Category: Ethereal Rowing

Today’s Pete Plan rowing session was a speed pyramid.  The first 4 intervals up through the 1,000 meter were done with a pace target of 1:56.5.  The following 750m, 500m and final 250m were each done at a faster pace than the previous interval.  The rest after each interval was an amount of time equal to 90 seconds times the interval distance’s multiple of 250.

The average pace for all 7 intervals was 1:54.6 and that will be used as the pace target for the first 4 of these intervals in three weeks, when this speed pyramid is repeated.

Happy trails to you.

Today was supposed to be a Pete Plan scheduled day of rest from rowing.  So I rested.  But I also logged some rowing meters, so as to make one last day’s contribution to the team’s results for this year’s Fall Team Challenge.

I refrained from rowing by exercising extreme restraint on the C2.

It takes a LOT MORE TIME to row any particular number of meters if a person is resting, than if the person is not resting.

The session was set up as 15K, with a target heart rate just 20 to 30 BPM above resting heart rate.  The DF was set as low as it would go, which turned out to be 63. I watched a movie and the rowing meters were accomplished by holding the handle on the C2 while moving back and forth sort of absent-mindedly on the rail.

This did not count as a workout, since my heart would have had a higher rate if I’d been strolling with Diane in the park. It was about the same rate as if I’d been strolling alone in the park.  (My heart beats faster if I stroll with Diane, because of the effect she has on me.)

Happy trails to you.

Today’s Pete Plan session was done online in the company of two other rowers, located in Denmark and Germany.

The plan for today was  a steady distance of from 8 to 15K.  I chose 15.

Rating limits were to be from 22 to 25. I aimed for 22.

DF is always rower’s choice. Today it was 135.

The pace was supposed to be at least 10 seconds slower than endurance interval sessions and so I targeted a pace of 2:11.

Pete Plan doesn’t say anything about HR zone, but I targeted HR anywhere between at least 60% to no more than 75% HRmax. The highest it reached was 73%.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s rowing session in the Pete Plan was supposed to be any distance of at least 5K or more done at a “hard” effort level.  The only guidelines I’ve found that Pete provides for the “hard distance” are guidelines which give you a lot of room for interpretation, which makes sense because everyone is different and the Pete Plan is not a personalized plan.

Pete’s guidelines for hard distance are “Hard distance doesn’t have to mean flat out every week, just that you can go faster than the steady days and over the 25spm limit.” If you visit that link, you’ll find those words about 1/3 from the top of the web page, under the paragraph with the subtitle of “Distance / endurance work:”

So… today’s choice of what to do was a 5K.  The target pace I chose was 1:57.6/500m.  The reason I chose that target pace is because I recently did a 5K at that pace and it was comfortable without getting into any painful exertion, so I thought it should be perfectly ok to target that pace again and then sprint a little faster during the last few hundred meters.  It worked out well and was pleasantly invigorating.

If anyone who is experienced in serious, competitive rowing notices and bristles at or objects to the words “comfortable”  and “pleasant(ly)” in this context, I should explain that I’ve never reached for the truly competitive experience of “embracing the pain.”  I’ll leave that to those who are trying to squeeze every last drop out of the tank during world championship races etc and be content to enjoy watching them race, when possible and trying to imagine what they are putting themselves through.

There was a 2K warm up finished about 5 minutes before the 5K and a 3K warm down, for a total of 10K today.

What else?  Oh yes – DF was 135.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s rowing session was scheduled online because it was a simple, straightforward non-interval session.  Nobody else joined but that is probably mostly because I didn’t post it online until an hour before start time and there were already other, shorter sessions scheduled at that same time.

The Pete Plan session designated for today was to be a Steady State session of from 8 to 15K.  I stated my reasons for choosing 15K the day before yesterday.  But there was a difference between what I did today and the day before yesterday.  Same rating range of from 22 to 25.  Same pacing of “at least 10 seconds per 500 meters slower” than my endurance interval sessions.  But this time, instead of aiming for a pace target, I aimed for a HR target of between 60% to no more than 75% HR max, which is something suggested by one of the guys in the C2 Pete Plan forum which seems very reasonable and sensible in context because if my HR had been 75% HRmax, that would still be about 30 BPM lower than my most recent measure of Lactate Threshold HR.

Other session info:  DF was 135.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s session was done offline because it was a set of intervals and those cannot be scheduled online and have them all in one session.

