Around the World Row!

[Trevor]

The watts and calories are off the monitor and I usually aim to keep my heart rate at 80 to 90% of max while pulling at 180 watts/900 calories. The problem is right now I haven't tested myself for max heart rate (as per the British Concept site) so I am only going by quess work.

Thanks for the Wolverine link, I downloaded the plan and will digest it over the next day or so.

I just started to take the training seriously over the past several weeks, unfortunately my work schedule is so erratic and unpredictable from day to day that I fear consistency may not be achievable. I will do the best I can.

The advice and suupport is greatly appreciated.

[Trevor]

The watts and calories are off the monitor and I usually aim to keep my heart rate at 80 to 90% of max while pulling at 180 watts/900 calories. The aim here is to increase my power and pay attention to my technique. The problem is right now I haven't tested myself for max heart rate (as per the British Concept site) so I am only going by quess work.

Thanks for the Wolverine link, I downloaded the plan and will digest it over the next day or so.

I just started to take the training seriously over the past several weeks, unfortunately my work schedule is so erratic and unpredictable from day to day that I fear consistency may not be achievable. I will do the best I can.

The advice and suupport is greatly appreciated.

[Yukon John]

A big welcome Ellen to the Eh Team's CTC boats! I happen to know that Ellen is a great person and I agree that she deserves being an "Honorary Canandian." But then, I think that every one who is on the Eh Team or with the Eh Team on the CTC deserves this status (especially if they watch Hockey Night in Canada ) Shannon just told me that Ellen rowed another 5k and took a minute and a half off of her time!!! You'll have to tell us your secret Ellen! Great job!!!

[danwho]

Trevor, with following good advice from Francois and no piece of cake next time, you are certain to get under 20, probably by more than you originally hoped.
But I'm thinking you may have stumbled onto something. If you can do that well after a piece of cake, then maybe, when it's the Eh Team's turn to pick the CTC challenge, we can stipulate that the race must be done 30 minutes after eating a big piece of cake. If we know that's what's coming, we can train for it, and catch all the other teams offguard. I think I will start training right now....
Sorry for the silliness, couldn't resist.

[danwho]

Trevor, with following good advice from Francois and no piece of cake next time, you are certain to get under 20, probably by more than you originally hoped.
But I'm thinking you may have stumbled onto something. If you can do that well after a piece of cake, then maybe, when it's the Eh Team's turn to pick the CTC challenge, we can stipulate that the race must be done 30 minutes after eating a big piece of cake. If we know that's what's coming, we can train for it, and catch all the other teams offguard. I think I will start training right now....
Sorry for the silliness, couldn't resist.

[danwho]

Hi Francois, I guess I will need to give some serious thought to playing around with my pacing during a race if I want to see improvement. I remember reading those kind of suggestions a while back but found them a little too hard to implement. Psychologically, I would find it hard to deliberately hold my pace back knowing that I planned to increase it soon. Because usually holding my pace back really didn't feel easy. So far my strategy has been very simplistic (maybe because I'm 'simple').
For the last 5K, I gave a good amount of thought about what average pace I might have a hope of achieving, based on previous efforts, and based on some hope.
I set the resistance level at 4. I train at 3, but after some experimentation last year, I found 4 more appealing for a 5K race, but not a 10K race.
Then I aimed to get to that average relatively quickly at a spm of about 26. Normally, I train around 24-25. But I didn't want to start out with a higher stroke rate. It feels more comfortable to me to save a higher stroke rate for just a little later (but I know I will have to challenge what feels comfortable to me if I want to improve - just not sure how uncomfortable I'm willing to get).
I tried to maintain that average as long as possible with my stroke rate eventually getting to about 28 or a little higher. I found myself feeling a little too tired after maybe 3K and slowed just a little, but only for a little while and then I found myself still coming back to my target average - I wasn't willing for it to get too far away, I guess. I again slowed down a little bit at the end because I was really getting drained and I figured I could easily recover any short slowdown with a little bit of a sprint at the end. And I ended up finishing at my target average.
I also will look at your Wolverine Post. I remember looking at some Wolverine Plan document before but it didn't seem to appeal to me - the meters seemed too high (I also like to cross-train and usually don't row more than 3X a week) and I really hated trying to row much below 24 spm. But I will look at it again. It seems to be a bible for so many.
Well, that's enough from me for one night.
Hope this one doesn't get posted twice too.

[ulu]

Wow, great rowin' everyone. Nice to see the 3 Eh!Team boats in the water at the C2C challenge.

In the meantime, our around the world row boat has made it into India. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/fac ... os/in.html. One of my favorite countries, amazing terrain, fantastic people and a land of contrasts.



Nice advice on the warmup for a 5k Francois. I will try it next time. What do people do the day or two before you are trying for a PB on a 5k?

Keep on rowin', eh.

Jim

[Yukon John]

Nice advice on the warmup for a 5k Francois. I will try it next time. What do people do the day or two before you are trying for a PB on a 5k?

Keep on rowin', eh.

Jim

I think that's what Francois was talking about, at least for me. I want to do a quick taper before major efforts so two days before I do a fairly short row (~6-7K) with some short pick-ups (about 15-20 seconds at race pace.) Usually about 8 of these total (one every 500 metres.) The day before depends on how I feel. If I'm feeling rested I'll do another short row of maybe 4-5k. If not I'll take the day off. Lately I've also been trying cross-training with cycling the days leading up to a race effort. Sometimes I'll take the day after a race off too, so doing a lot of racing can effect your training negatively. When I was involved with cross country skiing, we trained hard up till Christmas or so then did a lot of racing for the next couple of months. Conditioning definately slipped during that time.

