Ethereal Rowing

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.

Today’s rowing may or may not happen later today and if it does, it will be relatively minimal because I prefer mornings for other than minimal rowing.

As usual, if a rowing session does happen today, this post will be edited to reflect whatever it was.

Happy trails to you.

For today’s rowing, I joined an online session named Training which was a distance of 7,600 meters.  There were two other guys in the session. They did intervals of some sort. I used the first 600 meters to warm up, then rowed the next 5K or so at about 2:00, which kept HR in what would by some people be called “UT1” and “UT2”.  Probably more like UT2 for most of it.

The last couple K, I eased off to begin warming down.  Afterwards, there was a 2,500m warm down, mostly for the purpose of bringing daily meters to over 10K.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s rowing session was an online 10K in the company of three others who were in Denmark, England and France.

Things were back to normal for me today and therefore the rowing pace was what was desired as optimal for nourishing the aerobic base. That pace resulted in beginning the 10K at a 60-65% HR and reaching a HR of about 80% by the end of the session.  (HR percentages were calculated by the Karvonen method for calculating target HR)

Here are the screens, reports and charts:

Happy trails to you.

Today’s rowing session was 30 minutes scheduled online.  There was nobody else who wanted to row at that time so I did the piece alone.

The original plan was to row at a steady state pace of about 2:05.  But things weren’t acting right, so I lowered the pace, the shifted it back up, looking for equilibrium. The end result was to do a total of about 10K, including warmdown, at a rather slow pace.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s session is supposed to be a 30r20.  But it hasn’t been done yet.  If/when it is completed, I’ll update this post with the pertinent information. UPDATE: session was done… see further below for details.

Today’s rowing was supplanted by communication from one of my children, that she wanted to interview me.  For a graduate studies class assignment.  So instead of the usual morning activities including rowing, I chatted with her for a couple of hours. And in response to her questions, thought about things which I hadn’t thought about for quite a while.  It was a pleasant, somewhat rare experience of communication.

Thus… today’s poem which is written in the sky of today’s early morning photograph at the start of this day’s entry…

Until later today…. or tomorrow…

LATER TODAY:  A 30r20 was scheduled over one hour in advance but there were no others who joined so I did it alone.

It has been a week since the most recent previous 30r20. One difference between today’s and the one of a week ago is that today’s was done at a slightly higher pace.  Also, the very last minute of today’s didn’t seem to drag out, with time slowing down, like the very last minute of the 30r20 a week ago.

Go figure, because I don’t know why there would be the difference.

Here is the info on today’s session and the warm down that followed it:

Happy trails to you.

One of the things I’m currently reading is a forum thread focused on the Pete Plan.  And, I’m reading about the Pete Plan on the website of its author, Coach Pete. Though I haven’t yet tried the Pete Plan, I thought that today I would try one of Pete’s recommendations, which is to have one rest day every week.

But just as speed is relative and what is fast for one may be slow for another, so is rest.  Pete didn’t specify any details about what constitutes rest in the passage where I saw his recommendation of resting 1 day per week, so I reasoned that rest is relative and decided to get the best of both resting and also adding some daily meters to the Fall Team Challenge, by rowing very slow.

So today’s rowing session was a resting session.  It was scheduled online and named Rest Is Relative and it had the duration of 60 minutes.

One other guy joined, Sergio,  in Italy.  He rowed at a pace of about 1:57/500m and that may have been work but it also may have been rest for him, depending on what he considers a fast or slow for himself in 60 minutes. Speed is relative and likewise is rest.

Happy trails to you.

Today’s rowing session was 30 minutes online.  There was one other rower, Jesper T., in Denmark, who joined it and Jesper was energetically inspirational as usual.

The plan for today’s 30 minutes was simply to maintain a constant pace at any speed that felt comfortable and which was faster than the pace of 2:01.6, my season best 30 min pace up until today.

The reason I wanted a 30 minute piece faster than 2:01.6 was because yesterday’s 10K was done comfortably at 2:01.7 which is virtually the same pace as 2:01.6 and I thought those two paces were too close to each other.

So I rowed the 30 minute session at a pace of 2:00-2:01 until the last couple minutes and then sprinted a bit to pull the average pace to below 2:00. It was a comfortable enough pace, that I might try another 30 minute session someday soon this season and see how comfortable it would be to shave another second or more off the average pace.

After that, there was a 4K warm down, to return things to equilibrium.

Happy trails to you.