Pete Plan Group - Startup Aug 20th thru 22nd

[aussieluke]

Another unplanned rest day as our visitor was leaving for the airport. Will try and do my 4x2000m tomorrow. Looks like this week is going to be stretched over two weeks after all

[G-dub]

John, your workouts are too good to not be able to do it. And I say that with peace, love and understanding. Maybe you are right and doing more of them would open them up. Maybe a rate capped one or two where the pressure wasn't on the pace as much. Say one at r26 then one at r28 then r30? I also wonder what would happen if you did the real one at r32. Anyway.... you will make it happen.

[JohnAd]

Glenn, thanks for that I think it will come too but the stars will have to be aligned, rate capping for say 1500m is an interesting idea as it might help with my tendency to row too fast too early and give me something else to think about. I need to play and try to find my true VO2Max pace so just below the point at which the lactic build up really kicks in, at the moment I think it's probably around 1:45.5 so maybe its back to the fast start and sprint finish approach.

Also not sure about rating up, but may try it out in the sprint intervals, my theory is that the slower the rate the fewer wasted calories going back and forth.

[mdpfirrman]

John A - When I hit my PB last year, I wasn't even thinking about below 7:20 at the time. My target was like 7:25 and I just kept it really conservative the first two 500m splits. I had so much left in the tank at the end I surprised myself. Even maybe try one where you go out at 1:46 or even 1:47 and then blow the doors off the last 500m. I think that it's difficult to hold your target pace through 4 X 500m intervals. It's like our intervals in the PP. Do 3 you know you can handle and then go for it on the last one. Try it again next week or the following. You've done 4 X 2000, so you know you can do one measly 2000.

SS today for me - shortened from 55' to 50' as I got a late start.

11517 / 2:10.1 / 24 SPM - Felt really strong today. Probably a bit too fast for SS but if I'm feeling it on day 6 of the plan, I know I have an off day the next day to rest, so that's the day out of the 3 SS I let go the most on.

[G-dub]

I've done so few 2k's all the way that I cannot talk. But when I went pure negative, i still felt like crap at 1500 AND i had to go faster to get to goal split. Happened on last 5K too. It can be demoralizing to feel bad and having also left some time on the table. I think aggressive start and a softer middle gives me a better mindset. I can always chase the pace back down with some power strokes and it makes you feel like you are in control, not chasing.

[G-dub]

And!! I think we both would benefit from a more aggressive mindset on tests. It is not going to be easy - we aren't in that stage of the process. We won't sneak past it - it's going to hurt. We have to kick the demon right squarely in the ass and be willing to stare him down. Sorry, I've just had a couple of beers.

[Pie Man]

John, I bet the rubber foot falling off made more of a difference than you think. As you say, get a solid 2k in the bag, then worry about doing a sub 7:00.

Nice SS Mike, good to hear you are feeling strong, looking forward to trading times next week.

BTW John, your advice helped me today as well, in doing my 1609m 'Hard distance'. So thanks again.

2k warm up, wasn't feeling it, didn't even do 'hard pulls' just a 2:10 2k.

Sat on the erg thinking of reasons not to do it. Remembered what JohnAd says about just getting it in the bag, so I did.

Aim was to start at 1:49 and increase pace at the end.

0400m 1:48.6 35spm 143HR
0800m 1:48.0 32spm 154HR
1200m 1:46.9 32spm 159HR
1600m 1:46.6 32spm 162HR
1609m 1:45.5 31spm 161HR

Total time 5:46.2 @1:47.5 32spm av. hr 148

It went fine, very happy with my stroke rate, as that is a solid power per stroke for me. But I really didn't try and put a proper kick in, not sure why, it just didn't happen. Could I have gone on for another 90 seconds, perhaps I certainly didn't collapse at the end, and I wasn't at my max HR. Anyway it's a PB for the mile as it's my first proper one. Followed it up after about 3 mins, with a 30' row with my pace based on keeping in UT2 (<133bpm) @ 2:17 pace.

