Today’s session was just treading water so to speak by doing 11K at a slow pace.
Happy trails to you.
Easy Again
Category: RowPro 5 for the Mac review
Pretend To Row In The Desert
Today’s session was supposed to be a steady distance/recovery session of from 8K to 15K or more. So I chose to do a half marathon, with the thought in mind that it would compensate for not rowing at all tomorrow on the Pete Plan rest day. (One of my goals this season is to raise daily average meters to 10K or more).
The distance session was supposed to be done at a rating of from 22 to 25. The resulting average was in the ball park at 24.
For occupying the mind, I alternated between focusing on strokes per minute and watching news on TV.
Happy trails to you.
Early Again
Today started at about 04:30. The rowing session was to be from 8K to 15K, steady distance/recovery session at rating of 22 to 25 SPM. Distance chosen was 11K.
Happy trails to you.
Steady Heart HM
Today’s training session was supposed to be a steady distance “recovery session” of from at least 8K to 15K. Or more. The session was supposed to be done with a rating of from 22 to 25 SPM. Because tomorrow is a rest day and I will probably do no rowing tomorrow, I chose the distance of “or more” and rowed a half marathon. Average rating was 24, which was within the 22-25 SPM boundaries. As for the “steady” part, I mostly ignored the pace and just aimed to keep HR at a little higher than twice RHR. So in other words, I sort of aimed for a steady heart rate. That seemed to work well, because though I didn’t work up a sweat, it was enough effort to feel a bit of a glow afterwards. You might say it was heartwarming.
Happy trails to you.
All Systems Go
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.
Happy trails to you.
Hard Distance, Disregard Resistance
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.
Happy trails to you.
Just Doing It
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.
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.
Happy trails to you.
Pete Plan Cycle 2 Week 2 Day 1 Speed Pyramid
Yesterday (Nov 5) was the training plan rest day and there was neither rowing done nor a blog post made yesterday.
Today’s training plan session is probably the weirdest of all the Pete Plan sessions, the “Speed Pyramid.” It is a set of seven intervals done in this order: 250, 500, 750, 1000, 750, 500 and 250. The rest in between each interval is supposed to be a time equal to 90 seconds for each 250 meters of the preceding interval. So the rest after the first 250 meters was 1:30. After the second interval of 500 meters, the rest time was 3:00. Etc. The rest periods were active rest with slow rowing.
The first 3 intervals were each to be done at a pace equal to the average pace of all the intervals of the previous instance of this particular session in the previous cycle.
So the target pace for today’s first three intervals was 1:54.6. The 1,000 meter interval and the three intervals following it are supposed to be done at a “faster pace, if possible.” So I set target paces for each of them, with a target pace of 1:50 or better for the 1K, 1:49 or better for the 750m, 1:45 or better for the 500m and 1:40 or better for the final 250m.
The targets chosen for the last four intervals were based on what I thought was reasonable based on past experience.
Target pace was achieved for each of the last 4 intervals, with the exception of the 1K, due to an interruption at the beginning of the 1K which delayed starting it promptly.
The resulting average pace for all 7 intervals was 1:50.1 and that will be the target pace for the first three intervals of this session in the next cycle.
RowPro for Windows was used for this session because RowPro 5 for the Mac (Beta version) will not yet allow for programming variable intervals.
Happy trails to you.
Pete Plan Cycle 2 Week 1 Day 6 Recovery
Today’s Plan session was designated as recovery, steady distance of from 8K to 15K. I chose 8K, with pace the highest priority target. The pace target was 2:20.5, which was the midway point of UT2 (relative to my most recent 2K TT). Second priority was HR less than 75% HRmax. Last priority was rating 22-25.
By making pace the first priority, it was most certain that the desired recovery level of effort would not be exceeded.
Second priority of HR never exceeded 60% HRmax. Last priority of rating was rather sloppy but all in all I was happy with the session.
