Ethereal Rowing

It seems like quite a few days since having done any rowing.  The back pain is still not totally gone, but it has subsided enough that I was able to row gently today.  The chosen distance was a longer one, so as to help make up for some of the recent days lost.

Many people consider a marathon a “crazy” distance to do and I’m inclined to agree with them.  So today’s distance was only half-crazy, being half the distance of a marathon.

It was done very slowly and there were two necessary breaks before it was finished.  One of the breaks was a necessary one for myself and the other one was to help Diane find something that seemed to be lost.  The first break was a few minutes and the latter was a very short break.

Happy trails to you.

An alternate title for today’s rowing could be An Insufficient Warmup.

 

Today’s session was supposed to be a set of four 1,000 meter intervals but before finishing the second 1K, I experienced a lower back pain and had to slow down to accommodate it. I got off the erg and walked around a bit.  When I sat down again to do the 5 minute active rest portion, the pain returned, so I called a halt to the rowing for today and took a couple valerian tablets which are supposed to be good as muscle relaxants.

Perhaps I should warm up longer, when the house is cold.

The rowing started off with a 3K warm up but I guess that wasn’t enough.

Here’s the stuff for today’s training session:

 

Happy trails to you.

Today’s Pete Plan session was called “hard distance ~5K+” so I chose 5K.  In order to get a total distance of more than 10K today, I did a 3K warm up and then another 3K afterwards.

For the 5K, the pace was a mix.  Did the first 1,500 meters at about 1:54 point something and then eased up for the rest of the 5K.  It was happily hard enough but not a race or attempt do a SB or anything else.

Happy trails to you.

Today was the day for 4x2K in the Pete Plan.  4x2K R5:00, to be more specific.

The previous time this session was done, 3 weeks ago, the average pace for all 4 intervals was 1:57.5 and so that was the target pace for all but the last of today’s four 2K intervals.  The final interval was done a little faster and the overall average for today’s set of 4 was 1:57.2 which will be the target pace for all but the last interval when this is done again, three weeks from now.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s session was a Pete Plan speed pyramid, like the one done on December 4th a few weeks ago in the previous training cycle. Only this time I didn’t scratch it and it went like it was supposed to.  If you look at the result of this session on Dec 4th, the target rate for the first three intervals was the same as today’s target rate: 1:50.6 but the overall average for 7 intervals that time was 2:03.9 because there were problems and I backed off very early in the session.

This time, everything felt normal and so the first three intervals were done at the target pace of 1:50.6 and the last 4 were each done at a faster pace: The first and longest of the last 4, the 1,000 meters, was done at 1:49.8, the next one (750 meters) was done at 1:49.7, followed by the 500 meters at 1:48.7 and finally the 250 meters at 1:46.0.

The overall average for all 7 intervals of the speed pyramid was 1:49.7 and so that will be the target pace for the first 3 intervals of this seven-interval set when it is done again three weeks from now in the next training cycle.

The intervals were preceded by a mild warmup of 10 minutes duration.

Happy trails to you.