[mudgeg]

Glenn - in vino veritas, in aqua sanitas. So I'd better have some water first after my workout before I have that beer too.

PP Beginners Week 8 Day 3

8000m row, target after yesterday, to just get there in a half way decent pace. Nominally 2:12 but after another day of bad food and bad coffee etcetera etcetera (I'm still away working and will be until Sunday) just tried to concentrate on spm and technique.

So actual 2:14.5 but I live to fight another day.......

[mdpfirrman]

Really nice mile Piers!

Good solid SS Gordon too.

[JohnAd]

Piers, very nice mile. Steady increasing the pace like that seems to sap the sprint reserves but probably gets a better time if you judge it right. Faster than your last pyramid time in the spreadsheet I notice which is good going.

Gordon, well done for stepping up after a hard day, always feels better after than before I find on those days and makes the beer taste better later.

Glenn, I've settled down with a couple of beers too and thinking along similar lines, a bit more mental strength required

[Litewait]

BPP 9.4 8000m DF117

36:27.3 8,000m 2:16.7 137 771 23
7:17.8 1,600m 2:16.8 137 771 24
7:13.9 3,200m 2:15.5 140 781 23
7:19.0 4,800m 2:17.1 136 767 23
7:23.0 6,400m 2:18.4 132 754 23
7:13.6 8,000m 2:15.5 141 785 24

This is becoming a pattern, every time I take a rest day I do terrible the next. Last 8000m 2 days ago mostly UT2, today I had to bust it the last 1000m just to come close to prior session. Funny thing though this was the first time in a long time my back started to hurt during the row, I noticed to compensate I was actually pulling with my core (which could use the work!). Oh well meters in the bank.

@gordon - gonna throw a rope around you and let you pull me next time, your less than optimal conditions and you still best me.
@piers - generating a helluva lot more power using the same DF as me!

[john_n]

@aussieluke Luke - thanks for clarifying that. Your way of doing steady state sounds perfectly, excellently fine. The things that confused me were that since you didn’t mention “cycle,” I assumed wrongly that you were doing one of the other Pete plans, such as either BPP or PP5K which don’t have cycles. And so I looked at BPP and PP5K on the Pete Plan blog https://thepeteplan.wordpress.com/the-pete-plan/ and didn’t see a “week 5 day 2” that correlated with what you did that day. But Week 2 day 2 of the regular PP resembled it the most, since it was steady state.

Since the author of the Pete Plan says he designed it as something he could do entirely within his lunch hour on a single day, then he would probably not break up a SS session into 20 minute portions with a couple minutes break between each … but only because time is at a premium when limited to only a lunch hour and the extra time for breaks between 20 minute chunks would mean less total training on that lunch hour.

But otherwise, I believe time invested in steady state rowing is somewhat analogous to time invested in sleep, in the respect that sleep is accumulative whether it is done all in one uninterrupted period or is broken up by one or more interruptions at night and supplemented with napping during the remainder of the 24 hour period. So 4 hours + 3 hours + 1 hour = 8 hours sleep. And SS 5K + SS 3K + SS 4K + SS 3K = 15K steady state rowing.

I understand your enthusiasm where you wrote, “If I had the time, I could do that all night!”. After I learned of the man and woman who rowed 45 days straight, 18 hours per day each, on a 2,750 mile ocean journey… I looked them up on the internet, watched some interviews and talks they had done, which were available on youtube and afterwards told my wife that “one of these days, I’d like to try rowing for 18 hours in a 24 hour period, to see what it’s like to row that long at an effort level that amounts to the same as what they did, which was only somewhere between 400 to 475 average calories per hour rowing.” She thinks its more evidence of a mental problem on my part, but that’s only because she hasn’t rowed enough to get the rower’s equivalent of the “runner’s high,” and other session afterglow effects like I have. They rowed for a long, long time at a low effort level and were in great shape and very happy at the end of the 45 days. It seems that there are wonderful and mysterious benefits of rowing, no matter what the combination is of time and effort level.