I was trying to keep today’s recovery session in the UT2 zone, as mentioned in the first paragraph. If the first part of the definition (see the Rowing Lingo page/tab on the home page of this site) of UT2 which is a percentage of power relative to a person’s recent 2K TT is used, I succeeded. But if the second and less commonly interpreted part of the definition for UT2 is used (65% to 70% of the number arrived at by adding a person’s HRR+RHR) then I was rowing too hard. I consider the first and more commonly used definition of UT2 to be the valid one. At least, it felt “right” in that I wasn’t working hard enough to sweat but wasn’t working so ultra easy that it was extremely boring. If I’d rowed at an effort level that would have kept my HR at 65-70% HRR+RHR, that would have been in the range of 97 to 104, which would have been a much more boring effort level, to my experience.
RowPro 5 for the Mac (beta) note: I had a difficulty getting the custom session programmed to be subdivided into 20 splits, so that the distance would be equal for all splits including the final split and the glitch earlier noted could be avoided. (If the last split distance is not the same as all the previous split distances, the displayed pace for the last split is wrong, because RowPro 5 for the Mac uses the previous split distance value to calculate the pace for the last split). I finally managed to force it to be 20 splits by editing the previous 8K which had been automatically subdivided into 27 splits and instead of choosing to “save” it, I clicked the button to start rowing it immediately.
Happy trails to you.
Pete Plan Cycle 2 Week 1 Day 4
Today’s training plan session was supposed to be a “steady distance recovery”, from 8K to 15K, at rating of from 22 to 25. I chose 8K at r22. DF was 135. No warmup or warm down. Straps were loose as usual.
There were three targets: HR, rating and pace. Highest priority was to keep HR anywhere below 75% HRmax and that required little effort. (Pun intended.)
Second highest priority was to keep rating as near as possible to 22 and it is what got most of the portion of attention given to rowing.
Lowest priority was pace. The pace target was to average about 2:18, but most of the time I paid no attention to it, while my mind wandered in various directions and visited parallel universes. Toward the end of the session I noticed that pace was quite a bit faster than 2:18 and seemed to want to stay in that area, so I brought the average pace down by using legs only and not quite letting my legs straighten 100% with each drive. You can see on the chart that it brought the pace down quite a bit, to do that.
RowPro 5 for the Mac (beta version) note: disregard the pace of 1:39 displayed in the session report for the last split. That is incorrect because the algorithm seems to be using 300 meters instead of the correct value of 200 meters for that last split.
Apple watch note: As I said in an earlier post regarding the apple watch workout app when it is in rower mode, the data isn’t really useful for serious rowers because there is virtually no data except elapsed time from the time you start it until you stop it on the workout app. It also gives an estimate of calories burned, based on an algorithm using HR, body weight and I don’t know what else. The calories burned are usually in the ball park and might be useful for someone who needs that figure for purposes of dieting. It also continuously records HR until the workout is stopped, instead of only sampling it once every 10 minutes when the HR app is not being accessed.
Don’t get me wrong – I like the app and very much appreciate that a rower category is included among choices of workout types. The reason I use it, is so that the “activity” app on the watch will give me credit for doing some kind of a workout and say nice things to me about it. Anyway – – the note regarding it today is that I did use it to record the workout activity but forgot to start it until I’d been rowing for a while. When I remembered, I didn’t have to totally stop rowing, to initiate the logging of a rowing workout. All I had to do was take one hand off the C2 handle and keep rowing while holding the watch near my mouth and say “Hey Siri, start a rowing workout.” Three seconds later (there’s a ready-set-go type of 3 second countdown when it starts recording a workout) it was recording the rowing workout and continuously displaying HR.
After the 8K I forgot to stop the rowing workout on the watch. About 15 minutes later I stopped its recording and it had registered 325 Calories and an elapsed time of 49 minutes. That calorie figure looks about right, for the portion of rowing and then the non-rowing afterwards which included standing, sitting, walking and changing clothes.
Happy trails to you.