For today’s Pete Plan installment, the session was 5 intervals of 1,500 meters each, with 5 minutes of active rest after each interval.  The first four 1500m intervals were done with a target pace of 2:01.7, which was the pace of my season best 10K.  The last of the 5 intervals was done “as fast as I could,” according to Pete Plan guidelines.  But since Pete didn’t spell out precisely how to go about that, I chose the approach of mentally subdividing the last 1500 meters into 3 splits of 500 meters and did the first 500 at a pace of about 1:59-2:00, the second 500 at about 1:55 and the last 500 at about 1:50 until there were about 200 meters remaining, during which I tried to go as fast as I could go and raised the pace up to around 1:45 or a little faster at the very end.

For a warmup before the intervals, I rowed easy for 4 minutes.  For a warm down afterwards, I used the last 5 minutes of active rest and rowed very easy.

The average pace for all five of the 1,500 meter intervals was 2:00.3/500m.  That average pace will be used for the first 4 intervals in the second cycle of this Pete Plan, 3 weeks from now.

Happy trails to you.

Today was Pete Plan steady state session for week 1, day 2.   And, as the title says, this is the first cycle of Pete Plan for me.

The guidelines were to row at least 8 but no more than 15 kilometers, use a rating anywhere from at least 22 to no more than 25 SPM and to aim for a pace at least 10 seconds per 500m slower than the pace of endurance interval sessions.

Since the SS (Steady State) sessions are also designated as “recovery” sessions, I chose a target pace of 2:15 which was quite a bit more than 10 seconds/500m slower than my guesstimate of will be the pace of endurance interval sessions.

Refer to the note below the charts for an explanation of why the rating and pace weren’t more consistent and focused throughout the session.

So to sum it up, today’s targets were rating of 22-25, pace 2:15 and distance 15K.  I chose the longest distance in Pete’s range of from 8 to 15K because I figure it will do the most to maintain whatever is my aerobic base.

If anyone who reads this isn’t immediately familiar with what a person’s “aerobic base” is, one way I translate that term is that it is a person’s ability to breathe easily.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s rowing session started late because I spent the time during which I’d already be rowing in the morning, doing more reading and thinking about whether and when to try something I’ve never done: a TRAINING PLAN for rowing.

Real rowers train and everyone else looks for excuses not to row or to complain. At least… that’s what it seems, after the hours and hours I’ve spent reading forum posts and reading yet another couple of books about rowers.

By mid-morning, I’d sort of made up my mind to start by doing the Beginner Pete Plan, frequently referred to as BPP in the rowing training forum I’ve been reading. But after printing it out and then giving it more thought, I decided that – although I’ve never done any rowing training, the BPP was just a bit too beginner-ish for someone who has already been rowing several days per week for 14 or 15 years.

So I decided to try the Pete Plan “regular version”, like the guys in the forum I’m reading are doing and which they all seem to be very enthusiastic about in the appropriate way to be enthusiastic about something that causes a person to sweat and toil.

To do the Pete Plan the right way necessitates a form of physical piety and at least a mild obsession for the pursuit of physical improvement in the activity of indoor rowing, which all-in-all looks like a lot of good, healthy, honest fun.

So today was Week 1, Day 1 of my first try of the Pete Plan three week cycle.  Specifically, the session was 8x500m r3:30.  Pete’s advice for pacing the first attempt at this session was to do the first seven 500 m intervals at a pace equal to the average pace of my best 5K.  Rather than choose the pace of my best ever 5K, I used the pace of my current season best 5K, which was 1:57.6/500m for the first seven intervals.  And the very last of the eight 500m intervals was supposed to be done “as fast as you can.”

After doing all eight of those intervals, the average pace for all eight of them is calculated.  The last interval, “as fast as you can,” is the one that has the biggest influence on the resulting average pace… at least it does in the first attempt.  The first seven intervals were each done at about 1:57.6 and the very last was was done “as fast as I could,” which turned out to be 1:41.3.  All eight of them averaged out to about 1:55.7/500m.   That resulting average pace will be the target pace for the first seven of those intervals the NEXT time I do that particular session…. three weeks from today.

So you can see that way, a person is gradually compelled and hopefully improved and trained to go faster, with each succeeding three week cycle of the plan.

Happy trails to you.

 

Today was supposed to be a rest day, although since there had already been one day totally without rowing this week, I suppose this rest day wasn’t needed.

But when I looked at scheduled rows this morning, a session scheduled by a guy in Italy which was named “40 min tranqui” caught my eye and seemed the obvious choice.  Translating “tranqui” from Italian to English, the English equivalent is “quiet”.

I went online 5 minutes or more before the scheduled start time, but the session had vanished.

So I setup a QR of 40 minutes duration and named it “substitute for the vanished”.  Another guy, Nicolás S., joined.  I don’t know what country he was located in, but it was somewhere in Europe I’m sure, because he wished me “good evening” after the session ended and it was evening in Europe while it was mid morning here.

Today’s 40 minutes of rowing was so gentle and serene that there was no warm down needed.

Happy trails to you.