So your unplanned rest day gave you a day to charge your batteries.

@JohnAd John- that’s funny, about the size of the sweat patch on your shirt gauging the “properness” of your rowing session. Very nice 2K hard and the HD was just a blip from frustration / distraction of the rubber foot. But if there was wobble, that would make you less efficient and the wobble would bleed off a little of your effort. If the HD thing has been plaguing you, you might try doing your next hard 2K at any slower pace that you definitely know won’t burn and then try to make it burn during the final split. Two weeks to charge your batteries.

@Pie Man Piers - If you like to see planning styles, you might really enjoy seeing how the ones who compete at BIRC execute their 2Ks during those annual races. You can see the stroke chart recorded for each competitor, showing pace and stroke rate of each one, meter by meter from start to finish. It also has a table of split data of each competitor. To find it, go to concept2.com main page then click tab for Indoor Rowers->racing->World IRC->World IRC 2016. On the World IRC 2016 page, look in the paragraph at the top of that page for the sentence worded “We also have full results…” and click the words “full results,” which is a link to a listing of events. On the events page, click the one you are interested in, such as your age range of 40-49. On the next page, click any competitor’s name and you will see both a table of split data for his 2K and also a detailed stroke chart showing his pace and stroke rate, meter by meter (as I mentioned above) for the entire 2K. Each competitor’s graph is kind of like a fingerprint for that particular person’s race strategy - unique. I didn’t know how fast I could row that 6K without overstepping my boundaries, so I tried to err on the slow side, using how I felt and heart rate as the measure, until near the end when I would increase a bit and see how that felt, then increase a bit more etc. I felt no pain and set a new season record, so it was a happy ending. But I suppose a real racer in a real race would reach for the pain in the last part of the race…

Very nice mile, Piers!

@adam1882 Those “metres in the bank” pay dividends, but that’s not my idea - I’m currently reading the rowing book, “True Blue,” by rowing coach Daniel Topolski and just finished reading a passage on page 92 where he wrote, “The work is like an investment. The more you sink in, the more determined you are to get the dividend.” What you wrote about banking your meters (American way of spelling metres) reminded me of where the bookmark was, right at what Topolski wrote "The work is an investment...".

@mdpfirrman Mike - just keep at it and like adam1882 says, you are putting it “in the bank” and like Dan Topolski wrote, you will “get the dividend.” My activity has been mostly running, from 1976 until 2004. Long and slow. The only reason I started running in 1976 was because I thought it would be a way to avoid getting fat and morbidly out of shape like too many of the older guys I saw at work who had been doing the same job for decades. So I started running mostly for vanity and learned of its many other benefits later. The person who helped me get started and keep going with running was Joe Henderson, who wrote a book called “Jog, Run, Race”. He explained early in the book that if a person wanted to keep running, he would be most guaranteed of keeping at it and not turning away from it if he would first cultivate it as a "positive addiction". He had a program spelled out in the book which lasted 12 weeks and its main purpose was to cultivate the addiction of running daily. It started out with 3 minutes running as slow as possible without reverting to walking, the first day. Every week had several scheduled running sessions and rest days. The pace was always, always much slower than the person felt he could run and the latter was psychological - to run slightly increasing times every day and keep you "hungry" for doing it a little more and a little faster (or a lot lot more and a lot faster) after you FINALLY completed the 12 weeks. I did his program and at the end of it I was running slowly for 30 minutes daily. From then on, I was addicted. Increased time and distance but never raced and only sprinkled in a little sprinting once in a great while. Transferred it to rowing because of a knee problem when running more than about 20 or 30 minutes. Limiting to twenty minutes of running each day because of knee pain was simply not enough to satisfy the addiction.

