Today all systems were still go at launch time, as they were yesterday, and the session went well. The session was a 4x2K R5:00. Target pace was 1:58.1 for the first 3 intervals and a bit faster but I did not, as Pete Marston says, go “as fast as you can go” on the last one. I held back, deliberately, so as to raise the target pace more gradually from one cycle to the next.
The resulting average pace was 1:57.5 and that will be the target pace for the first 3 intervals of this session in the next cycle. Gradual is good.
RowPro 5 (beta) for the Mac finish screen for today’s 4x2K R5:00
Today’s session was a Pete Plan recovery distance of 15K. Everything seemed normal so all systems are go, for tomorrow’s endurance intervals without a scratch like yesterday’s speed intervals.
The effort level for today’s 15K was reduced as time passed, to keep HR about the same throughout.
today’s 15K finish screen15K report. The two splits which show “0” meters for distance are a software glitch with RowPro 5 (beta) for the Mac15K charts
This cat is no doubt getting a lot more satisfaction from scratching his pyramid than I got from scratching my speed pyramid today.
Today’s rowing session was a standard Pete Plan speed pyramid, just like the ones that were done 3 and 6 weeks ago. But this one didn’t feel right, so I scratched it, after getting almost halfway through. From the halfway point on, it was a lot slower than it should have been.
The target pace for the first 3 of 7 intervals was 1:50.6 and then the last 4 were supposed to be done as fast as I could. But as I said it didn’t work out and though I did avoid a literal HD and row the entire distance, the overall average pace was so much slower than the starting target pace that when this is done again in three weeks, I’ll use the same 1:50.6 target pace for the first 3 intervals and see if I can maintain a faster pace for all four of the last intervals.
There were two warmups done because I had to interrupt things to answer an important email, after finishing the first warmup and I became cool again.
first warmup reportsecond warm up reportMessy looking finish screen for the scratched pyramid.Session report for scratched pyramid.
Today’s session almost didn’t happen. The training plan called for a “Hard Distance” of at least 5K today. I set the alarm clock to wake me in time for a moderately early morning wake-up. But sleep had been cut short the night before and I was up late with a rare long session of happy long-distance chatter, so I didn’t get to bed until a couple hours after normal bedtime.
When the alarm went off this morning, I reached out from under the blankets, turned it off and went back to sleep. It was 10 a.m. before I finally roused out of bed. Everything was discombobulated by the late morning start.
So for most of the day, I thought I’d either skip rowing or do an extra day’s worth of recovery rowing. But by late afternoon, everything seemed more or less recombobulated, so I decided to do the shortest hard distance allowed in the training plan, a 5K.
The target pace for the 5K was 1:56.1, which would match the average pace of the next guy ahead of me in the 5K rankings. The plan was to row at 1:56.1 until the last 500 meters and then pick up the pace enough to move up one spot in the 5K rankings.
But when I set up the 5K in RowPro 5 for the Mac (Beta), I discovered that pace boats can only be programmed for paces in whole numbers of seconds. I wanted a pace boat to row against, so I set up a pace boat with its pace to be 1:56 and ended up rowing the first 4,500 meters a little faster than the initial plan of 1:56.1.
The first 2,000 to 3,000 meters felt good and I had to restrain myself from rowing faster than 1:56. The pace boat helped with the restraint. After about 3,000 meters I began to feel a wee little bit of mental resistance, as though part of my mind was starting to say, “hey! this is getting a bit hard, don’t you think? You wanna call it off, maybe, and try again another day?”
But it was just a whisper-y voice, which I gently warned away from the main area of the mind, while focusing on things like how low the distance would count down to by the time the song currently playing ended and the next song began. I guessed that by that time, the distance would count down to between 1,100 and 1,200 meters. I focused on that.
I play the same music playlist for every hard rowing session and that one particular song is played many times in the playlist and is slightly less than 4 minutes long, so I had a pretty good idea of how far I could row at any given pace for its duration. The very last note ended and the next song began as the distance counted down from 1,201 to 1,200 meters. Close enough.
The last 1,200 meters took less time than the next song, because I was able to increase the pace a bit. I didn’t push too hard and avoided fading before the end. The result was a new SB and a one-place move up in the 5K rankings.
Before the 5K, there was a 15 minute warm up and another 15 minutes afterwards for warming down.
warm up finish screenwarm up reportwarm up chart5K finish screen5K report5K chartswarmdown finish screenwarm down reportwarm down chart
Yesterday’s session of endurance intervals required a boost of energy for the final interval. That’s because Pete Plan training guidelines for interval sessions are to do all the intervals except the last one at the target pace and then do the final interval “as fast as you can.” Or – at least definitely faster than the target pace.
Therefore, the final interval requires a bit of a boost of energy, to elevate the pace into a higher energy level and attain a resulting higher average pace for all the interval sessions.
Today’s session was what the Pete Plan refers to as a “recovery” session. A recovery sessioin gives you a day in between hard sessions, to help recover that booster energy you expended in the last interval of the day before.
The session today was 10K done at an easy pace, with the only target being to keep the average rating for the entire session at somewhere between 22-25. DF 135. No warmup or warm down.
The recovery sessions are also called “steady distance” but this one wasn’t very steady because I was watching TV and operating the channel switcher and volume control while rowing with one hand each time.
The intention today was to continue doing what has been working well for the most recent sessions: Do the rowing before anything else, including before having coffee or breakfast. The mind has been eager to comply with this approach until today, when it started dragging its feet, which amounted to 5 minutes delay here, another 5 minutes there, etc until the session start had been delayed about 20 minutes. I gently confronted that subconscious delaying tactic, quickly changed into rowing clothes and sat on the C2.
