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
The session I checked off in Pete Plan for today is the one that was supposed to follow a day 5 “hard distance”. So it is being done a day early, ahead of the hard distance. But I took two unscheduled days off this week, so it is being done a day later than it should have been done per the schedule.
Today’s rowing wasn’t done until late in the day/early evening, though not as late as yesterday’s. And I didn’t want to do a hard distance late in the day. So I did the recovery session today. Which I guess means that I’m already recovered from tomorrow’s hard distance. If I do it tomorrow.
The recovery session is always supposed to be steady-state (constant pace) and is to be done at an average rating of 22 to 25. The generally (in the forum) agreed best effort level is about 50% of recent best 2K TT wattage.
Today’s 8K was done at a pace 1/2 second faster than yesterday’s 8K and it resulted in an ending HR of 119, which was 1 BPM lower than yesterday’s ending HR. Go figure.
On possible factor in today’s lower ending HR might be that last night my heart switched to a lower resting rate of as low as 44 BPM, instead of the recent usual 49 BPM.
Dear Diary, -It’s been a while. But this isn’t a diary, though it has been a while.
This Pete Plan session was supposed to have been done on Nov 16th. But it wasn’t done until in the evening of Nov 18th, after sunset. That’s the explanation for the missing days in the otherwise usually daily blog posts.
This session was done so late in the day on Nov 18th, that there wasn’t time to make a blog entry for it that day. But, thanks to a none too rare episode of insomnia, there is now time to make the overdue blog entry.
The session was a plain and simple 8K done at an average power level of about 130 watts, which was about 54% of my recent 2K TT. Straps loose, DF 135.
Today’s training session was endurance intervals, of a type frequently referred to as a “waterfall”. The previous instance of this particular session was done at an average pace of 1:59.8 so that was the pace target for the first 2 of today’s 3 intervals. The last one, a 2K, was done only slightly faster, at a pace of about 1:55 for the first 1,500 meters and then faster for the last 500 meters, by which time I was feeling a bit tired. The “bit tired” might have been due to the fact that time was at a premium this morning.
I got up more than two hours before dawn and had to do the rowing first thing, before having any breakfast, coffee or even re-hydrating after having slept all night. Did the rowing to get it “out of the way” and then took our car to the mechanic’s shop, to be there when they opened, so they could begin work on replacing it’s worn out clutch. Finally got a first cup of coffee from the coffee machine, at the mechanic’s shop and then I felt like rowing some more but chatted instead since that mechanic’s shop is a typical one and has no erg for waiting customers to use.
The resulting average pace for today’s intervals was 1:58.5, which will be the target pace for the first two intervals of this session in the next cycle of Pete Plan training.
There was no warm up. DF was 135. Straps were loose. 15 minute warm down.
Today’s session was another 8K recovery identical to the previous except that the pace target was made 1/2 second faster, at 2:19.5. The result was a slight increase in ending heart rate of 2 BPM higher than the previous recovery session which had been done at a pace target of 2:20.0. No straps, DF 135.
Today’s Pete Plan training was a set of four intervals, 1,000 meters each, with 5 minutes active rest after each 1K. No warm up. 15 minute warm down. Strapless. DF 135.
Today’s recovery session was another 8K. But it was done at a very slightly higher pace, 1/2 second per 500 meters faster than the 8K recovery session done two days ago.
I increased the pace just slightly, because I thought that I’d try to raise the effort and the resulting average HR just a little because I thought that I’d been rowing just a little too easy on the previous recovery session. The reason I thought so was due to some discussions that happened in a rowing forum.
But rowing 1/2 second per 500m faster for 8K only added a total of one single calorie to the entire rowing session. It reduced the total time of the 8K by 7.5 seconds. It increased the power level by 12.5 watts, according to a comparison of the two session reports. But ending HR was 2 BPM lower, instead of being the same or higher. Interesting, that it made no difference to HR. Maybe next time, I’ll increase pace by another half second and so on from one recovery session to the next, to see where the “tipping point” is, to increase HR. Of course, it might depend on other factors, since life is so very complicated.
Today is the day I’ve been looking forward to for the past seven days. It was another chance to aim for improvement in the 10K, on the Pete Plan “Hard Distance” day.
The session was scheduled online and three others joined in. One of them was in the US, another was in Germany and the third was in England. The guy in the US wanted to help encourage me by pacing alongside.
It was a very easy pace for him though it was a nice hard pace for me at that distance. The other two could have rowed the 10K a lot faster also, but they decided to have an easy day also and they too rowed right alongside for the whole distance. It was a mental boost, to have them there and another reason to keep going, so they wouldn’t be disappointed to see a HD.
I knew I’d have company so I went with the most conservative plan that I could think of for the 10K. The goal was to finish with an average pace faster than 1:59.3, so the plan was: Row the first 9,500 meters at a constant average pace of 1:59.3 and then go faster during the final 500 meters. And – if I felt okay when the remaining distance counted down to 1,000 meters, to slightly pick up the pace, from 1:59.3, to about 1:59 with 1,000 meters to go.
The plan worked well and I was breathing easy until the last 500 meters when I had to start breathing faster. There was still enough energy left that I was able to sprint the very last 100 meters, to finish breathing very hard during the last 5 or 10 strokes.
Immediately afterwards, I had to get off the rower and use the bathroom, due to the influence of having drank perhaps a little too much coffee before the 10K. So I typed, “be right back” instead of joining in the afterwards chat right away. When I returned, I saw that they were speculating if I left to “make a bathroom check” so I typed, “Yes, I had to make a bathroom check.” One of them then typed, “I hope you didn’t have to vomit.” To which I replied, “No, I had to deal with an excess of coffee. 🙂 ”
To repeat myself: It was really nice, to have their company.
Before the 10K there was a 15 minute warmup and a 10 minute warm down afterwards. Straps were loose for most of the session but near the end of the 10K I reached down and pulled each of the footstraps to cinch them up snug for the final sprint. DF was 135.
warm up finish screenwarm up reportwarm up charts10K session report. There was no screen shot made of the final screen view.10K chartswarm down finish screenwarm down reportwarm down charts
