work even if it was slightly off what you were hoping for and in spite of everything else you had working against you.

I noticed that your rate was much higher than the 3 x 1500s you did last week. Could that have been part of the issue? I haven't noticed what you normally rate, but I wouldn't be able to do that distance well at that spm.

[G-dub]

Gordon, doesn't the BPP keep getting progressively longer? Like you don't do the same workouts over again? If so, how are gains actually measured other than adding more distance, which is a great measure of improving?

[mudgeg]

Glen, you are of course, absolutely right. I think it's just been a long and difficult week and the two rest days I have had have been anything but rest. I guess one of the lessons is not to write posts when you are tired!

Ben, yes you are also right. I didn't do the whole thing at that rate of course but I do have a good sprint finish and a bit of a shit or bust attitude so do sprint hard on the last 500m. I also had the benefit of a much better monitor tonight and expect the spm from last week may have been inaccurate. On distance pieces I am normally at 22/24spm.

[Pie Man]

Gordon you are taking the stroke rate from the memory of the pm and not from the screen at the end of each rep which shows the rate of the last stoke not the whole piece.