Today’s session was preceded by a 5 minute warm up. The warm up wasn’t really needed, but it was easy to persuade the subconscious to get started on the warm up without further delay. After that, the efforts to delay went away.
Warm up session report. If you notice that the average pace for the 12th split was 2:21 but it took zero time and was zero meters…. that’s a glitch in RowPro 5 for the Mac beta version, which will be remedied in the non-beta version.charts for the warm up session
The main part was a Pete Plan endurance interval session of 5×1500 R5:00. The last 5 minute rest after the last 1,500 meter interval served as the warm down.
Target pace for all but the last of the 5 intervals was 1:59.5, which had been the average pace of all 5 intervals for this session in the previous cycle. The last interval was done a bit faster. Resulting average pace for all 5 intervals was 1:58.4, which will be used as target pace for this session in the next cycle. DF was 135.
Today’s session was one of the Pete Plan designated “recovery” sessions. The daily sessions in the Pete Plan training schedule alternate between one day of hard rowing and one day of easy, slow rowing which is called “recovery”.
The distance should be at least 8K and I chose to do 10K.
Rating was supposed to be somewhere from at least 22 to a maximum of 25. According to the RowPro session report, the average rating was 23, so that was perfectly in the ball park.
It was supposed to be done at a constant pace, but I didn’t focus on keeping the pace constant because I spent most of the time watching TV and channel surfing.
DF was 135. If there is anything else you’d like to know about this session, ask a question via comments before it totally fades from my mind.
Refer to the second paragraph of this post for an explanation of the above image.
Today it seemed that I was starting to feel withdrawal symptoms and a little bit of yearning for some more of the Pete Plan training. So today was the beginning of the 3rd cycle for me of the Pete Plan.
When the title for this post, “A New Beginning,” came to mind, I searched on the internet for an appropriate image among the “free to share and use” choices, which was associated with the phrase. One of the images that came up in the search was similar to the above, only it included the words “Part 2”. I liked the image because of the elements of storm, water and its depiction of the big boat Noah built. So I looked for the website where the picture was hosted and found it at the Torah Family website. I might listen to one or more of the relevant video presentations later, to find out what it’s about. I’m trusting that it is something good, so a link to the website is included in the previous sentence.
The first session of each cycle of the Pete Plan is an 8×500 R3:30. I re-read the Pete Plan looking for any advice relating to whether any adjustments should be made if a person takes time off from doing the Plan and according to Pete’s guidelines, “It’s best not to take extended periods off training if you can help it, but life has to get in the way sometimes. A good method to get back into the plan after time off, for whatever reason, is to back off your targets by 1 second in pace for each week you have had off. So if you have been away on holiday for two weeks, take 2seconds off your pacing targets for this cycle, and build back from there.”
So I could have “backed off” by 1 second in pace, since I took a week off. But I didn’t TOTALLY stop rowing. So I decided to NOT back off on the pace and see if it felt ok. It felt ok. The target pace for the first 7 intervals, therefore, was 1:54.1, based on the resulting average pace for all 8 intervals of this session in the previous cycle. The resulting average pace for all 8 today was 1:53.2, which will be used as target pace for all but the last interval the next time this is done in (hopefully) three weeks.
The training session was preceded by a 15 minute warm up and followed by a 15 minute warm down.
today’s warm up report. Notice that RowPro 5 for the Mac is showing off some of its glitches by reporting zero meters for one of the intervals and a negative value (-1 meter) for another interval. But the overall meters rowed is correct.today’s warm up charts.Today’s Pete Plan 8×500 R3:30 finish screen.Today’s 8×500 R3:30 session reportToday’s 8×500 R3:30 charts
For a few days previous to today, I’ve been a bit hit-and-miss with rowing sessions. In other words, some days there was no rowing done. And on none of those days was the Pete Plan training done. I didn’t have any enthusiasm for rowing, but did not totally abstain because of various considerations such as health. And my personal obligation to blog at least to a minimal degree about doing rowing, which requires that I do some rowing. Other motivational considerations come to mind, but I won’t try to list them.
Except for one more: I’m finding the “Activity” app on the Apple Watch to be a pleasant motivation. It is a well-done app and its “social” feature is nicely done, allowing a person’s daily activity level to be automatically shared and view-able by each other person who has an Apple Watchand with whom activity is shared.
To do the minimum daily exercise portion for the Apple Watch, I need to log at least 30 minutes of some kind of workout with it.
Today, a Pete Plan session was done, but that will be in a separate post after this catch-up post is published. Below are reports and charts for the sessions that have been done since the previous post, beginning with Nov 20th:
warmup on Nov 20thcharts for Nov 20 warmupThe unenthusiastic 5K which was done after warming up on Nov 20thcharts for the 5K of Nov 20warm down Nov 20thwarm down charts Nov 20
There was no rowing done on Nov 21. For Nov 22nd, a 30 minute session was done:
Nov 22nd 30 minutes reportNov 22nd 30 minutes charts
For Nov 23rd, 30 minutes was done but it was broken up into three pieces:
Nov 23rd report 1 of 3Nov 23rd charts 1 of 3Nov 23rd 2nd of 3 pieces reportNov 23rd 2nd of 3 pieces chartsreport for 3 of 3 on Nov 23charts for 3 of 3 on Nov 23
On November 24th, the rowing was a piece of a little more than 10K:
Nov 24th 10,250 meter reportNov 24th 10,250 meter charts
For November 25th, a 10K piece was done, followed by a 5 minute warm down, extremely slowly:
Nov 25th 10K reportNov 25th 10K chartsNov 26 warm down reportNov 26 warm down charts