Another training plan that is very good is the "Pete's Plan." I haven't looked that closely at the wolverine plan, but is seems a bit involved from a quick glance. The Pete's plan is quite simple. My times improved a lot when I did this plan for about a month. I modified the plan somewhat as it was a bit too intense for me. It revolves around doing two interval sessions / week and a 10k race effort on the weekend. As your times for the intervals get faster, you do the workouts at a quicker pace. My modified version left out the 10k weekly race efforts. It was too much for skinny old me. I'm planning on doing this routine again probably in July when I'll decrease the amount of cycling I've been doing.

Dan, there are different thoughts on pacing for races. I did as Francois suggested on my last 5k attempt starting at 1 second slower then my pace then speeding up. It worked, and I'll do it again on my next attempt. But for a 2K I've tried the negative splits and it didn't suit me at all. At that intensity and speed the idea of increasing speed just didn't work for me. Xeno said that he doesn't do negative splits either (not that I'm in his class ) He said that he starts out 2-3 seconds faster than the pace that he wants (for a short period) then settles into the pace he wants. But he said that it's important not to get carried away at the start. (I'm going off memory here so this may not be an exact quote!) This works best for me for the shorter distances.

[Francois]

As far as tapering is concerned, it all depends on the importance of the race. For the most important races (2 or 3 every year), I start tapering about 10 days before. For less important ones, I try to make them coincide with the end of a recovery week. For time trials, 2 or 3 days are sufficient. What you do during those tapering days depends heavily on the amount, intensities and frequency of training you have done in the months before. Someone training 3 times a week for 30 minutes doesn't need much tapering, while someone training 3 hours a day, 6 days a week would benefit more from tapering.

In my case, for local swim time trials held on Saturdays, I skip the swim workout on Thursday, but do an easy 45 minutes of rowing or biking. I do an easy swim workout on Friday, and nothing else. What I have found is that I always feel sluggish after a complete day of rest, so if I am to take a day of rest, it is much better to have it 2 days prior to a race or time trial than just the day before.

Tapering is as much an art as a science, and everyone is different. For instance, sprinters don't taper like long distance swimmers, and even within such groups, there are individual differences.

Regarding training plans, one should note the Pete's Plans is essentially the Wolverine Plan (WP) minus the Level 4 workouts. If I remember correctly, Pete had recently second thought on wether they should be reintroduced to some extent. IMO, the L4 workouts are of paramount importance to develop stroking power and endurance. Also, the WP can even be adapted to people training 3 or 4 times a week. In the end, even an average training plan is better than no training plan!

One of the reason mentioned by Mike Caviston on the advantage of starting a little slower than goal pace is that no matter how strenuous your warm-up is, you are still not completely warmed-up at the start of your race.
For instance, if I rank each 1000m of the 5K I did in the order of decreasing pain (i.e most painful to least) it would be: 5th (1:44.0), 4th (1:46.2), 1st (1:48.5), 3rd (1:47.4) and 2nd (1:47.6). So even though my first K was 1.8 sec above average pace, it wasn't the easiest. The same thing happens regularly in swimming, for instance when doing a 5x100m on 1:30, the second and third 100's are always faster than the 1st for the same perceived exertion level.

[ulu]

16,000,000 meters down! and less than 40 million to go.

Well done, hosers!

Keep on rowin, eh.

Jim

[BriK]

But I'm thinking you may have stumbled onto something. If you can do that well after a piece of cake, then maybe, when it's the Eh Team's turn to pick the CTC challenge, we can stipulate that the race must be done 30 minutes after eating a big piece of cake.

It will be a tough challenge, but if we start with our training in time and train really hard, I think we can make it!

[Yukon John]

But I'm thinking you may have stumbled onto something. If you can do that well after a piece of cake, then maybe, when it's the Eh Team's turn to pick the CTC challenge, we can stipulate that the race must be done 30 minutes after eating a big piece of cake.

It will be a tough challenge, but if we start with our training in time and train really hard, I think we can make it!

Does Cheesecake count? I have a great recipe for a cheese pie that my Grandma came across back around 1955. It's rich and moist. Although I eat a vegan diet most of the time, holidays wouldn't be complete without this stuff! I could easily train myself to eat lots of this, but I'm afraid that my lightweight status would dissapear . Maybe if we did some marathon training and cake . . .

[BriK]

Does Cheesecake count? I have a great recipe for a cheese pie that my Grandma came across back around 1955. It's rich and moist. Although I eat a vegan diet most of the time, holidays wouldn't be complete without this stuff! I could easily train myself to eat lots of this, but I'm afraid that my lightweight status would dissapear . Maybe if we did some marathon training and cake . . .

Sounds delicious ... and I start to wonder if it would count as an illegal substance. But if I can have a piece too, I won't tell anyone
On the other hand the CTC might be desined to fail because no team would be able to get a boat on the water, because there are no lightweights left anymore.

[Trevor]

In my case, and I suspect many others, indoor rowing would be converted to an indoor ralphing. I was able to dodge the bullet last time but I suspect cheesecake would be pushing the limit. The prospect is too ghastly to contemplate.

[Yukon John]

In my case, and I suspect many others, indoor rowing would be converted to an indoor ralphing. I was able to dodge the bullet last time but I suspect cheesecake would be pushing the limit. The prospect is too ghastly to contemplate.

Rich food, rowing, ralphing, the three R's diet plan , or at least a way to get rid of a sweet tooth! I'll post the recipe on the weekend. Maybe it can be used for celebrating pb's, not making pbs . John