Regarding heart rate: I got my first heart strap in the 1990s and in the pamphlet that came with that particular heart strap there was some information and general pointers regarding heart rate training and zones and reference to the formula “220 minus age in years = maximum heart rate” and the generally accepted fact that for every year of a person’s life, maximum heart rate decreases by 1 bpm. So a newborn has HRmax of 220 and a 20 year old HRmax of 220-20=200, etc. But the pamphlet added something to that which I haven’t seen anywhere else: It said that “there is evidence to indicate” that if a person is “aerobically active on a daily basis,” then the person’s HRmax will not decrease. So if true, that means that because I’ve been “aerobically active” for almost 40 years, my maximum HR should be about the same as that of someone who is 70-40=30 years old and who has NOT been aerobically active for any of the 30 years of his life. The last time I got my HR wound all the way up to what I thought at the time was its maximum at 189, it climbed to 190 and then settled at 191 in the last split of the “hard 10K” I was doing. I don’t know what to think of that, if it was a display error or for real, but if you use the lower figure of 189, which I’d seen a few times before that in other rowing sessions… then 220-HRmax of 189 = age 31. I was born in 1946 and started running at age 30, in 1976, so what the pamphlet said about HRmax not decreasing for any year during which a person is “aerobically active” that year might be true. I just smile at anyone who tries to tell me that slow, low-level aerobic exercise isn’t worth doing.

Since you felt really strong today in your steady session, you should be fully charged the day after your tomorrow rest day.

@paul45 “Metres in the bank,” Paul.

@Street When its allergy season, one of the benefits of rowing that I like is it helps “get things going,” to clear out/ cough up some of the results of the body’s reaction to whatever allergens are in the air. But if you have a cold… that’s something else and you are your own guinea pig in such an experiment. I’ve found sometimes it helps, sometimes it makes things worse.

@Slacker Ben-thanks for the kind words. I’m addicted to rowing and do it to get my daily fix of endorphins.

@G-dub Well wishes for a solid recovery, Glenn.

@mudgeg Gordon, 2:14.5 is very worthwhile for an 8K steady session. When the target doesn’t pan out, toss the target out and keep the rest.

@Litewait Tim, nice SS 8K. Things take quite a while to resolve and readjust in the myriad systems of the body.

Oct 21 PP cycle 1 week 2 day 6.
no warmup
15K steady state. Solo, offline, with easy music.
targets in order of priority
1. 60 - 75% HRmax
2. rating: 22
3. Pace: no target but hoping for average of between 2:11 - 2:25.
Straps: loose
DF 135
no warm down
Pace seemed less volatile than previous 15K perhaps because wore sweatband & moved towel out of reach so I’d keep both hands on handle for entire session.


Blogged a post of the session at http://etherealrowing.com/pete-plan-cyc ... state-15k/

[john_n]

Hi John, the PP5KT has 4 x 3 week cycles = 12 weeks (it's all laid out in plan)

... Love your write ups, nice training as always.

@paul45 Hi Paul and thanks for correcting me. I didn't look closely enough at the PP5KT, when I was trying to figure out what Luke was doing, to notice that it had cycles.

The PP5KT sounds a bit more complicated than the regular PP but it sounds like it gradually, gradually puts the squeeze on someone who is following it, to row harder in gradually increasing increments, just like the simpler, regular PP does.

Fitness Matters, in England has an annual indoor racing event which includes a 5K. This year, they allowed people to race online in the event also. You might be interested next year, since you will have quite a bit of 5K training under your belt by then. http://fitnessmatters.me.uk/devon-indoo ... pionships/ I'm not in England, but the nice thing about them trying to include ways for people to participate online is that people all over the world can join in.

[G-dub]

Good work Paul. Making progress.

[aussieluke]

Yet another day away from the erg. Busy day and busy evening then a bad stomach put an end to today's plans.

Managed a brief strength workout at lunchtime at least:

50kg barbell press 5 x 1,2,3

Chin ups 5 x 1,2,3

I have about 10 days off work now so hope to get back in the habit of getting up early to train. Only problem with that is steady state work is fine first thing on an empty stomach but intervals not so much.