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.