Today’s session was supposed to be a hard distance but I didn’t feel like racing and if I wasn’t going to race, I didn’t want to row a hard distance so I just rowed firmly on the easy end of the effort scale.
Altogether it was a 15 minute warmup, 5K rather easy and a 15 minute warm down. Neither the warmup or warm down were needed for such an easy 5K, but I wanted to log at least 10K for the annual holiday charity drive sponsored by Concept 2. They call it the Holiday Challenge.
warm up chartwarm up finish screenwarm up report5K finish screen5K report5K chartswarm down finish screenwarm down reportwarm down chart
There was no rowing session done today. There was, alas, only a walk in the park. There was, however, a lass with me during the walk in the park – namely, my better half.
At the start of this walk, I set the Apple watch to track a 30 minute outdoor walk. I should have just set it to track an outdoor walk with an “open” goal since we didn’t know exactly how long it would take us to make two laps around the park. After 30 minutes, the app announced “workout complete,” but since we were not on a treadmill and hadn’t yet returned to where the truck was parked, I let the app keep running until we arrived back at the truck.
After the outdoor walk was ended and saved in the Activity app, it awarded me with something that resembled a gold star and exclaimed joyously that I had earned that award for having done my “first walk with the Workout app!” I’m still basking in that glory.
These are the results of what was recorded for the walk.
The seat on the Concept 2 rowing machine has rollers on it and with each stroke it slides back and forth on the rail. At least, that’s what I call the metal beam upon which the seat sits.
Today was a scheduled recovery rowing day. I took it easier than usual, slowed or interrupted the session a few times for changing channels and also helping my better half bring in the groceries.
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.
